In August 2025, the City of Cape Town announced that from 8 September, people with visual and cognitive impairments, elderly individuals, and organisations would no longer be eligible for the Dial-A-Ride service. This decision restricts the service to wheelchair users and people with severe walking impairments, allowing them to use it only for trips to and from work. The City argues that where the transport service operates, there is a universally accessible system, and with the available public transport options as well as e-hailing platforms, there are now additional ways for persons with disabilities to get around that were not available before.
Is the decision of the City of Cape Town contrary to the Constitutional principles of equality?
Section 9 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, provides that everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law; this provision ensures the protection of the rights of all people in South Africa. In relation to persons with a disability this obligation is further drawn from the international laws and agreements which South Africa is a party to such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) of 2006, which seeks to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.
The State, on this basis, has the obligation to not only provide disability related services, but also to adopt measures to eliminate the physical and social barriers that inhibit persons with disabilities from exercising their rights and ensuring that laws and policies support non-discrimination and guarantee the rights of persons with disabilities to be able to participate fully in society and enable them to contribute socio-economically.
A crucial question which ought to be asked is whether the decision of the City of Cape Town is contrary to the principles of The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act (PEPUDA), 4 of 2000 which promotes equality and provides for measures to facilitate the eradication of unfair discrimination, hate speech and harassment on the grounds of race, gender or disability, amongst others. More narrowly, the question is whether, through this decision, any persons with disabilities are denied supporting or enabling facilities necessary for their functioning in society.
The decision of the Municipality to no longer accommodate people with visual and cognitive impairments and elderly people in the service is grounded on the overwhelming budget constraints and that there exists no obligation on the part of the Municipality to provide such specialised services.
The Local Government: Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000 defines a “basic municipal service” in section 1 as:
“a municipal service that is necessary to ensure an acceptable and reasonable quality of life and, if not provided, would endanger public health or safety or the environment.”
Based on this definition, it does not need much convincing that access to public transport, particularly the specialised service of the Dial-A-ride, offers an acceptable and reasonable quality of life. In furtherance, public transportation intersects with the right of access to healthcare, education, work, and adequate housing, as these rights cannot be leveraged or exercised without an affordable and reliable transport service. The National Land Transport Act 5 of 2009 underpins the values of safety, reliability and affordability, drawing a nexus to the Constitutional socio-economic rights.
The access that public transport provides to individuals and groups has inherent fundamental rights such as dignity, equality and freedom at its core. Excluding persons with certain disabilities from access to safe, reliable and affordable transport produces not only economic inefficiency but also public health risks. It can be argued that the decision by the City effectively marginalises persons with disabilities despite being motivated on the ground of a lack of economic resources.
The main issue with the decisions by the Municipality is twofold; firstly, the City of Cape Town is differentiating between two sets of disabled persons, the first group being people with visual and cognitive impairments and elderly people and the second group being wheelchair users and people with severe mobility impairments. The second issue is that after affecting the clear distinction between the two groups, the City of Cape Town goes further to limit the service to them only to get to work and back.
There arises a possibility that the decision could act as an effective bar to persons with certain disabilities to meaningfully participate in and contribute to the South African economy, thereby making it difficult for them to be provided with fair opportunities to realise their full potential. The counter argument is that, unlike in 2002 when the service commenced, universally accessible transport has now become available for persons with disability, thus not effectively barring either of the groups classified by the Municipality.
In conclusion, the decision of the Municipality must ensure that the people with visual and cognitive impairments, elderly people, organisations, wheelchair users and people with severe mobility impairments can exercise the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms of South Africa. This exercise however, cannot be to the detriment of other basic services, consequent to the financial burden on the Municipality. Even if the Municipality proceed with its decision, the ‘universally accessible system’ which it now advocates for must provide safe, reliable and affordable access to the extent of not marginalising a previously disadvantaged group of our society.
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