Navigating urban encounters: an infrastructural perspective on violence in Johannesburg’s taxi industry

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe introduction of app-based ride-share services in Johannesburg, South Africa has provoked deadly clashes between meter-taxi and e-hailing drivers. While the extreme violence in the taxi industry has a long history, the current escalation of violence is very specific in its spatial manifestation and employment of urban infrastructure. Violent encounters concentrate around particular nodes, such as some of the commuter rail stops. Through the spatial examination of the Sandton, Park Street and Rosebank Gautrain stops, this article sheds light on the infrastructure’s design and role to mediate violent conflict, and drivers’ strategies to engage with the transport infrastructure to navigate the violence. Focusing on Johannesburg’s transport infrastructure allows not only to underline the continuation and blurry divide between violence in conflict and post-conflict urbanism, but moreover provides insights into the role urban infrastructure, from transport networks to cars and mobile phone applications, plays in the renegotiation of identities and belonging in contemporary South African cities.