Buti Mkhonza the former chairperson of Gauteng Santaco Provincial Taxi Council has lambasted taxi operators for lack of self-reliance and for not taking their future in in own hands.
Mkhonza says the taxi industry has the ability to self-finance their business needs only if they organize themselves economically. He gave tips on how the taxi operators can “free themselves from vehicle finance debt using the example of his taxi association membership that has its own stokvel that raises an amount of R1.2 million every week without fail.
“Our members play a taxi stokvel and every Tuesday we collect around R1.2 million. This demonstrate the power that we have as an industry but yet we are powerless economically,”
He said taxi operators must not underestimate the power of the stokvel industry saying that the taxi operators’ who play stokvel within the taxi industry makes an upward contribution of R4.3 billion annually.
“We contribute R4.3 billion annually in the stokvels within the taxi industry – this is the money that is taken to banks by our members. They deposit it and their banks which in turn use the same money to lend to others at favourable interest rates not to us,” he said.
Mkhonza added that the taxi operators are to blame for not using their collective power to start their own bank,” he said.
“We don’t have a taxi bank of our own?” he protested.
He said the problem of the taxi industry lies with the lack of leadership and belief system.
“Our belief system is wrong; we also have a problem of thinking. We have to work on our belief and thinking system if not this industry is not going to change,” he said.
Mkhonza who describes himself as a born leader says he does not want leadership titles for the sake of it, urging taxi industry to develop future leaders through training.
“As a leader you must produce more leaders not followers to lead and serve members with integrity and dignity. We need to build leadership capacity at taxi associations level to also improve the level of the economy” he said.
