Celani Sikhakhane
Taxi owners in Ladysmith, KZN have decided to drop the R15 million lawsuit against the KZN Department of Transport.
The Klipriver Taxi Owners Association were in the process of suing the department over the 2018 closure of their route, citing loss of income for the entire year.
But they have now run out of funds to pay their lawyers, so the lawsuit has been abandoned.
In 2018, the then MEC of Transport, Mxolisi Kaunda, imposed a ban on the troubled routes after the death of more than 60 people in non-traffic related incidents since 2014.
In 2015, a Gauteng family of three was shot dead in what the police said was a case of mistaken identity by hitmen who intended to assassinate a taxi owner.
In another tragic incident, five teachers were killed whilst travelling in a taxi to school in 2017.
The ban was lifted in 2019 by the Pietermaritzburg High Court after Klipriver filed the case against the MEC’s ban.
The Department of Transport was instructed to pay the legal costs amounting to over R500,000.
Mkhulu Masondo, from the association, said the closure of the Gauteng, Newcastle, Durban route led to many losing their taxis and houses because they didn’t have any income.
They then sued the department for R15 million.
“We wanted the department to pay for our loss of income but we are no longer able to continue with lawsuits because we don’t have money to pay the lawyers. We have already lost a lot of money,” said Masondo.
The battle for routes started as a family dispute a decade ago in Gauteng but it ended up involving more people between Sizwe Taxi Association and Klipriver Taxi Association.
