Good day everyone.

I hope you are well. Hereafter follows my statement in relation to Bolt South Africa's response. Please also see the link to a video I released which gives further details regarding their response. 

Thank you very much for all the support shown thus far. We still have a long way to go but we are heading in the right direction. 

We will not rest until the safety of women and all Bolt South Africa passengers' safety is secured!

Kind regards,

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RE: Atang Swartbooi's response to Bolt South Africa Statement

Atang Swartbooi

Founder: #YoubeforeMe!

Third year Law (LLB) student

Social Justice Activist

Good day Mr. Taylor,

I hope you are well. Firstly, thank you for your response. It is well appreciated within the movement.

As a point of departure, I wish to point out the intention of this petition, which is highlighted by the emphasis placed on the vetting/verification of drivers. I shall deal with each of these concepts holistically throughout my response. Firstly, it would be appropriate to define these concepts and use it as the indicator to what follows. Verifying means to make sure or demonstrate that something is true, accurate, or justified. Vetting, which will make up the bulk of this statement, means to make a careful examination of something or someone. The point of the petition was to point out that the existing vetting/verification processes that you have in place are ineffective - not that they don’t exist at all. An example of that ineffectiveness is the case of the very driver that you mention in your response. My understanding of your response is that the driver in question driver was successfully vetted through your processes, and was continuously assessed thereafter through your ratings system, but STILL raped one of your passengers.

In the light of the above definitions, and, subsequently, the continued lack of engagement (or the intention thereof) with the public, it seems like the point of the petition, and the public outcry, is, to a large extent, missed by Bolt South Africa.

You have made reference to the testing and piloting of new safeguarding measures in order to improve the safety of passengers, but more questions were raised rather than answers provided. Assuming that the tests were implemented last year December, as there was no mention of a specific date relating to when these tests were done, it is now almost 5 months from “last year”. The assumption that they were done in December 2021 is giving you the benefit of the doubt, because the question would be: why have these measures not yet been implemented?

Further questions relating thereto are as follows:

● Were these tests successful?

● Why was there no mention of this in previous communication by Bolt South Africa, i.e. the open letter in response to the petition?

● Were these measures only mentioned now because Bolt South Africa has been receiving bad publicity about its safety?

I find it redundant for you to have again mentioned your safeguarding measures which have clearly proved to be ineffective and, in principle, the subject matter of my petition. You have, in your statement, admitted that Bolt South Africa needs to do more, yet you repeat already existing and ineffective procedures.

The truth is Mr Taylor, while you are “piloting” your safety measures, WOMEN ARE BEING RAPED OR SEXUALLY HARRASSED BY BOLT SOUTH AFRICA DRIVERS. Respectfully, seeing that we have reached the end of the first quarter of the year, the slightest clarity regarding timelines of implementation is a reasonable ask, and would be reassuring to victims. It would provide clarity to those with grievances against Bolt South Africa. This is more efficient than stating that you will “inform [me] of these safety measures once they are in place”.

Furthermore, an open forum discussion was proposed, but no mention was made of it in your response. Although a one-on-one meeting may no longer be necessary, as I already have a direct line of communication with you, this issue affects not only me, and I am therefore unwilling to compromise on my proposal for an open forum discussion. The purpose of this open forum would be to mitigate this back-and-forth in writing, and maximize productivity in trying to find solutions. The truth is, Mr. Taylor, the people of South Africa have proposed solutions to your safety issues and you need only listen. After all, your services are being used by the very people asking for this engagement, which begs the question: how are you to solve a problem that affects a passenger to whom you are not willing to listen? The scope of the discussion at the proposed forum would cover, inter alia, the extent to which the public has experienced issues with Bolt’s implementation of its safety measures - one of which being the Women Only Service. For example, the issue with your Women Only Service is the expense attached to this exclusive service. When passengers access the Bolt app, they have three options, which include the following: Bolt, Bolt Go, and the Women Only Service. The normal Bolt service and the Women Only Service are more expensive than the Bolt Go option, which does not include a Women Only Service. In your open letter, you pointed to our country’s dismal economy and your contribution thereto, so, in my opinion, it would only make sense that women would choose the Bolt Go option as it is cheaper - inadvertently endangering their lives. If paying a higher fare for your safety is one of your solutions to creating a safer environment for your passengers, then Bolt South Africa has a long way to go to fully appreciate the extent of the detrimental impact which gender based violence has on our country. More than that, the issues of verification and vetting by Bolt extend beyond South Africa and its obscene rates of gender based violence. Petitions have been started against Bolt in both Nigeria (https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-boycott-bolt-nigeria and Kenya (https://www.change.org/p/various-african-governments-rescind-bolt-operational-licenses-charge-bolt-leadership-with-gross-criminality raising the same issues experienced by passengers in South Africa - sexual assault. So the problem, in my opinion, is a broader and more systemic issue unrelated to gender based violence in South Africa. A strike by Bolt’s own drivers in South Africa this past week around the safety issues that they face - including the theft of their profiles - is further indicative of that.

I therefore wish to reiterate our intentions to have this open forum discussion so that every relevant stakeholder is held accountable and contribute towards finding amicable solutions for everyone. I would also like to mention that your competitor, Uber, invited me to a Virtual Safety Roundtable talk in response to my petition. This, according to them, was their way of being proactive and increasing public engagement in order to solidify their intentions to provide a safer environment for their passengers.

In conclusion, my petition emphasizes values of transparency, openness, and accountability, which are not being projected by you should you reject the proposal for this kind of engagement. Should you be unwilling to take up this offer for engagement, I will be handing over my petition to your head offices on Bond Street in Ferndale, Johannesburg in April 2022. The handover will be accompanied by a protest against Bolt South Africa and the indifference towards the issues raised in the petition.

● I hope that you will take to heart what is in this message, and that you will elect to engage meaningfully with us, because the dignity, persons, rights and lives of South Africans depend on it.

Kind regards,

Atang Swartbooi