Protests against the high cost and poor quality of transport continued during the first quarter of 1984. New moves were made in March to try to end the bus boycott in the Eastern Cape which had lasted for eight months, while the boycott of PUTCO buses launched in Alexandra in January was subject to severe repression. A boycott of the Inanda and KwaMashu routes in Durban, begun in December 1982, was still having an effect in January 1984.
The Alexandra protest began in response to a 12.5 per cent increase in fares introduced on 16 January 1984. An estimated 36,000 commuters travel daily the ten kilometres from Alexandra to central Johannesburg. On the first day of the boycott police baton-charged commuters. One person was shot and injured.
The boycott was organised by the Alexandra Commuters Committee (ACC), an ad hoc group formed by members of the Alexandra Youth Congress (AYCO), the Alexandra Civic Association and the Alexandra branches of COSAS (Congress of South African Students) and AZAPO (Azanian People's Organisation). Members of AYCO had been subject to police harassment previously. Two of those detained during the boycott, Obed BAPELA and Khanda VILAKAZI, were held during 1983 in connection with the trial of Carl Niehaus.
Police arrested or detained a number of the boycott's leaders. Some were released without charge while others were subsequently charged with intimidation. After a number of separate court appearances a total of 11 people were due to appear together on 8 May. These included the chairman and vice-chairman of the ACC, Mike BEEA and Mac LEKOTA. Also charged were two members of the AYCO executive: Paul MOSHATILE, the president, and Nesto KGOPE, the treasurer. The others charged were Lazarus TSHABALA (25), Emmanuel MAAKE (23), Solomon MOTSEPA, Johannes MAKOE, Ernest NDLOVU and Daniel SHIBAMBU (all aged 18 years) and an unnamed youth whose age was variously estimated to be 14 or 16 years. All the accused were granted bail.
A number of other tactics were tried by the police in order to break the boycott. Road blocks were set up at all the entrances to Alexandra, vehicles were examined and people ejected from taxis and cars considered defective and forced onto buses. Many taxi drivers were held for overloading or lacking fire extinguishers. At the end of the day's operation only 15 out of Alexandra's fleet of 56 registered taxis were still able to operate. Taxi drivers had been supportive of the boycott from the beginning, lowering their fares in solidarity with the action.
After a month the boycott was called off at a mass meeting of Alexandra residents because the 'harassment and intimidation of commuters, and the clampdown on taxis' had created a dangerous situation. The ACC launched a petition to disprove claims that there was no support for the boycott. By 12 February they had collected 7,000 towards a desired 40,000 signatures.
The boycott of the Ciskei Transport Corporation buses by the residents of Mdantsane continued. Negotiations for selling the company were reported to be in progress — in one case with Herbert Jekwa, a Mdantsane businessman, who was himself detained between August and October 1983.
In early March the Committee of Ten, representing commuters, put fifteen demands to the company. Later that month, the CTC threatened to retrench 240 more workers if the boycott was not ended by 1 April 1984. Three hundred jobs had already been retrenched by the CTC. At the same time the Institute for Planning Research at the University of Port Elizabeth began a project to look at the causes of the boycott and to ascertain the 'best possible ways of ending it'.
