Two new academic books examining South Africa's minibus taxi industry — which provides daily transport for millions of commuters but is often labelled "informal" or "unregulated" — argue that policymakers risk misunderstanding such systems by treating them as simply deficient versions of formal institutions. Researcher Siyabulela Christopher Fobosi contends that taxi drivers, rank marshals, and operators possess deep practical knowledge about how the industry functions, and that this knowledge is too often dismissed or ignored when governments design reform programmes. His work, including a study of the Taxi Recapitalisation Programme (a government scheme to replace ageing vehicles in Johannesburg), found that changing physical infrastructure without addressing underlying social and labour conditions does little to improve workers' lives or the system's equity.