Tale guide

An English driver in South Africa

"Speaking for a friend", as they say on Facebook

The back story is necessary to better appreciate my experience on a recent visit to sunny South Africa.

The United Kingdom’s little islands combined, are slightly less than 20% the size of South Africa. On the islands, the population exceeds that of the ‘world in one country’, by some ten million people.

It follows that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be and are indeed interconnected by a web of world class motorways, byways and a few hundred ferries that carry some 40 million vehicles virtually day and night throughout the year; compared to South Africa’s 12 million vehicles, most of which seem to only travel between 4am and 10pm Monday to Saturday. Not to mention the snow, sleet and rain conditions for what seems like most of the year in the former!

The traffic activity in the UK is so demanding that the level of driver competence is guaranteed and legislated. Staying within the rules is a way of life not only by virtue of the way drivers are conditioned, but because traffic violations of even the smallest kind are severely dealt with by the police. Driving immediately after downing a pint could put you at risk of being over the limit and if you happen to be in any kind of traffic accident, the standard procedure will be for you to blow into a breathalyser.

Courtesy and care are the optimum words. You can’t drive fast as a rule, and certainly not above the speed limit. Speed cameras, highway cameras, mobile camera vans and the rest, blend in discreetly throughout the country whether on the motorways or through village lanes and they are regularly maintained for optimum performance. So, in narrow lanes, built of old and never designed for motor vehicles, drivers slow down and make way for oncoming vehicles. Single lane bridges and temporary road works are governed by traffic lights, fixed or mobile, that allow the cars to pass safely, in equal measure.

Drivers wave their appreciation to fellow road users and allow others right of way. It’s a calm and peaceful space, even when, for whatever reason, the highway is blocked unexpectedly, and the traffic is forced to backup for miles until eventually the jockey on the community radio lets you know that the blockage up front has been cleared.

It was from this highly efficient and compliant environment that I embarked on my trip to South Africa in high spirits for a memorable holiday. And in that regard, I was not disappointed!

The immediate positive was that you drive on the same side of the road as I was used to and that, dear reader, is where it all kind of ends.

I left the car hire park nervously, with one eye on the GPS and the other on the road. I slowed at the yield sign and when I looked left, I almost had a heart attack. Three white microbuses (known as Kombi taxis) came around the corner at a rate of knots way more than the 60kph traffic sign silently required. It was evident that they were enjoying a madly reckless race and fearless of repercussion. The driver of the vehicle nearest to me had his arm out of the window and vigorously signalled me to f#*K off, or maybe something kinder.

Not a kilometre further as the highway passed under a flyover and around a blind corner, I came face to face with half a roadblock. A couple of policemen were selectively pulling drivers over, presumably for a routine inspection. As I approached the traffic cones strategically positioned to create a single lane, a policeman waved me through. By this time far ahead of me, I could see the backsides of the three Kombis disappearing into the distance at high speed! ‘Curious indeed’, I thought with a wry smile.

South African drivers travel fast and aggressively, and I quickly understood that there was no place for complacency. Here you had to keep your wits about you!

Once off the highway and into suburbia, I approached an intersection where traffic lights, or robots, as the locals call them, tried to ensure a fair distribution of traffic passing from each direction. Red for stop, amber for caution and green for go. I came to a halt just behind the white line before realising that the car to the right of me had stopped halfway across the white line which creep inevitably encroached on the space that vehicles from our left would have when turning right.   

A five-ton truck moved forward into the intersection from the left - no sign of an indicator. It swung right as it accelerated into the passing lane with evidently, little concern for my protruding neighbour, who in turn panicked, put his car into reverse and started moving backwards. My eardrums burst with the sound of a car’s horn as the fellow behind the reversing neighbour, angrily motioned his disquiet at these antics!

“YO, Yo, yo, yo!” I heard the driver exclaim at the top of his voice while his arms waved widely. I later learned that ‘yo, yo, yo’ is an African expression that roughly translated suggests an exclamation in disbelief and amazement.

The truck narrowly missed my neighbour. My neighbour put his car into drive and then, lo and behold, he fearlessly nudged his way back across the white line once again. The traffic lights were still red for us. But my neighbour was probably colour blind. He kept on creeping forward until almost halfway across the intersection before turning right and accelerating away, against the red light.

I was so transfixed at the audacity of it all that I didn’t notice the traffic light change to green for me. Only milliseconds must have passed before I was frightened out of my wits by another loud, irritable horn blast from the driver behind me, jolting me back into reality as I rapidly drove away.

