The taxis have been on strike in PE all this week. I don’t
understand everything about taxi strikes, but I know it is political and
economical. A lot of the time they are striking to receive more money from the
government. The World Cup is coming to South Africa in 2010. They are
building a stadium just down the road from our house which we can see from our
front window. For the World Cup, they want to remove most, if not all, of the
taxis in the city to build a new mode of public transportation that is safer
for tourists. The taxi drivers are now on strike to revolt against the
government’s propositions.
The strike affects thousands of people in the city. It is
the black and colored community who use the taxis the most. Many people cannot
get to work because they don’t own vehicles and rely on 
the taxis and have no
way of earning money for the time being. Kids can’t get to school and a lot of
the time families can’t even get to the grocery store. I heard one story about
a nurse who walked 3 hours to get to work because her patients had no one to
look after them. Also, one of the house moms at EP Children’s Home (where I
work) has stayed 5 nights now with the girls because she has no way of getting
home and no other staff can come relieve her. The township is experiencing extreme violence as well during this time,
as it is rumored that cars in the townships have been set on fire.
The strike affects our team as well. More than half of our
team takes taxis every day to ministry, which means we’ve had to think of
creative things to do around the city or around the house. You can imagine that
many of my teammates are quite frustrated because they believe that God has
them at their ministries for a specific purpose and it’s hard to see how God is
working through this. Meghan and myself are lucky because EP is just down the
street and we are able to walk every day.
We heard this morning that the taxis are running again, but it’s possible that it would only be for the weekend. People are saying that the strike could last as long as a month. This would be devastating to our ministry (at least in our minds), but even more devastating to the people of this city. We are praying that God will give us new ideas of how to serve Him in the city, and for now have resorted to praying hard core for those affected by the strike. Of course, it’s quite possible, and maybe even likely, that this is all part of God’s plan for us and the he has something even greater in store.
