Johann Ferreira, the CEO of Intercape, the largest long-haul bus company in Southern Africa, says the police have finally run out of road after the Makhanda high court’s recent rejection of the SAPS appeal against a court order to protect his buses from the taxi mafia.
“One missed deadline after another they played for time, and when they ran out of time they applied for leave to appeal. Now they don’t have an option. They have to comply, they have to come up with a plan.”
Since 2015 Intercape has been exposed to “a deliberate stratagem of extortion”, demanding he increase his prices, pay a “cash levy” for certain routes and stop using other routes altogether.
While other major long-haul bus companies capitulated or stopped operating, he refused to budge and his buses were attacked. Requests for police protection were ignored, as were letters to the ministers of police and transport and then to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The tipping point was when one of his 450 drivers was shot and killed as it left Cape Town for the Eastern Cape in April 2022.
He gave the driver’s family a bus free of charge to take mourners to the Eastern Cape for the funeral but taxi operators pulled a truck across the N2 at Dutywa, blocking it for 24 hours. They refused to reopen it unless the then Eastern Cape transport MEC, Weziwe Tikana-Gxothiwe, agreed to expel Intercape from five large towns including Dutywa and Butterworth, which provided almost half Ferreira’s business in the province.
They’re shooting randomly at buses carrying 60, 70, 80 passengers at a time. It’s not that they’re just trying to take the bus out. They are literally firing live rounds into moving buses, hitting passengers and drivers
Instead of having the perpetrators arrested the MEC “instructed” Ferreira to “come immediately and negotiate with them” — prices, routes, timetables and the number of buses they could operate. “Effectively, they wanted to run your company.”
When he refused, Tikana-Gxothiwe met with the taxi bosses and agreed to stop Intercape from loading passengers in these towns, a “patently illegal” ban which cost him R10m a month in revenue. The police were present but did nothing.
Ferreira says he decided this was such a flagrant violation of the government’s constitutional and legal mandate to provide protection against extortion, intimidation, assault and murder that he took the MEC, the then national transport minister Fikile Mbalula and police minister Bheki Cele to Makhanda high court.
The court gave them 20 days to come up with a “comprehensive plan”, with timelines, to ensure the safety and security of long-distance bus drivers and passengers in the province, an order they “opposed and appealed”, but in effect “ignored”.
“They were late, and never came up with a plan that could have been implemented. Whatever they put on the table was impractical,” Ferreira says.
In August 2023 he got another court order instructing police to produce a “revised” plan to protect his buses. Again with timelines, which again they ignored.
Three months later in the “forbidden” rural town of Dutywa, taxi drivers blocked 41 passengers from getting onto one of his buses while the police looked on. As before, passengers were intimidated, buses stoned and shot at.
In December 2023 Ferreira obtained another Makhanda high court judgment in which national police commissioner Fannie Masemola and his Eastern Cape counterpart were declared to be in contempt of court for failing to implement earlier court orders to protect Intercape buses.
They were warned that unless they provided visible policing to Intercape and reported back to court within a month on the steps they had taken, they could be sent to jail.
“It’s not that they have to escort every bus in every part of South Africa. It’s when we call the police and tell them there is an imminent threat, that is when they have to comply and come and escort the buses and have a visible presence at the bus stop.”
They failed to comply even with this, Ferreira says. “Their response when called upon has been haphazard and replete with excuses: they don’t have staff, they don’t have cars, they have to attend to another issue.”
By the end of 2023 he had opened 176 cases with the police ranging from murder, attempted murder, assault, intimidation and extortion to damage to property.
Attacks on his buses have now gone from 160 since the 2022 court order to 192.
He has registered criminal cases with the police for each one but there has not been a single arrest, Ferreira says. “Zero, nothing.”
“They’re shooting randomly at buses carrying 60, 70, 80 passengers at a time. It’s not that they’re just trying to take the bus out. They are literally firing live rounds into moving buses, hitting passengers and drivers.”
Instead of providing protection the police and responsible ministers have been “fighting us all the way in the high court and losing. Five times they’ve been to court and five court cases they’ve lost”.
The politicians and officials have been in contempt of court and should have been arrested, he says. “If it was me in contempt of court I would have been in jail. They’re untouchable, they’re above the law.”
Ferreira believes the police, at least, are in cahoots with the taxi mafia. “They have business interests in the taxis. Traffic officers, police officers, they’re all in it, specifically in the Eastern Cape. It’s entrenched, it’s a quagmire.”
Intercape has incurred losses and expenses of about R50m including loss of revenue, damage to property, legal costs of almost R20m and bills for at least R7m for private security.
Ferreira hopes that with the appeal thrown out and a new government of national unity in power things will change.
“There’s new ministers of police and transport. The new police minister says he’s aware of what’s been going on and is committed to doing something about it.
“It’s now the end of the road. Parliament has an obligation to see that ministers do their job. We will be knocking on the doors of the police and transport portfolio committees to ensure they put pressure on these ministers.”
He is particularly encouraged by the appointment of anti-crime activist Ian Cameron as chair of the police portfolio committee.
“He’s shown his credentials in the field. He can now summon the minister to report to the committee on what he’s doing about these attacks. I think it will be a game changer.”