Loadshedding has become the scourge of the country. Inadequate electricity generation can no longer fulfil the needs of the people so, very often, the traffic lights on busy intersections are not working and the dangers that are inevitably present, become that much more heightened during the night hours, when the streetlights are also out and the roads are very dark. In many places even the white lines are very faded to the point of disappeared. There one would venture at one’s peril!

Into this cauldron, I had to drive. On one occasion, I peered into the night in search of the headlights of oncoming vehicles that seemed to pass me traveling at high speed, the drivers ignorant of the unlit intersection. I was about to take the gap, as it were, when the dark form of a saloon car, sporting no lights whatsoever, whooshed passed in a blink of an eye. In that fraction of a second, time and heart stood still. “Lordie, Lordie, Lordie!”

In smaller towns, simple two-way roads are the order of the day. One needs to be aware of gaping potholes in the tarmac and manoeuvre past them as best possible, to avoid one of the tires striking the sharp edge of a hole and being torn to shreds.

During loadshedding the traffic tends to stack up in long queues as drivers take turns in crossing the intersection from each of the four directions. The process is naturally a slow one and patience would ordinarily be the order of the day.

Whilst quietly sitting in my car in a long queue, awaiting my turn, I saw in my side mirror, a medium sized delivery van swing up onto the pavement behind me and proceeded to drive down the hill passing me on my left with two wheels on the pavement and two in the roadside gutter.

Unlike the UK where road infrastructure is well maintained, years of neglect has created wash aways and subsidence along the sides of the roads. The lobsided van ‘flew’ down the hill before dramatically slowing down to virtually clamber through a ditch and then accelerate again until it reached the next washaway, the body bouncing. Goodness knows what he was delivering. I hoped it wasn't fresh eggs!

Finally, once it reached the bottom of what was about a twenty-vehicle line of cars, the driver swung back into the traffic, held his arm out the window to vigorously signal that he was pushing in, and forced his way into the line. Having seen that there was a break in the oncoming traffic from the intersection, he then immediately swung out onto the opposite side of the road in the face of potentially oncoming vehicles and drove like the clappers to the intersection before pulling in front of our queue and halfway across the pedestrian white line, and then he shot off before the lights changed to go!

It was quite evident that no one seemed the slightest concerned or perturbed. It was as if this kind of conduct was the order of the day and people had become completely immune to it over the years. As I reached the traffic lights, I noticed a traffic officer sitting in his highly visible official vehicle, parked off under a tree, peacefully drinking his coffee and completely ignoring the goings on.

Not far from there I came across another very funny sight and I promise you that I’m not making this stuff up!

Still well and truly within a loadshedding period in which all electricity supply to the area had been switched off, I came upon a road maintenance crew busy repairing a stretch of road that transversed another normally, traffic light-controlled intersection. There were about fifteen labourers standing around behind a municipal truck. Some of the chaps were inserting fresh tar into prepared potholes and others were sweeping the residue off the road. The rest of the gang were standing around chatting aimlessly. I’m told this behaviour is as a result of what they call cadre deployment which apprently is another way of saying jobs for mates!

In the middle of the intersection stood a young fellow looking a little dishevelled in his worn-out jeans and crumpled T-shirt. He was clearly unskilled in the art of controlling traffic, but he was making a gallant effort, to give him his due. It so reminded me of the pith-helmeted-clad policeman in Luanda, back in the days of Portuguese West Africa, of whom absolutely no one of the hundreds of passing motorists took a blind bit of notice as he rhythmically waved his arms in every direction.

Although drinking and driving is as illegal in South Africa as it is in the UK, in SA, there is largely an absence of active law enforcement, save occasionally when observed manning a speed camera on the highway, and what seems to be a lack of interest, unless of course, if there is something to be gained personally.

The result can be seen by the number of amazing stunts that local drivers achieve, particularly late at night. In the short time I was on holiday I saw a saloon car balancing precariously on a branch of a tree, three meters off the ground. I passed over a number of bridges where missing sections of balustrade evidenced where motor vehicles had passed this way en route to the road or river below.

Local municipal speed cameras have fallen into disrepair a long time back and once this information became general knowledge, well…!

Once back home I finally realised that all of the talk of driverless motorcars in the United Kingdom could indeed become a reality.

In Africa however, “Esch”.  (Sorry, that’s very difficult to translate!)

Captured on behalf of a friend.

The bushman!

Footnote: 'Esch' is a favourite expression in Southern Africa and is usually used when an observation is completely beyond belief or reason.