The city’s first challenge was to win over the formidable minibus taxi industry, which moves 14 million people daily in a nation of 49 million, far more than the bus and rail systems combined. It is perhaps the country’s greatest success story of black entrepreneurship, though with a history of ruthless violence. Experts estimate that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have died in “taxi wars” to control routes.

The city has sought to get the industry involved by offering taxi proprietors ownership of the bus operating company, but negotiations have dragged on, and some in the industry remain fiercely opposed.

After the bus line began running five months ago, along a 16-mile route from Soweto to the central business district, a bus was fired on and a passenger and a policewoman on it were hit. Gunmen shot at the home of Mrs. Moosajee, hitting her security guard in the neck. And Vananda Khumalo, a taxi industry official and advocate for a deal with the city, was killed. There have been no arrests, Mrs. Moosajee said.

The city has also faced steely opposition from suburbanites that some officials describe as a classic case of not-in-my-backyard resistance. At a packed meeting in November 2008, residents from the strand of stately, still mostly white communities along the heavily traveled Oxford Road shouted down city officials who were trying to describe proposed bus routes, including one that would use two of Oxford Road’s four lanes for buses.

“They just stood up and said, ‘No, no, no, no!’ ” recalled Tessa Turvey, a resident married to a mining industry entrepreneur. Mrs. Turvey has since honed a message in defense of her neighborhood, Saxonwold, where jacaranda trees arch over tranquil streets and homes are adorned with rose gardens, swimming pools and lush greenswards.

In a letter to the city, the neighborhood association’s members welcomed a mass transit system but opposed what they considered hastily and ill-conceived routes that they said would pollute the air, cause traffic to spill onto side streets, increase crime and damage property values.