ABSTRACT
The Black taxi industry in South Africa has grown from a few hundred six-seater sedans in the late 1970s to over 80,000 ten—and sixteen-seater minibuses in the 1990s (Barolsky 1990; Khosa 1990; McCaul 1990). Today, the industry is a powerful force in the urban economy and estimates reveal that taxi owners buy over 800 million litres of petrol and purchase over 3.5 million tyres per annum. The Black taxi industry provides four motor manufacturing companies with a turnover of about R2 billion a year, capital investment of about R3 billion, and has created some 300,000 jobs (equivalent to 60 per cent of the entire gold-mining industry in South Africa) (Khosa 1990).
