Cape Town's mayor urges devolution of rail, unionising taxi drivers or risk repeat of violence and chaos

The star of Cape Town’s young executive mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis continues to rise - with his leadership abilities seen to good effect during the adept handling of the city’s potentially debilitating taxi crisis earlier this month. Like the city’s water crisis between 2015 and 2018, lessons appear to have been learnt from the challenge. Hill-Lewis reckons these include the need for Pretoria to devolve decision-making power on rail services; and find ways to address the working conditions under which taxi drivers operate - an arrangement which incentivises them to break the law. In this interview, the 36-year-old mayor also provides an update on the city’s progress towards fulfilling his campaign promise of ending loadshedding. He celebrates the role of an innovative power supply agreement to secure for Cape Town the first AWS Skills Centre outside of the USA, launched today. It brings Amazon’s seven-year investment commitment of a further R40bn on top of the R16bn already injected by the multinational. - Alec Hogg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices