Why do labels matter?

South Africa’s minibus taxi industry is often described through terms such as “informal”, “unregulated”, “illegal” or “difficult to govern”. These descriptions capture some realities. The industry has serious problems, like working conditions, exploitation, violence and conflict.

The labels used to describe the taxi industry can also obscure another reality: that it contains extensive knowledge, organisation and social practices developed by the people who work in and depend on it.

Taxi drivers know their routes. Operators understand the economic pressures of the industry. Marshals, who manage taxi ranks, understand how to coordinate taxis, control queues and direct passenger flows. Commuters understand where the system works and where it fails. Communities know what inaccessible transport means for their everyday lives.

The question is not whether this knowledge should replace scientific, technical or governmental knowledge. It should not. The question is why it is so often treated as less authoritative.

This is where African philosophy and epistemology – the study of knowledge and how it is produced and validated – become particularly relevant.

Take the word “informal”.

In South Africa, the minibus taxi industry is routinely described as part of the informal economy. Yet “informal” can easily become synonymous with being unorganised, backward, temporary or deficient.

An institution can be informal without being disorganised.

What are your books about?

The books span sociology, politics, law, social work and infrastructure. They place the taxi industry within broader questions of mobility, inequality, governance and justice.

In Blood on the Tar, Hope on the Horizon I argue that the problems confronting the industry cannot simply be understood as criminality or disorder but must be connected to historical deregulation, economic pressures and failures of governance.

A Fork in the Road examines the formalisation of South Africa’s minibus taxi industry against its historical development, labour relations and relationship with the state.

Rather than treating formalisation as a straightforward technical process, it raises questions about what is gained, what is lost and whose interests are served when an informal institution is brought under greater state regulation.

The industry has associations, social networks, rules, norms, hierarchies and systems of coordination. Its organisation may not always resemble that of the formal institutions through which the state prefers to govern, but this does not mean that organisation is absent.

This distinction matters.

If policymakers begin with the assumption that informal institutions are simply incomplete versions of formal ones, they may overlook the social systems that already make those institutions work.

What approach would be better?

Instead of asking how to formalise the taxi industry, we might ask what formalisation means in this particular African context. And then, what knowledge already exists within the industry that should inform its transformation.

Formalisation programmes have not always changed what workers experience.

My research into the Taxi Recapitalisation Programme examined its impact on precarious working conditions in the minibus taxi industry in Johannesburg. The programme was designed to phase out old vehicles. It showed that replacing vehicles or introducing formal regulations does not automatically make jobs safer. A policy can change the physical infrastructure of an industry without transforming its social relations.

Institutions are lived and reproduced by people.

Consider a taxi driver who has spent 20 years working in the industry. That driver may not have a university qualification in transport planning, economics or sociology. But they may know a lot from experience.

They may know why passengers choose particular routes, how informal agreements operate, how disputes are managed, how regulations affect work and why certain government interventions succeed while others fail.

A marshal may possess detailed knowledge of how a rank functions. A commuter may know that a technically completed road is still unusable. An operator may understand economic pressures that do not appear in official statistics.

Such knowledge should not automatically be treated as truth. Experience can be partial, contradictory or self-interested. But neither should it be dismissed simply because it was not produced in a university, government office or consultancy.

Recognising people as knowers does not mean accepting everything they say. It means recognising that they have something to contribute to the production of knowledge.

What about the question of invisibility?

Millions of South Africans depend on the industry for mobility, yet the people who make that mobility possible can remain largely invisible in public policy debates.

Workers may be invisible not only as workers, but also as producers of knowledge.

Their experiences become data collected by someone else. Their stories become evidence interpreted by someone else. Their realities become policy problems defined by someone else.

Mobility determines whether people can reach work, education, healthcare and other opportunities. A transport system can therefore reproduce or reduce inequality.

And if we want to understand that inequality, we need to listen to those who experience it.

African philosophy offers another useful perspective through ubuntu, particularly the work of South African philosopher Mogobe Ramose.

Ubuntu is often reduced to the phrase “I am because we are”. Its deeper philosophical significance concerns relationality: the idea that human existence and flourishing are profoundly connected to relationships with others.

This provides an interesting lens through which to understand the taxi industry.

What is the key take-away from your work?

That Africa should not merely be a place where theories developed elsewhere are applied. African realities can also produce theoretical knowledge.

A Fork in the Road? asks us to reconsider how we understand formalisation, informality, labour and the taxi industry’s place in South Africa’s economy and society.

Blood on the Tar, Hope on the Horizon connects the taxi industry to wider questions of mobility, justice, citizenship, governance and structural inequality. Its comparative perspective also demonstrates that the challenges facing informal public transport are not uniquely South African.

Together, the books suggest that the taxi industry is not simply a transport problem waiting to be solved.

It is also a site from which we can learn about South African society.

It reveals the limits of simple distinctions between formal and informal.

It exposes the difficulties of state-centred approaches to governance.

It shows how social networks can simultaneously create resilience and inequality.

It demonstrates how workers can be economically indispensable while institutionally marginalised.

And it shows why lived experience matters when designing policy.

African philosophy therefore has something important to contribute to contemporary debates about South Africa’s development.

Written by Siyabulela Christopher Fobosi, Senior Researcher, UNESCO 'Oliver Tambo' Chair of Human Rights, University of Fort Hare, University of Fort Hare

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.