Intercape CEO Johann Ferreira, whose long-haul buses have been shot at and prevented from operating in Eastern Cape towns for years by taxi operators, seemingly aided by the police and government, says what his company has had to go through to stay in business “is not just a political issue, it’s about an economy going down the drain”.
It makes nonsense of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s frequently stated commitment to facilitate business and economic growth, he adds.
“It’s empty words, empty promises. And the public of South Africa, the business community and international investors are sick and tired of the nonsense that he’s talking and selling, and nobody’s buying [it].”
Ferreira cites gross fixed capital formation at 13.6% of GDP, which is “not a bankable number”, he says.
“There will be no foreign investment in this country because this country is run like a circus by clowns. It’s an absolute disgrace how South Africa’s been run into the ground and how the biggest intercity bus operator is treated. Our passengers are the constituency of all the political parties in South Africa, the grassroots of this country, the masses. We carry them; we fight for their safety. Not a single political party has come through for them and spoken out for them.”
In the past five years, Intercape has brought 17 court cases and won 17 court orders against the national and provincial departments of police and transport, all of them ignored.
Ferreira’s interview with the FM takes place against the backdrop of a pending contempt of court ruling after police ignored a February court order to protect Intercape’s buses; four months later an 11-year-old passenger was shot.
Intercape employees and passengers face ongoing intimidation and violence in Ngcobo, Alice and other towns in the Eastern Cape.
In September, Ngcobo municipality was ordered to demarcate an area in front of the local police station where Intercape buses could offload and load passengers without being “obstructed, fined, impounded, harassed and shot at”, but the municipality, supported by the Ngcobo Taxi Association, has opposed the order.
Contrary to Ferreira’s hopes, the GNU has made no difference to Intercape’s situation, he says.
“The authorities and the taxis are still obviously in cahoots. Intercape is still obviously, for the government, a problem. Why, I don’t know. Maybe we’re too honest, maybe our service is too good.”
What former police minister Bheki Cele and former transport minister Fikile Mbalula did and what the new ministers have done is “criminal”, he says.
“They’ve fought us all the way. We’ve not heard from them, they’ve not written to us, they’ve not replied to us. It’s as if nothing happened in the past five years, like there’s never been 17 court cases that their departments defended and lost.”
Municipalities in the Eastern Cape are still working hand in hand with the taxis against him, he says. “They’re all in it together. The government, the taxis, the police, the whole lot.”
Intercape is the only long-distance bus company that is still going strong, “and they want Intercape out. They want to cleanse the industry of Intercape.”
Referring to taxi boss Joe “Ferrari” Sibanyoni’s appearance at the Madlanga commission, the revelations about links between organised crime and the taxi industry “resonate 100% with what I’ve experienced”, Ferreira says.
“I was told to my face, you will pay the protection money, you will do this, you will do that. I was a victim, 100%, of this situation.”
A long legal road
Ferreira took over Intercape from his father, a teacher, who started it with one bus in 1971. It now has 300 luxury coaches, each costing R10m, and 1,500 staff in four Southern African countries.
He won’t say how many passengers he transports to the Eastern Cape every year. “These numbers are confidential. This is what fuels the anger.”
The tipping point for him came in April 2022, when one of his 450 drivers was shot and killed.
Ferreira gave the driver’s family a bus free of charge to take mourners to the Eastern Cape for his funeral. When taxi operators saw the bus in what they had declared a no-go zone, they stopped it and held it to ransom with the mourners inside.
They pulled a truck across the N2 at Dutywa and refused to move it until the Eastern Cape transport MEC agreed to get Intercape out of five large towns in the province, including Dutywa and Butterworth, which provided almost half his business in the province.
Instead of having the operators arrested, Ferreira says the MEC instructed him to meet with them to “negotiate” prices, routes and frequencies.
He told her this was unacceptable and refused.
The MEC, however, met them, and with the police looking on agreed to stop Intercape loading passengers in these towns, he says — a “patently illegal” ban that cost him R10m a month in revenue. Just fixing shattered windscreens had cost R800,000 in the previous two years.
Ferreira 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, Mbalula (then transport minister) and Cele (then police minister) to the Makhanda high court. It gave them 20 days to come up with a plan for the safety and security of long-distance bus drivers and passengers in the province.
Mbalula said law enforcement was not part of his job and in effect did nothing.
In August 2023, Ferreira obtained another court order instructing the police to produce a “revised” plan to protect his buses.
Three months later, taxi drivers blocked 41 passengers from getting on one of his buses while the police looked on.
In December 2023, he obtained another Makhanda high court judgment, which declared national police commissioner Fannie Masemola and his Eastern Cape counterpart to be in contempt of court for failing to implement earlier court orders to protect Intercape buses.
Taxi operators were firing live rounds into moving buses, hitting passengers and drivers. Ferreira registered criminal cases with the police, but no arrests were made.
He says he’s lost “hundreds of millions of rand” in income from operations that have had to be halted in towns where Intercape was prevented from loading.
A climate of fear
Ferreira would have expected more support from the business community “in the sense of coming forward”, but says they fear for their lives.
“I know people in business who would rather pay protection money because they’re scared for their families and staff if they don’t. So they’re not prepared to take a stance against it, to put an affidavit forward and open a case. South Africa is being driven into the ground by fear and poverty.”
The state attorney in Cape Town told him that he got daily complaints from businesses, including big companies, about extortion and racketeering.
“He told them to go to the police and open a case, but they said their boards wouldn’t let them and in their own capacity they couldn’t do it. So nobody is making a stand and that’s the problem. If enough people make a stand, this nonsense will stop.”
Organised business must put pressure on the government because if they don’t, where will the pressure come from, he asks.
“If they are serious about the future of South Africa, they should seriously look into the crime syndicates operating within their companies and milking protection money from them.”
He says if the country’s biggest intercity operator is being fought tooth and nail by a taxi industry the government refuses to regulate, the question must be asked: why?
His answer is that “they prefer an informal operation far removed from the National Land Transport Act so they can play by their own rules, not pay taxes, extort money, run a rogue operation so they can fund their mafia-style operations and cartels”.
That may be the motive of the taxi mafia. What’s the motive of the president and his ministers?
“Follow the money and see where it ends up,” he says.
What were Cele and Mbalula doing at alleged taxi mafia boss Jothan “Mswazi” Msibi’s funeral in 2024, he asks.
“It’s clearly not in the interests of the government to formalise the taxi industry, otherwise why haven’t they?”
