adminCAPE TOWN. – The port and tourist city of Cape Town has been paralysed for several days by a collective taxi strike, which has taken a violent turn in South Africa’s largest city with three deaths reported, the police announced on Monday.
Thousands of commuters were stranded after a work stoppage on Thursday by drivers of minibuses, the main means of transport for millions of working-class South Africans, who are blocking many roads.
On Monday, on the road to the airport, “one person was shot and three others injured” after throwing stones at a motorist, the police said.
The authorities then said that another body, that of a 28-year-old man who had died from several gunshot wounds in an attack “presumed to be linked to taxis”, had been found nearby.
On Friday evening, a policeman was shot dead while on patrol some twenty kilometres from Cape Town.
Here again, “we cannot rule out the possibility that this attack was linked to the ongoing taxi strike”, commented the police, as officers were “patrolling (…) to contain incidents linked” to the strike.
The airport road, which had been regularly disrupted and blocked the previous night, was finally cleared on Monday afternoon.
The British Embassy in South Africa posted a notice on Facebook last weekend advising travellers to delay their journeys “to and from the airport until the route has been cleared”. – AFP
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