Here is a much belated posting on perhaps the defining feature of my life in Cape Town: the minibuses. Cape Town has no public transportation system save a complex and somehow (criminally) organized system of vans. Many have a nickname proudly displayed such as “Prison Break 3,” which seems to have no Prisons Break 1 or 2 hanging around, and two employees: the driver and the “door dj” whose job it is to yell out the destination in an accent and tone that you really never hear anyone else anywhere else use. I ride these fairly frequently in spite of their shoddiness since they only cost R5 (about 60 cents) but have had three exemplary rides:
1. On the way to the beach, our minibus gets pulled over by the cops. Since the police force is incredibly corrupt we get a little nervous but soon realize that there’s a fairly legitimate reason for pulling us over…we are all riding in a stolen vehicle. Our driver is subsequently maced, hand-cuffed and led off to the station while we all got our R5 back and proceeded, naturally, to the next available minibus.
2. On our way back from Stellenbosch (the wine country north of Cape Town) we had to take two minibuses and transfer in Belleville where fellow Hoya Meg Hathaway attends University of the Western Cape. Our first bus had 21 people in it. Just to give you an idea of exactly how overcrowded this was, we couldn’t get up a hill. People almost had to jump out and push. We also ran multiple red lights, probably because once we had enough momentum to get going we just couldn’t slow down lest we never start up again. But this was nothing compared to…
3. Our second bus. Which ran out of gas at a busy intersection.
(The photo is of me and my friend katie on the second minibus to the beach that day, post-brush with crime)
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