Safe Taxis Now

In a nutshell

The Safe Taxis Now campaign was developed in response to a number of high profile rape cases which were perpetrated in taxis, in Johannesburg and Soweto, between March and April 2017. The goal of this campaign is to: Create a safe public transport system for women, and highlight the challenges they face daily while commuting via public transport. The campaign is implemented by Soul City Institute in partnership with community-based women’s organisations.

What we do

The campaign, through its partnership with Amandla.mobi, mobilised women and collated their submissions into a National Safe Taxis Charter. As part of the campaign, there are ongoing stakeholder engagements with Taxi Associations, government and community stakeholders. Priority activities include advocating for the adoption of the National Safe Taxis Charter and lobbying for the regulation of the Taxi industry.

How we do it

A brainstorming session was held with all partners to plan the Safe Taxis Now campaign. This planning meeting also involved government departments. Soul City Institute (SCI) uses various platforms to mobilise support and put the issue of women’s safety on the agenda. The platforms include social media, community dialogues, public protests, stakeholder engagement, lobbying government to adopt the National Safe Taxis Charter and to regulate the taxi industry. Campaign activities included the following:

• Creating awareness on unsafe public transport, specifically taxis.
• Creating awareness of Thuthuzela Care Centres for Post rape services.
• Advocating for the regulation of the taxi industry.
• Adoption of the National Safe Taxis Charter.
• Highlighting the need for Public officials to account when women who have been sexually assaulted are secondarily victimised at police stations.

What we have achieved

Through social media during April - June 2017 the campaign managed to:

• Raise awareness and create engagement especially on Twitter through live tweeting at our #SafeTaxisNow events and by sharing original content.
• Through SCI's Facebook accounts, we managed to reach 724 454 people (men and women. 39 755 people engaged with our content and we had a total video views of 81 222).
• Our #SafeTaxisNow hashtag reached 1 598 374 people. This is the sum of all users mentioning our brand and the sum of those users’ followers.
• Compiling the National Safe Taxis Charter has been a key achievement.

What we have learned

• This is a long term campaign. Follow-ups need to be conducted with stakeholders to achieve our objectives.
• The unregulated environment of the taxi industry makes it challenging to navigate. We need the cooperation of the taxi industry and to keep them involved whilst advocating for change.
• Any campaign that focuses on safe public transport/spaces for women, need women’s groups as partners in order to mobilise and demand change.