A minibus taxi user guide and more

To hail a minibus taxi just point in the direction you want to go. There are a number of finger signals that you may use that have the same effect, but avoid the middle finger since this signal is reserved for other motorists who have to deal with the taxi's erratic behaviour.

Five outstretched fingers will get you to the main railway station, Park Station and three fingers will get you to Bree Street in Joburg's CBD.


Once aboard the taxi start praying ... even atheists may do this apparently there is a special permit for them to pray in taxis. The standard fee seems to be R7 for a trip on one route. This may go up during the World Cup ... or a dual payment system will be designed to rip off foreigners.


You can pay on getting on or just before getting off. If you are in the back of the taxi, you tap the person sitting in front of you on the shoulder and hand him/her your money.


That person will pass it on to the next and so on until it reaches the driver ... who will briefly interrupt his cellphone conversation to fish out change from the vehicle's ashtray, before sending it back the way it came.


Some drivers expect the front-seat passengers to deal with the money matters while others clearly don't. Surprisingly enough I have seen no disputes over money going missing in this to-ing and fro-ing of money.

Once you have paid start praying again, because by this time the vehicle's obvious defects would be obvious to you too.

Too get off the taxi just shout out the point where you want to do so. Like: "Next robot..." (Traffic lights are often called that here and if you are a World Cup visitor asking for directions you should know that.) Or shout "shopping centre" ... or "Garage" as filling stations are called. You can shout anything really as long as the driver hears you and knows what you are talking about.

When you get off, sigh a deep sigh of relief and think of buying a car. However, millions of people use minibus taxis and survive. Meanwhile a pseudo Frenchman in Fouriesburg told me that communal taxis are the only form of public transport that is profitable in the world. I somehow believe him. I call him a pseudo Frenchman because we spoke French ... it turned out that he is a 'Norman' from the channel island Jersey.


My next blog will be about the different kinds of porn favoured by different nationalities. It is PG18 and sensitive readers must please abstain.

Fouriesburg and a taxi nightmare

Fouriesburg is a dusty three-bar town in the Eastern Free State. You will notice that I base my tourism on the number of bars in a town. If you can count them it is my kind of a place. Fouriesburg has few attractions as town in itself, but it is situated in one of the most beautiful corners of South Africa. It lies between magnificent sandstone formations at the foot of the Drakensberg (Maluti in seSotho) mountain range, about 8km from Lesotho and about 30km from the much more (too) touristic Clarens.

My friends John and Amanda have a weekend house here, so the Oyster Bay crowd, with some new additions in the form of Charli, Hannah and Carol decamped from Joburg for the weekend. For future reference I decided to name everyone here. They are : Jan (previously called the Laughing One), Madelein (previously the Laughing One's Chick), Vince (Writer), George (Fridge Guy), John (Lawyer), Amanda (no previous mention) and me. Charli debuted on my fist blog as the Wannabe Lawyer.

For the outdoors enthusiast Fouriesburg has much to offer. From rock-climbing to horse-riding, day walks, scenic drives ... you name it. Since I'm not much of an outdoors enthusiast myself I quickly ran out of possible things that the typical outdoors enthusiast might be interested in. But there is more outdoors here than you could reasonably shake the proverbial stick at, or in my case wave a wine glass at and I'm sure that there will be something for everyone.

Incidentally, the road between Fouriesburg and Clarens is one of the most beautiful in the country and the world perhaps. For more things to do in Fouriesburg see my guide about things to do in Oyster Bay.

As we speak, my friends are busy engaging with the outdoors. They invited, nay pleaded with me to come along but I said no. I pointed out to Jan that my time is no longer my own and that I have to satisfy the thirst of my 13 blog followers first and not be tempted by the lure of excursions into the mountains on foot. I must admit that I am running out of excuses for not going on these walks. I think last time I feigned a pain in the knee ... I was shot through it remember!

Anyway I walk enough in Joburg, not having a car and being reliant on public transport and taxis to get around.

The last minibus taxi I took was straight out of Stephen King. It had no tread on the tyres, and only the right front brake pad seemed to be working, but the driver made no allowance for this fact at all when it came to the speed he was driving at.

It was also raining and every time the driver braked, it would slide across two lanes to the right before coming to a standstill. When we almost smashed into the back of an oblivious police van, most passengers interrupted their fervent prayers to loudly voice their concerns ... this included me .... the atheist.

I still maintain that minibus taxis converted more people to prayer than any number of missionaries ever could. They are probably the most religious places in South Africa.

After the police van incident most passengers got off when the taxi stopped next. I followed suit and took a municipal bus ... which happened to come along at the right moment. Nobody knows exactly when or where these things run, but they are there. After the taxi it was a pleasant experience. The driver took my R6 without issuing a ticket and I did not mind.

This morning just before waking up I dreamt that I was on that taxi again ... but when I wanted to get off, the driver told me with a grin: "This is like the Hotel California. Once you get on ... you can never get off."

I woke up in terror.

Next time I will blog about a taxi user's etiquette.