To understand Africa’s problems …
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Shyaka Kanuma
Do the individuals who call themselves taxi drivers in this country wake up with a death wish each morning?
Not only does the evidence suggest an emphatic yes, but apparently their death wish includes the innocent, docile sheep that commute in their vehicles!
I am no stranger to strange behaviour by taxi drivers, since in Rwanda, where I come from, the breed is not exactly a paragon of the law-abiding road-user. But the first time I travelled in one rust bucket of a public transportation vehicle in Johannesburg, I was a heaving, seething mass of nerves by the time I got out.
The driver, a fellow bedraggled enough to match his vehicle’s appearance so much so that I began wondering whether there are any regulatory authorities here first yelled at me to get out of the front seat as there was still space in the back. Matters were made worse because I couldn’t understand a word of isiZulu (someone translated) and I couldn’t see the space he was talking of, as the three occupants in the back looked cramped enough without shoving in a fourth.
”That is the way of the taxis here,” an elderly, matronly looking woman soothed me. But that was only for starters.
As soon as the ”taxi” got moving with a grinding of tired gears, the docile passengers began collecting money among themselves and passing it on. Seat by seat, row by row, conveying the coins by means of tapping the person in front with the solemn chant ”four” (amount collected per seat). The person in front whose seat batch had already sent theirs sent the money on with the same ”four!”
On it went, like some sort of mantra in a hurtling, lunatic mini temple. ”Four!” until all the collections were with the driver, a man who by now had taken on the sinister aura of any of those cult masters that every now and then lead hundreds of their followers into mass suicide.
Now Rwanda might not be famous for concerns about its people’s welfare, but at least there it is considered illegal for a taxi driver to deliberately endanger his own life and the lives of the passengers he is conveying. Yet here was this man on a South African road, speeding along like a demon with little apparent thought of the 15 lives aboard. And terrifyingly all he could think of was to count the takings, his face contorted not from concentrating on what other road users were doing (or what he might do to them), but because of the turbulence in his mind as he computed the change.
In the space of about five minutes, the fellow had broken every road law; making a call on his cellphone, jumping a red light, changing lanes in the most reckless manner …
Ask anyone why the most economically advanced nation in Africa has ended up paradoxically with one of its messiest, obviously non-regulated public transportation systems and the usual non sequiturs and glib answers come tumbling forth.
”Oh, you know we are poor people.”
So?
”Well, during apartheid and the racial segregation years we Africans didn’t have anything, so the taxis are part of our economic empowerment.”
Oh really?
With the outrageous conduct of the taxi drivers, not to mention the taxi wars that rocked the nation a few years ago, doesn’t it look like what people have here isn’t economic empowerment but the empowerment of taxi goons to kill or maim black people and jeopardise their lives day in, day out?
”Hey, but you should realise these are people who have lived too long in poverty and so can’t afford functional, roadworthy vehicles for their business.”
How sweet! So in the name of economic empowerment for these law-abiding citizens, every South African who can’t afford a car is supposed to put his or her life on the line every morning.
The most telling aspect of the taxi industry, one notices, is the utter lack of outrage among commuters at the antics of the perpetrators yes perpetrators of this highly hazardous business. Where is the anger at being packed like sardines in a scrap heap that will leave your clothes tattered as you attempt to get off?
How tolerant can you be of the fellow who hurtles you along hairpin bends, mind intent only on dispensing change, even as sudden thoughts of ending up in some hospital’s emergency ward assail you? Anyway, why should anyone turn me into an impromptu collector of taxi fares, and the pusher of doors as other commuters get off?
”Oh, but some of these men carry guns and you can’t dare mess with them!” Indeed. And how many of you are in that taxi that can’t overpower the driver at some point away from the taxi rank?
For this jaded African, the experiences with South Africa’s public taxis, one of the most irritating eyesores in this most beautiful of countries, has added some insight into the problems plaguing the continent.
So you want to know how a thief like Mobutu could reduce Zaire, in terms of pure natural resources the wealthiest country on the continent, to the poorest of pauper nations? I can hear the apologists going on about American interference. But for a real answer, just watch commuters willingly cram themselves into moving contraptions held together with an assortment of strings, wire and glue!
Are you wondering how a demented buffoon like Idi Amin could turn Uganda, a country once called the pearl of Africa, into a non-functional, severely depleted entity known only for state sanctioned massacres, or how a mealy-mouthed dictator like Robert Mugabe can single-handedly ruin a country? For an idea, just observe what goes on in a taxi!
And how could Rwandan Hutus be manipulated into becoming mass murderers as they attempted the ”final solution” on their Tutsi countrymen? I would say though this might seem far-fetched to some just take a careful look at the blind obedience to even the most thuggish driver.
Kenyans grumble louder each day as the government, led by a manipulative Arap Moi that septuagenarian who has clung to power since 1978 leads them into deeper economic ruin, but you never hear of any riots even as thousands go destitute daily.
Instead all its press reports is the ”incredible” fortitude of Africans in adverse circumstances. Of their stoicism, stolidness and patience as they ”courageously” carry on under brutal dictators.
Stoicism, fortitude, stolidness! What an embarrassing people we can become. For it should have become painfully obvious long ago that these adjectives can only apply to donkeys or mules.