THE inevitability of change and the pangs that come with every birth must be the dominant lesson of the many that could be learnt from the chaos caused by the taxi strike in some parts of Johannesburg and Soweto.

THE inevitability of change and the pangs that come with every birth must be the dominant lesson of the many that could be learnt from the chaos caused by the taxi strike in some parts of Johannesburg and Soweto.

The taxi industry has a point when it says it was built on the sweat and entrepreneurship of many who had to learn their trade from the school of hard knocks when successive governments pretended it did not exist. It is also indisputable that it has been the backbone of the South African economy.

But economies and consumer patterns change. In the same way that huge shopping malls are a reality and a factor in how the local corner shop conducts its business, the sooner the taxi industry realises the inevitability of bus rapid systems across the country, the better.

The taxi industry will be betraying its own history of enterprise if it thinks that things will stay the way they have been forever.

It should know this all too well having started off in sedans and today being the main driver of minibus trends.

Instead of complaining about changes, it must dig deep into its innovative resources and seek the best way of making the best of the changes that are inevitable.

The barricading of roads and intimidating of passengers in alternative transport means the taxi industry has again spurned an opportunity to show it would embrace evolution.

Its behaviour means that the death it fears will come from its own hand because it has forgotten that change is the only constant.