The City of Cape Town’s Traffic Department this week destroyed several vehicles that were recently impounded after the owners fell foul of the new Traffic By-law.

The amended by-law was gazetted on 29 July 2022 and paves the way for more effective traffic enforcement by City Traffic.

It provides for the regulation of public transport vehicles and traffic within the City’s jurisdiction in line with national legislation, as provided for in the Constitution.

Read more: READ: The City’s traffic officers can now impound your vehicle on the spot

The by-law makes provision for the impounding of vehicles in certain instances, including:

• Where the vehicle was involved in reckless or negligent driving or illegal street racing
• The driver is under the influence of alcohol
• The driver is unlicensed
• The driver disobeys an instruction to stop or pull over, resulting in a pursuit
• The vehicle is unregistered, has an expired licence disc older than 90 days, is not roadworthy or has been abandoned

The amended traffic by-law now also includes a section that focuses directly on public transport vehicles, not only the conventional “taxi” but also those in the e-hailing sector.

The City says previous legislation proved to be lacking and often allowed offenders to easily bypass enforcement action, resulting in a blatant disregard for road rules, with very limited consequences that failed to change the driving behaviour of public transport drivers.

Late last month, four Golden Arrow buses, and private and state vehicles were burned and stoned following an integrated impounding operation targeted at illegal local Avanza taxis also known as Amaphela. One bus driver suffered head injuries.

The operation was prompted by ongoing complaints about illegal operators, and 19 Amaphela sedan taxis, and two minibus taxis.

Drivers accused the City of not supporting the issuing of operating licenses for Amaphela operators.

But the City said this was misleading.

The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility, Rob Quintas said at the time that contrary to the messages circulating on social media, the City is still awaiting the ‘new list’ from Kiki Murray Taxi Association for the 170 remaining operating licences to be applied for.

To date, only 230 of the agreed-upon 400 operating licences have successfully been applied for.