Sorry for the typo.
Yeah, if I had to guess, it was so extremely hard for them to recruit taxi drivers in South Africa. The metered taxi industry has always been extremely untrusted (my personal opinion), and basically non-existent.
They approached these guys and also the hand full of companies that existed back then, but it really wasn't until Uber established a trusted driver experience that we really started using taxis on a daily / weekly basis. So they simply did not have the funding / momentum to establish such a large scale transition in transportation and consumer trust within SA.
For years prior to Uber, the segment for "upper / middle class" public transport was not served and for sure not accessible. You could phone a cab company in Cape Town and get a taxi, but then it was super expensive and that was basically the only option – service which was also not available in most other cities.
When Uber arrived, they (and other companies) helped jobless drivers secure funding for cabs and within a year or two there were thousands of drivers, cabs and Ubers in all metros.
For the first time, when I had to go to the airport, I could get a Uber instead of asking a friend to drop me off. Crazy but this was the reality.