Ride-hailing pricing in South Africa shifted at the start of April. Bolt implemented fare increases citing a R3.06/litre petrol rise; the National e-Hailing Federation of SA (NEFSA) simultaneously pushed for a pricing mechanism tied to fuel costs rather than demand algorithms. Into that gap, Ashif Black, Country Representative at inDrive South Africa, published a Freedom Day reflection arguing that the pricing model itself is the problem, before any specific fare is even set.
Black’s piece frames negotiated pricing as an equity intervention. On inDrive, passengers propose a fare; drivers accept, decline, or counter. The piece contrasts this with Uber and Bolt’s algorithmic approach, where surge multipliers activate during peak demand and load shedding disruptions, leaving commuters to either pay or wait. NEFSA has said publicly that the algorithm removes driver agency over basic operational decisions, and commuters from Gqeberha to Johannesburg have documented fares running at two to three times base rate during morning peaks this year. The structural frustration Black is writing about exists, and Bolt’s April announcement confirmed the timing of his piece was deliberate.
What the op-ed leaves largely unexamined is inDrive’s most concrete claim on SA drivers: its commission structure. Where Bolt takes 15-20% per trip and Uber charges closer to 25%, inDrive operates at around 10%. Black mentions this in passing, noting drivers retain an extra R15 to R25 on a R100 fare. For a driver completing 15 trips a day, that figure is material. It is also the most durable argument for the model, because it is measurable and does not depend on contested claims about negotiation producing equitable outcomes.
Those contested claims rest partly on research by Oxford Economics, conducted in collaboration with inDrive, showing that peer-to-peer fare-setting produces more completed trips and fairer perceived outcomes. The collaboration detail matters: this is commissioned research. Black presents it in an advocacy piece without flagging that provenance, which asks readers to treat sponsored findings as independent analysis.
The equity argument also rests on an assumption the piece does not examine. Negotiation between two parties in significantly different financial positions does not automatically produce a fair result. In a country with unemployment above 30%, drivers under pressure to cover fuel, maintenance, and household costs may accept fares that do not cover their operating expenses. A negotiated model can reflect financial desperation as accurately as it reflects genuine choice.
There is a second access constraint the piece skips entirely. Bolt’s own Gig Economy Report, released this month, found that over 80% of ride-hailing transactions in South Africa are cash-based, compared to roughly 15% in Nigeria. For passengers in townships and peri-urban areas where smartphone penetration and banking access are uneven, payment infrastructure is as significant a barrier as pricing structure. As with other platforms pitching digital flexibility to SA consumers, the promise reaches the parts of the market that are already well-served.
inDrive is a global platform operating in 47 countries, and its SA entry follows commercial logic alongside social logic. Using Freedom Day to position that commercial logic is a legitimate communications decision. Using commissioned research as the evidentiary foundation of an equity argument, without noting the commission, is where the credibility shifts. The lower commission rate and the negotiated fare mechanism are differentiated features in a market actively looking for alternatives to Uber and Bolt.