The day the City of Cape Town tried to steal mobility – and lost

For many people with disabilities in Cape Town, September 8, 2025 was set to be the day their world ended. And then people’s power triumphed over MMC Rob Quintas’ diktat. Had the MMC for Urban Mobility had his way, healthcare, grocery shopping, social grants, community associations, and family would be beyond the reach of thousands of people with disabilities.

But the City underestimated the resistance it would face. It is used to picking on the vulnerable, punching down on the homeless, the indigent, the elderly, the struggling, the precarious middle class, the historically disadvantaged. Quintas’ cruel decision galvanised support against the City across political, cultural, racial, and organisational divides. 

The City did not count on organisations like the Western Cape Network on Disability, an umbrella organisation of almost one hundred organisations that advocates for the disabled community, to pull together a coalition for change. The City did not think that the disabled would be able to approach the courts. The City miscalculated that the disabled would not find a powerful ally in the People’s Legal Centre. This coalition, together with civil society organisations such as #UniteBehind, Cape Town Society for the Blind, Disability Revolution and, crucially, opposition political parties, stopped the City in its tracks. 

The Cruelest Cut

For the disabled community, every single interface with the City proved the point that Cape Town is a city of barriers. The extraordinary gathering of disabled people and their allies at the Civic centre was stymied by the inaccessibility of the physical structure of the centre and the CBD itself. Interactions with the political and administrative governance gave insight into the futility of performative engagement. Within the Portfolio Committee for Urban Mobility, they decided to move the agenda item pertaining to Dial-a-Ride to October - a month after the cuts were to be made.

The Democratic Alliance-led City of Cape Town had wrapped this decision in technocratic language – “budget constraints”, “realignment”, “sustainability.” But underneath the jargon is the simple truth that the City made a political choice to cut the service, thinking that they would get away with it. It misled the public, already well versed in the DA trick of dragging the National Government into the chat to deflect from its own political decisions.

Never mind that the DA-led Provincial Government funds and has an oversight function over Dial-a-Ride.Much like the Western Cape Provincial Government cut more than 2,400 teachers to divert National Government funding to elsewhere, the City’s decision to cut Dial-a-Ride is the result of the DA’s political decision to fund a highly ineffective security strategy, by defunding services that underpin the social safety net. Any appeal to the National Government is just a smokescreen to cover their failing agenda.

A Private Sector Failure

The Dial-a-Ride saga also exposes the unwillingness of the City to investigate a private sector failure. Dial-a-Ride users have consistently raised the alarm about inefficiencies and service failures by the service provider, HG Travel.

Dial-a-Ride users have related how the company would assign multiple vehicles where one vehicle would have sufficed. They have raised concerns of sudden cancellations of their bookings, leaving them stranded. They have told of vehicles idling for hours, wasting fuel.

And when they have tried to raise these issues, they are met with officiousness, or an automated system that lacks the human touch whether they call or try to navigate the Dial-a-Ride app.

Even now, in defiance of the settlement reached at the high Court, many users find that the HG Travel still will not accommodate them. Bookings are being unilaterally moved or cancelled altogether.

Despite the High Court settlement that the service be restored in full, users are reporting alarming changes. Some were told that their personal assistants - essential for their mobility and safety - would no longer be allowed to travel with them.

One commuter, who had carefully booked specific pick-up and drop-off times to arrive at work punctually and leave when their workday ended, found those times unilaterally changed by the Dial-a-Ride office. They were fetched much later in the morning and collected earlier in the afternoon, effectively shortening their workday and putting their job at risk.

The service was meant to be restored to its previous state, but these examples show clear deviations from what was promised.This is not a new service provider. HG Travel have been the service provider for many years. Yet the service levels and user experience has been declining at an alarming rate.

A thorough examination of why this is the case, or why feedback from users has not been treated with the seriousness that it deserves has never adequately been explained. There seems to be a blanket refusal by the City over many directorates to hold its private sector partners to account. The starting point to find the shortfall of R1 million would be at the service provider level, yet this never occurred to Rob Quintas.

Why?

The First Dominos

 What happened with Dial-a-Ride is more than a single service fight. It has exposed how little the City listens when it thinks it can get away with a cut. It has shown how accountability in Cape Town often has to be forced from the outside. For many years the City of Cape Town has been getting away with not having a public participation policy. The absence of this policy is not an oversight. It is by design. It’s how the City is able to impose decisions on the public with little to no consultation.

This win on behalf of the most vulnerable residents is among the first few dominos to fall against the DA myth of good, clean and effective governance. The recent imposition on tariffs by the City of Cape Town, a practice that will be challenged in court, raised the ire of a coalition of people whose support the DA would ordinarily take for granted. 

If a group as systematically excluded from political life as disabled residents can organise themselves, build public sympathy, and force the City to backtrack, then what does that mean for other communities facing cuts, neglect, or poor service?

It means there is a model now. It means that people can see that organising works, in the face of the DA-run City of Cape Town taking public silence for granted. It showed the crucial role in centering political parties at the heart of an inherently political struggle. And it showed political parties that effective organising can only be accomplished together with civil society organisations and NGO’s. For those who have long felt powerless in the face of municipal bureaucracy, this fight is a warning to the City. The era of unchallenged austerity is ending. The era of accountability has arrived.

September 8, 2025 could have been the day the City took away the mobility and dignity of hundreds of residents. Instead, it may be remembered as the day a vulnerable community stood up, fought back, and showed Cape Town that no cut is beyond challenge.

And for a City that has grown comfortable making decisions without real public participation, that is a dangerous precedent indeed.

* Roscoe Palm is a City of Cape Town Councillor for the GOOD Party.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.