We are masters of the mini-cab

We had quite an adventure on Tuesday. C had an interview lined up in Pretoria, South Africa's capital, which is 50km or so to the north of Jo'burg. The interview was for 10am and when we asked our hotel owner (the lovely and lively Christine) what time we should leave to get there on time we were a little shocked when she said 7am.

She was absolutely spot on.

We left the hotel on the dot of 7 and walked down to the main road accompanied by Christine, who was worried that we'd disappear into the wilds of downtown Jo'berg and never be heard from again. We caught a mini-cab (a 12-seater mini-van taxi that holds more like 15) downtown, got out at some unknown spot and walked to the main station, where, guided by Christine, we ended up in another mini-cab heading to Pretoria. This time by ourselves - there's only so far your hotel owner is willing to hold your hand.

So far, so good.



When C told the driver we wanted to go to the University of Pretoria he looked at her blankly and said he didn't know where that was, but that we'd be able to get another mini-cab from where he would drop us that would take us to our final destination.

With those assurances we settled back to enjoy the ride, which was much longer than one might have anticipated. We hit peak hour on the Jo'Berg to Pretoria run and the traffic was bumper to bumper for most of the journey. Our driver, not to be slowed down or out done, would take off at high speed up every off ramp that we came upon, only to get stopped by street lights at the top of the off ramp. As soon as the lights turned green he would speed back down the other side and re-join the traffic headed to Pretoria, only slightly further back than before. We must have gone up a half dozen off ramps along the way and the fact that each time we slipped further back into the traffic didn't seem to affect our driver's dedication to the theory that it might just get us there quicker one of these times.

Pretoria seems like a less hardcore version of Jo'berg, though we both still felt a slight sense of impending doom around every corner. I guess a country with 40% unemployment and horrific crime rates is never going to make you feel at ease. Jo'berg is the worst part of the country on both fronts. On the way back from Pretoria we walked about 10 blocks through downtown Jo'berg from where our mini-cab dropped us to another station to get a cab back to the hotel. Every step of the way felt somewhat scary. Downtown Jo'berg is a little like a war zone. There are burnt out buildings and the streets are filthy. People have a haunted look about them too, and you feel like every other person is a potential mugger. Not that we've had any trouble at all, quite the contrary in fact. Everyone we've spoken to has gone out of their way to assist us. People have dropped what they were doing and walked us several blocks rather than just pointing the way.

This is hard to reconcile with the stereotypes we have firmly stuck in our minds (and that are borne out in the statistics). Interestingly, it's the black "underclass" that have been helpful and have gone out of their way, while nearly every white person we've seen (outside the part of town we're staying in) has been inside a car driving furiously and looking hunted. There's a definite undercurrent of fear among the whites in Jo'berg. Most of them have moved to high-walled, security patrolled, gated communities in the north of the city and when they venture into the southern areas they seem to have a siege mentality. Almost an "us or them" mindset. Apartheid might no longer be a legal reality in South Africa, but the apart-ness it engendered lives on.

We met a white store keeper the other day who was lamenting that most of his generation (our generation) were leaving the country and settling abroad. He wondered what was going to happen to the country and then told us he was closing his business due to the changing spending habits in the area (read the encroachment of blacks into a formally white only part of town). This in a mixed part of town, where people seem to get along (though nearly every house is surrounded by a high wall and topped with either razor wire or electric fencing).

Enough of that for now, back to the mini-cab story.

After arriving in Pretoria we hopped out of our mini-cab only to be ushered straight into another. This new cab took us a couple of blocks before stopping. The driver pointed to a line of cabs a block or so away and told us that we'd get a cab to the university there. He didn't charge us for the ride so we jumped out, crossed the street and found ourselves in another cab, our 4th for the day. This one filled to capacity, drove across town and dropped us right at the front gates of the university.

I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9.30am, we'd made it with a half hour to spare. Two and a half hours to travel 50km! That's got to be some kind of a record.

The interview went really well, and afterwards we began the process of re-tracing our steps. Getting back to the centre of Pretoria was easy enough (in cab number 5). We then caught another cab to the place where we'd be able to get a cab back to Jo'berg (number 6, another freebie). Cab 7 took us all the way back to downtown Jo'berg and it turned out that the traffic we'd hit in the morning wasn't unusual as it was just as bad at noon on the way back.

Cab 7 dropped us in an unfamiliar part of downtown, but we were set in the right direction by a girl who told us she was studying pharmacology at Wits University (the biggest school in Jo'berg). This is the part where we walked 10 blocks or so and arrived at the central cab station - the one the Lonely Planet tells you not to set foot in. Not that we had any option at this stage. The place wasn't so bad, though I imagine it would be all your worst car park nightmares after dark. We were able to find the right cab (number 8) without too much hassle and ended up right back where we started from.

Like I said; we are masters of the mini-cab. We've even got the payment regime worked out and can travel at speed of up to 120kmh with no seat belts in sight and only experience mild terror.