Has Cape Town found way to end matatu madness?

For an all-too-brief moment in early 2003, I remember Kenyans asserting themselves over the matatu industry and championing their safety over everything else.

Urban Kenyans, in particular, became known as “the walking nation”, even to the point of walking to work in a boycott of the matatu industry, which was resisting the adoption of new safety rules.

Sadly, and I cannot actually pinpoint why exactly, this mood fizzled out and was soon forgotten and things returned to how they had always been.

Not long afterwards, the matatu industry was back to its old ways, treating passengers and the law with impunity and creating havoc on the roads, aided and abetted by all involved.

Meanwhile, those in charge of governance stopped being bothered to even pay lip service to the idea of commuter safety, and that was the end of that.

For my sins, I am old enough to remember when the Kenya Bus Service was subsidised by the Nairobi City Council and provided an affordable and regular public transport system on city routes. Also when Nairobi’s matatus were also a hell of a lot more law-abiding than they are now.

In those days, believe it or not, dear reader, bus commuters knew that according to the schedule posted at the bus stop, a bus would come by at a particular time, give or take a couple of minutes either way. 

So, for instance, when leaving your house, place of work or wherever else, all you had to do was factor in the time it would take you to get to the nearest bus stop, and voila!

You also knew you would be relatively safe throughout your journey, bar the odd pickpocket. Of course, there were also those people who sexually assaulted fellow passengers, especially on a crowded bus or matatu, but that deserves a whole separate column.

I got to thinking about the glory days of Nairobi transport when here in Cape Town, they launched a passenger rating system for taxis, as matatus are called here.

According to the provincial authorities, this nine-month pilot will see the participation of approximately 1,300 minibus taxis distributed across the whole province.

The system, which the minibus taxi industry has bought into, will reward good driving behaviour and higher service quality.

At the same time, it is expected to encourage less matatu madness as we used to call it in Nairobi.

Matatu madness is what happens when matatu crews are incentivised into fare-chasing, destructive competition by their owners, who want to maximise profits at all costs. 

We have similar issues with minibus taxis here in Cape Town, with the added option of an escalation into Wild West-type violence with street shootouts and even the assassination of taxi owners.   

With the introduction of the “rate your ride” system here, the provincial government is showing it is alive to the fact that the minibus taxi industry is the largest provider of public transport services in the province. 

And despite delivering an essential service that is vital to the functioning of the economy, they don’t get any subsidy or funding from the government unlike the buses and the trains.

With the rate your ride system, participating minibus taxis will be rewarded for good performance.

If a passenger who rides in a participating minibus taxi is unhappy with the service, they can dial a particular code, include the particular taxi’s unique number on display inside and leave an anonymous rating, much like users of Uber, Bolt and other such services do.

This platform looks set to empower the passengers, and because it is anonymous, it will give people the courage to stand up to the minibus taxi bullies and, in the long run, help bring order out of the chaos.

I wonder if Kenyan matatu passengers could do with such powers. Would there finally be a solution for matatu madness?