Pretoria — Isaac David Satlat was 22 years old, an automobile engineering student from Nigeria who had lived in South Africa for a decade, and he had been driving for the e-hailing platform Bolt for five months. He needed the income to support himself during his engineering internship. On February 11, 2026, four suspects ordered a ride using an unregistered phone number, forced him to stop in Pretoria West, strangled him to death, and stole his phone and vehicle.
Police describe it as a premeditated robbery that turned fatal. The industry describes it as the predictable consequence of a safety framework that has never adequately protected the people working within it.
Satlat was driving under someone else's Bolt account — a practice known as profile-sharing that the platform confirmed violated its rules. The registered account holder had completed Bolt's verification process, then allowed Satlat to operate the vehicle. Bolt has permanently banned the profile. But the story the industry is now demanding that regulators confront is not about one banned profile. It is about why profile-sharing exists in the first place — and who benefits from the ambiguity that has allowed it to persist.
According to Daily Maverick, e-hailing industry bodies have renewed urgent calls for structural safety reforms in the wake of Satlat's murder, presenting three concrete demands that go beyond the reactive, app-based systems currently in place.
Profile-Sharing as Economic Survival, Not Rule-Breaking
To understand why a young engineering student was driving under someone else's account, it is necessary to understand the economic architecture of gig work in South Africa. The country's formal unemployment rate sits above 32 percent. Youth unemployment approaches 60 percent in some provinces. For hundreds of thousands of workers who lack the capital to register their own vehicle and the income history to qualify for the loans that might provide it, the gig economy offers a pathway to earnings — but only if they can access a registered account.
Profile-sharing, in this context, is not negligence. It is the predictable response to a system that created an economic opportunity and simultaneously built barriers to accessing it legitimately. Platforms like Bolt have profited from the scale that informal profile-sharing made possible, collecting commissions from trips completed by drivers who were, technically, violating the terms of service. That the consequences of this ambiguity fall most heavily on the unregistered driver — invisible to the platform's insurance, unprotected by its safety systems, and in Satlat's case, dead — is the accountability question the industry has not yet answered.
"Current safeguards remain largely reactive and app-based, with limited real-time intervention capability," said Tella Masakale, spokesperson for the National E-hailing Federation.
Three Demands That Reframe the Safety Debate
The National E-hailing Federation and E-Hailing Partners Council have presented regulators with a specific reform agenda that, taken together, would structurally alter how safety is managed across the sector.
First: mandatory dashcams with cloud storage. Currently, camera installation is not required by the draft e-hailing regulations. Industry bodies argue that cloud-backed dashcam footage would create an evidentiary record that deters crime, supports prosecution, and enables platforms to respond to incidents in real time rather than reconstructing events after the fact. The absence of this requirement from the draft regulations — despite its low implementation cost relative to the safety benefit — has been characterised by industry groups as a regulatory failure of the first order.
Second: verified rider identification at the point of signup. The four suspects who murdered Satlat booked using an unregistered phone number. A verification requirement for passengers — comparable to the driver verification process that platforms already require — would significantly raise the risk of identification for would-be criminals and create accountability on both sides of the transaction. Opponents argue it creates friction that undermines the product's convenience. Proponents argue that convenience is not an adequate response to murder.
Third: vehicle panic buttons directly linked to emergency services and police. The current safety architecture relies on in-app reporting mechanisms that, by definition, require a driver to be in a position to use their phone. A hardwired panic button that triggers an emergency response independent of the driver's phone status is the difference between a system designed for emergency use and a system designed for routine complaint management. The distinction is not subtle.
The Migrant Dimension and the Regulatory Lag
Satlat's Nigerian nationality adds a dimension to this story that South African policymakers have historically been slow to confront. Migrant workers are disproportionately represented in the informal segments of the gig economy — precisely because formal employment pathways are narrowed by documentation barriers, xenophobic hiring practices, and the structural exclusion of non-citizens from state social protection. The combination of economic precarity and social invisibility makes migrant gig workers particularly vulnerable targets. Their murders generate headlines and then, too often, silence.
Regulators drafted e-hailing safety regulations but declined to mandate camera installation. Industry groups are pursuing litigation to strengthen the rules. The government has not signalled urgency. In the meantime, the profile-sharing economy continues — informal, unprotected, and waiting for the next Isaac Satlat.
In South Africa, as across post-conflict societies, the journey from apartheid to true equality requires generations — and constant vigilance. A 22-year-old engineering student from Nigeria who spent a decade building a life in South Africa deserved better from the system in which he was working. So does everyone still working within it.
