JOHANNESBURG—Uber Technologies Inc. on Monday asked police to
protect drivers and passengers using its ride-sharing service from
taxi drivers in South Africa's biggest city, who have lashed out at
a company they say is cutting into their business.
"Recent intimidation...only underlines why people are
increasingly choosing safe, reliable alternatives like Uber," the
San Francisco-based company wrote on its website.
Several Uber users reported being harassed into taking metered
taxis in Johannesburg's business district Sunday and Monday instead
of the cars they had hailed via Uber's smartphone app.
"They said Uber as a non-African organization was taking a
significant cut of the business away from locals," Roheid Ojageer,
an analyst at a health-care nonprofit, said of the taxi drivers who
coerced him to ride in one of their cars Sunday evening at three
times the fare Uber charges.
Uberpop uses drivers without professional licenses, allowing it
to offer lower prices.
Dozens of metered taxi drivers also protested Friday outside
Uber's offices in Johannesburg, after city officials said they
wanted Uber to comply with affirmative action legislation here
meant to overcome decades of racial discrimination under
white-minority rule.
Uber says many of its 2,000 drivers in South Africa come from
groups discriminated against under apartheid. The company is also
fighting a licensing dispute in Cape Town, where officials have
impounded hundreds of its drivers' cars this year.
Alon Lits, Uber's general manager in Johannesburg, said most of
its drivers in Johannesburg were still operating uninhibited.
"There have been isolated incidences. It's not widespread," he
said.
Opa Sikhosana, chairman of the Johannesburg Regional Metered
Taxi Council, condemned the intimidation Uber passengers have
experienced this week, but said he sympathized with his frustrated
members.
Uber, he said, should operate under the same category of license
they are subjected to, rather than the charter service
categorization the government has assigned Uber drivers to
date.
"They go to the extent of intimidating passengers because they
want authorities to apply the law equally," he said.
The backlash in Johannesburg is the latest in a long string of
battles Uber has fought with regulators and rivals from Portland to
London to Beijing.
On Friday, the company suspended one of its most popular
services, Uberpop, in France until a constitutional court ruling on
the service's legality later this year.
Courts in Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have also
banned Uberpop. Last month, Indonesian police said they were
investigating Uber, and in May, authorities in the southern Chinese
city of Guangzhou raided an Uber office.
Uber has amassed its $41 billion valuation by upending the
heavily regulated taxi marketplace, expanding into 57 countries in
six years. With its next round of funding targeting a $50 billion
valuation, Uber could become the most valuable venture-backed
startup in history. Only Facebook Inc. attained a $50 billion
valuation before going public.
In South Africa, Uber users requested 2 million rides in the
first half of this year, compared to 1 million in all of 2014, says
Mwambu Wanendeya, Uber's communications director for Africa.
Drivers in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg cater to
passengers with smartphones and a credit card, a level of affluence
that excludes the millions of South Africans who rely on
accident-prone minibuses known here as taxis to get around.
Those minibuses are operated by a network of powerful business
owners with a history of solving disputes over routes and revenue
through violence. But so far Uber had operated with little
interference because the existing metered-taxi industry here is
relatively small.
Now those metered taxi owners appear to be pushing back.
Mr. Ojageer, who was coerced late Sunday into taking a metered
cab instead of the Uber ride he had hailed, said he would watch
closely to see whether it seemed safe to try his smartphone app
again.
"If there seems to be a lot of unrest I'd probably want to keep
using the cab system as expensive as it is to avoid causing any
more problems," he said.
Write to Patrick McGroarty at patrick.mcgroarty@wsj.com and
Alexandra Wexler at alexandra.wexler@wsj.com
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