Rattle and roll

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Issue 30

Millions of Africans, unable to afford their own cars, have to rely on local taxi networks to get themselves and their belongings from place to place. Drawing on his trans-African travel experiences, Hamilton Wende tells us how to tell our matatus from our tro-tros – and how to survive the colourful journey from A to B. Anybody who has travelled in Africa will know what minibus taxis mean to the people on the continent. In every single city from Cairo down to Cape Town you will see minibuses crammed with passengers rushing through the choking traffic, stopping unexpectedly to pick up another fare-paying customer, or swerving madly to avoid a pothole in the road. They are also used to carry people from the cities to the smaller towns and villages. On the bush and savannah roads the minibuses are piled high with luggage strapped to the roof. Anything anybody wants to take home with them will find its place somewhere in or on the minibus. “In Ghana,” a friend told me, “you will find suitcases, jerry cans of petrol, chickens, guinea fowl and goats tied to the roof. Sometimes goats find their way inside, too.” In Kenya the minibuses are called matatus because originally a ride in one cost only three Kenyan shillings – tatu is the Swahili word for ‘three’. In Ghana they are called tro-tro which means thruppence. In Senegal they are aptly called cars rapides or taxis-brousse (bush taxis). In South Africa they are nicknamed ‘Zola Budds’, after the young Afrikaner sprinter who broke the anti-apartheid sport boycott in the 1980s. In Nigeria many of them are painted the same yellow as American school buses. There they are cynically called ‘moving coffins’ or ‘yellow fevers’. Minibus taxis can be dangerous. Many are badly maintained, and accidents, when they happen, can involve a large number of people. So not everybody wants to travel in them. But for most people in Africa, they are the only real option for moving around the city or the countryside. In South Africa, there is a complex set of finger signs that prospective passengers have to learn before they can be sure of getting to the correct destination. If you stand on the side of the road with your index finger held upwards that means you want to head for the centre of the city. People say the upraised finger represents the tall buildings of Johannesburg’s skyline. If you are just travelling locally, you hold your finger pointing downwards – but no one seems to remember exactly why. Anyway, as somebody told me, “the signs differ from town to town.” To subscribe or order this issue click here On many of these taxis, the sides and windows are painted with bright colours and slogans. Some are sponsored by businesses and sport flashy advertising catchphrases on their doors. Often they have short passages from the Koran or the Bible sprayed onto the rear windows; at other times there are simple messages aimed at the passengers like ‘go well’ or even ‘a fool and his money are soon parted.’ I’ll never forget the minibus we hired in Kinshasa, in what was then Zaire, while we were covering the fall of President Mobutu. Our driver was a carefree soul who wore a straw hat with a long pointed peak. He looked like one of Robin Hood’s merry men. He turned the music on his radio up to full and drove us directly into the middle of a street riot. No matter how much tear gas filled the streets or how aggressive the soldiers with their assault rifles became, our driver was cool and calm, but when we asked him to turn his music down he was very unhappy. Passengers have no choice but to enjoy – or, at least, put up with – the driver’s selection of music inside a matatu or a Zola Budd. I remember travelling in one of the rural areas of South Africa with a friend at night. We stopped to fill up our car at a petrol station. A minibus taxi filled with passengers pulled up at the next pump. Music was thudding out of the windows. As the taxi stopped, the door slid open and the passengers tumbled out. The driver cranked up the music even louder and suddenly everybody was laughing, clapping, and jiving around the petrol pumps.   It was like something from a music video.   My friend, from Scotland, stared at the scene in front of him. Then he turned to me, his voice filled with delight. “Nowhere else in the world would people do that!” he said. But of all the crazy stories about African minibuses, my favourite comes from Botswana. I was travelling in an up-country minibus with a driver called Zola. “You see,” he said, “this is how it is on African roads. When a car drives along and it encounters a donkey on the road, the donkey just stands there. He refuses to move. A goat, though, will always run away from you. And a dog will chase after you barking at the wheel. “Can you imagine why this is?” Zola asked. “Well, you see, a long time ago all of these animals were travelling in a minibus taxi. The donkey paid the full fare. The goat paid nothing. But the dog paid too much – and so he still wants his change.” To subscribe or order this issue click here

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