As
part of planning the youth day campaign I had to meet with a group that will be
performing on the day. This is an upcoming group that just recorded an album
which is to be released soon. A meeting was scheduled with these three young
black men who formed a group called Generation
X, which I think in all honesty will blow the South African music industry
away, hip-hopers better be scared. I also wanted to hear the kind of music they
produce, just now they come on the day and be rapping “where the B**ches at”.
I
had never seen these guys before so when I met them they were a decent group of
three guys who seem very passionate about their music so we went off to their
recording studio which is but a small room in someone’s backyard and also a
bedroom for one of the guys. Now if you listen to their music you would think
they were in an actual studio with all the advanced equipment musicians use
today. The highlight for me was not really their recording studio or their
music which is really great, but the actual highlight is an incidence that took
place on our way to their studio. Now for the record, I just think the Western
Cape has the worst taxi system I have ever come across.
So in Nyanga they have
mostly ‘amaphela’ and Avanzas as
taxis and not your minibus taxi. As we were driving, these guys in a car in front
of us, we had taxis trying to drive over, under and between us, but that just
how they drive, like they are the only people with places to get to. Unfortunately
one of the ‘phelas’, a very old rusty
Cressida knocked the car the group was driving in, belonging to one of them, a
BMW, I’m not into cars so I wouldn’t know the model but it is one of those nice
ones. To my surprise, the taxi driver did not run, he actually stopped and came
to apologize. But you don’t bump a BMW (or any other car) and get away with an apology especially
if you were reckless in your driving, someone has to pay. The guy driving the ‘phela’ decides he wants to call his
boss, and to his luck all he did was knock the number plates off the BMW, so
that is all he was asked to replace. The guys were actually nice, the deal was ‘give
us R60 to replace the number plate and we will be off-no police or anything
like that”. The guy refuses to pay and steps away to call his boss.
Now me I’m
sitting in the car we were driving in because I just couldn’t get involved, so
as I wait for the guys to sort this out I get on my phone. When I looked up 10
minutes later there are about 40 men surrounding the car, and about ten
vehicles around. Some of the guys came out in groups of 5 from the vehicles and
it got me scared because now I didn’t know what was going on. So the story is
that the driver of the ‘phela’ stepped
away to call his boss, but because he refused to pay the R60 for the new number
plate, told his boss (who must’ve been at the taxi rank at the time) that he
was being attacked because this boss came with what could be 39 other taxi
drivers. These drivers were ready for action, and to their surprise these were
just four young men, including a dear friend of mine I was driving with and all
they were asking for was their R60.
The first thing this boss asked is why his
driver was being attacked as that was the call he received! This scared me
because today yes they found that their guy was not being attacked and the boss
paid the R60 - no qualms. But given any other day let’s say that his driver was
really being attacked but in self-defence, what would happen to the guy
attacking the driver given the violent nature of our taxi drivers in this
country and this sort of gang way of doing things. What is it with this ‘mob’ mentality
among taxi drivers? I thought this was very interesting, well it shook me off a
bit but it got me wondering whether being in this industry actually makes them
violent or whether the violent people in our society tend to be drawn to this
type of work.
Now what concerns me is that knowing they are in a way ‘protected’
by this ‘taxi gang’, taxi drivers are very likely as it the case to think they
run the world and may even initiate some of these situations that end up in
violent attacks. I just don’t like taxis in the Western Cape, and what is it
with taxi drivers smoking in a taxi full of passengers? Once I complained to a
taxi driver who was smoking in the taxi…I think you know what happened, I
wanted to throw myself out of the moving taxi because he wouldn’t stop talking
about how I think I’m better than him because I speak English, and how the
white people came and taught us English and now we think we are all that. I
think this may be an unfair generalization, but I think taxi drivers ‘abanayo ingqondo’ period!
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