How to cross the road.

It is my sincerest hope that reading my blog has made at least one or two people out there think of visiting South Africa. Should such a wonderful thing come to pass, I feel that I have a bit of a responsibility. 23thorns is not a travel brochure. It is not here to create some utopian wonderland full of bunnies and people who say “Have a nice day” like they mean it.

One out of two isn’t bad.

No. 23thorns is gritty. Hard-edged. We don’t shy away from ugly truths round here. We tell it like it is.

So if you’re thinking of visiting, there is one thing I feel I have to let you know. You’re going to have to learn to cross the road. Or you will die.

Mrs 23thorns recently visited Sydney, in Australia, and was rather taken aback to find these painted on the roads;

They were going to add “, not down here, dumbass!”, but they ran out of paint.

There is not a soul in South Africa who doesn’t already know that, not as a result of any sort of educational campaign, but through a process of elimination. Because of these;

The vehicle, not the passengers.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the very beginning. This is a typical traffic light setup where two four-lane roads cross;

I rule at Microsoft Paint!

The first thing that you will notice is that we drive on the left hand side of the road, unlike less sophisticated foreigners. In most of the cities I have visited, the system seems to work like this; pedestrians will walk up to the edge of the pavement (point A on the illustration below), where they will wait for a sign on the traffic light to show a little green man. Then they cross over to point B.

How dull and predictable their lives must be!

More often than not, an alarming beeping sound will accompany the little green man in order to induce panic in the herd in order to keep them moving. And move they do. In an orderly fashion. Between two white lines painted on the road. Hah.

In South Africa, this would be a very foolhardy thing to do. For a start, the only pedestrians allowed between those lines are beggars and street performers. In the recent past, there have been jugglers and mimes, but of late there seems to have been a bit of an invasion by pantsulas. These are pantsulas;

That, I’m sure you will agree, is a pretty damn irresponsible thing to do with your feet in the privacy of your own home, let alone in heavy traffic, and is not the sort of thing that an innocent bystander should wander into unprepared.

But that’s not all. Back to these;

Still the vehicle, not the passengers.

That, good people, is a minibus taxi. It’s not a metered taxi like you would find overseas; it’s more like a privatised bus. And it is the reason that this lesson is necessary. Minibus taxi drivers get paid according to how many passengers they deliver on any given day, which means that wherever they are going, they need to get there first.

Add to that the fact that for some reason (most likely to do with weekend spending money) our traffic police cannot see them unless they burst into flames, and you have a bit of a minefield for the uninitiated. We’ll go back to them a couple of times, but for now let’s deal with those white lines.

In most countries, vehicles stop before those lines in an orderly fashion, like this;

Those blue rectangles are cars. Why does anyone bother with Photoshop?

Which seems rather sensible. But the taxi’s overwhelming need to be everywhere first means that they need to get a bit of a head start. This is where the taxis stop;

Taxis are orange. Microsoft Paint has an almost infinite range of fine, fine colours.

Or rather don’t stop. Should you feel tempted to walk around the taxi to rejoin those white lines, bear in mind that no taxi ever comes to a complete halt unless it is loading up or offloading passengers, in which case it will stop anywhere, including the middle of a busy intersection. The taxis will keep edging forward until they are in the middle of the road in order to avoid losing precious milliseconds to their eternal enemy, inertia.

Don’t get ahead of yourself by looking at the traffic lights, either. It will end in tears. Taxis are allowed, by law, to start driving 1,5 seconds before the light turns green.

Talking about getting ahead of yourself, you may notice that none of the locals are waiting on the pavement. They are edging forward just like the taxis. Ignore them. They know what they are doing and you don’t. You don’t know about the secret lane, for a start. This is the secret lane;

Have you ever noticed how well blue and orange complement each other? And that black background really makes the colours pop.

If a taxi comes up to a traffic light and notices that he is not coming first, he will pull over into the emergency lane in order to remedy that situation. This does not appear to be illegal unless one actively hits a policeman. Even then, it’s a grey area if the taxi driver has enough cash on him.

Think you’re getting it yet? You’re not. Not even close. I will take a deep breath and try to cover this all in one go. Bikers tend to be the sort of alpha males who don’t like other people to come first. They will weave through traffic until they are in the front, and then they will try to out-edge and out-anticipate the taxis.

Lilac. Bikes are lilac. There was no other option.

Which is fun because they can take off at 120km/h. There’s also another ultra-secret lane which entails the taxis driving into oncoming traffic when they notice that the secret lane is full, and then trying to merge with the stationary bumper-to-bumper traffic in the middle lane.

South African drivers would rather swim naked with piranhas than let the taxi back in at this point.

There are also secret rules and customs to driving here that you will not be party to. One of them, for example, is that a traffic light turning red does not necessarily mean stop. In rush hour traffic, it means that five more cars can go through if the drivers pretend that they simply can’t stop and are really very sorry.

If you have not found all of this confusing enough, we also have those little green men. Do not be fooled. The little green man does not signal to pedestrians that it is safe to cross. It indicates to traffic that it is safe to turn across the path of the pedestrians.

If you see this, freeze. Looking both ways will do you no good. Cars could now be coming from anywhere.

We don’t have that alarming beeping sound, however. I understand that that is there for the benefit of blind people, and in South Africa, most of the blind people are begging at the intersections anyway, and can feel their way through traffic like bats.

I wish I was joking.

When all is said and done, the only safe way for a visitor to cross the road in South Africa is to catch a taxi on one side and get him to drop you off on the other. This will also give you an opportunity to learn some of the more colourful local language from other drivers.

No. Don’t even think about it.

Just for the sake of completion, I will explain how locals cross the road. The traditional places to cross are here;

The green blocks are the people, crossing the road in an orderly fashion. It’s a lovely green, isn’t it? Do they have that green on Photoshop? No? Didn’t think so.

Do not allow yourself to be confused by the lights. Rather wait until the traffic has stopped moving because a taxi has stopped in the middle of the intersection to drop off passengers. Look both ways not just before crossing, but also several times while crossing. Be careful not to touch anyone’s car, or they will think that you’re a hijacker and either give you their keys or try to fight back. Pay special attention to those alpha males on their bikes and the ultra-secret taxi lane.

With a couple of years practice, crossing the road becomes second nature. You will develop the reactions of a cobra, and learn some very fancy footwork. Those pantsulas didn’t get their dance moves from nowhere.

They aren’t dancing, they’re dodging a motorbike.