If you think you had a rough Monday listening to Janice from accounts drone on about her weekend spare a thought for Ismail Vadi, the provincial minister in charge of transport in Gauteng.

Vadi had to be rescued by armed police, metered taxi drivers attacking him and holding him hostage.

This story had enough teeth to make it onto the pages of Forbes – here’s what they said:

[he] was assaulted by 20 metered taxi drivers at his office in Johannesburg…

…Vadi was briefing reporters about his government’s plans to issue Uber drivers with the same operating licences as metered taxis. This would allow them to operate as metered taxis too.

During a tour of facilities, which the group of metered taxi drivers attended, one driver walked up to Vadi and shook his hand…“Then they started hitting him and shouting‚ asking him if he knew what he was doing. He fell to the ground and more men joined the attack. A security guard who tried to intervene was thrown to one side.”

Vadi ran into an office where he was locked in until police arrived. The taxi drivers refused to allow him to leave the building and blockaded the road outside, until more police arrived and began issuing fines. These taxi drivers accuse Uber of taking their business away from them without the same licences taxis are subject to.

Some footage of the attack, although it doesn’t show just how extreme the end result was:

See, told you someone had a worse Monday than you.

You’re a brave soul if you mess with the metered taxis in this country, and that above is just another example of why I’d steer clear.

[source:forbes]

[imagesource:here]