Millions of
South Africans rely on public transportation to get from place to place. In cities, public transportation can take
forms similar to what is present all around the world—city and long distance
buses, light rail, and meter taxis, to name a few examples. As in the United States, these forms of
transportation are somewhat underdeveloped, even in big cities like
Johannesburg and Durban. In addition,
they don’t even come close to meeting the transportation needs of South
Africans who don’t live in big cities. Townships,
rural areas, small towns, and all the places in between have very few
connections to this type of transportation infrastructure. Since many South Africans don’t own cars, a
significant proportion of the population needs an alternative mode of
transportation. Enter the kumbi.
Kumbis, or
minibus taxis, operate virtually everywhere in South Africa. Each village, town, city, township, and
neighborhood has its own set of taxi ranks, stops, and routes that thoroughly
penetrate the rainbow nation. Kumbi
drivers and owners’ associations form a network of organized chaos that provides
daily service to millions of South Africans traveling to and from work, school,
shopping centers, and sports matches. A
network of long distance kumbis runs between cities and towns that can be
hundreds of kilometers apart. Kumbis are
hands down the cheapest, the most accessible, and the most common form of
public transportation.
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| Kumbis waiting in the Kranskop taxi rank |
Most kumbi
routes originate from taxi ranks. Taxi ranks can range from massive, buzzing
masses of humanity with taxis traveling to hundreds of destinations to small
dirt pullouts on the side of the road that connect two neighborhoods within a
city. Bigger ranks also serve as hubs
for informal traders and vendors. While
waiting in a taxi rank, you can buy anything from soda, chips, super glue,
fried chicken, sunglasses, fresh fruit, dish towels, airtime (pre-paid cell
phone minutes), fingernail clippers, candy, grilled mielies (ears of corn),
electric filaments to boil water, mini Christmas trees, CD’s and DVD’s, shoes,
crafts, and frozen bags of juice. The
frozen juices are delicious, by the way.
Most taxi
routes at a given rank are unlabeled, making it difficult to figure out which
taxi goes to a certain destination. In
addition, the fares for routes are rarely posted, adding to the confusion when
traveling somewhere for the first time. Many,
rural areas don’t have official ranks at all.
Instead, people stand by the side of the nearest road and flag taxis
down as they drive by. Soon after
arriving in Umphumulo, I learned that each of these seemingly innocuous places
by the side of the road has its own name and corresponding fare. For example, the place I wait to catch kumbis
is called Magengqezeni. I always seem to have to repeat myself several
times as I try to tell the driver where I need to get off, which is probably
mostly for the entertainment value of listening to a white guy trying to
pronounce Zulu words and clicks.
There is no
set schedule for kumbi departures or arrivals.
A minibus taxi will leave the rank only when it is full—i.e. when 15+
people and their assorted goods have piled inside. Sometimes, this can take quite a while. I have frequently waited for 90 minutes or
more for my kumbi to fill up when traveling from Kranskop to
Pietermaritzburg. What’s more, in rural
areas people often come to town to do several weeks worth of shopping. When multiple people are bringing home 50
liter propane cylinders, 25 kg bags of maize meal, sacks of squash, beets, and
cabbages, gallons of cooking oil, and bags of other groceries, this can make
for very full kumbis.
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| Nothing says community like sweating in the back row of an almost-full kumbi for a couple hours... |
Kumbi
drivers also are notorious for speeding, passing at inappropriate times,
screeching to a halt at the side of the road with no notice, overloading their
vehicles, and otherwise driving with complete disregard for the rules of the
road. Fortunately, the police are
cracking down on reckless drivers, but the number of deaths on South Africa’s
roads is still frighteningly high. Part
of the reason that drivers are always in such a rush has to do with the way the
kumbi system is regulated. Drivers have
to collect about R6000 a week to pay for gas, pay fees owed to the taxi owners’
association, and make monthly payments on their kumbi. Whatever money they earn after that is kept
as profit. When you add up the number of
R5 – R8 fares a driver has to collect over the course of a day to meet this
quota, the constant rush is a little more understandable.
Kumbis can
range from brand new Mercedes Sprinter
style buses to 15-passenger Toyota Quantums
to 30+ year old models made by companies that went extinct before I was
born. The South African government spent
millions of Rands buying new kumbis before the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but many
smaller towns and rural areas are still served by minibus taxis that were made
in the 1980s. Taxi drivers are ingenious
when it comes to keeping their machines running, but the continuous use takes a
heavy toll. I’ve ridden in taxis that
have to be push started because the ignition doesn’t work, a few that have no
internal door handles, and many that require months of practice to open and
close the sliding door in one try.
All in all,
the kumbi network is a very practical and useful means of transportation, but I
have my own list of pet peeves. Legroom—especially
for someone like me who is about foot taller than most South Africans—is
virtually nonexistent, especially when I have three bags of groceries to hold
on my lap. In addition, despite being
crammed into a kumbi like sardines, South Africans rarely open the
windows. I don’t know whether people
dislike the cool (refreshing) air or just don’t want the wind to mess up their
weaves, but kumbis can be absolutely stifling on long trips. Finally, the lack of scheduled services and
the fact that most kumbis are off the road by 6 pm makes traveling very time
consuming and difficult to plan. Still,
all these challenges have definitely added to the flavor of my South African
experience. For instance, being crammed
next to a complete stranger for a couple hours has provided some great
conversations. Once, I spent an hour or
so talking to an older man about American westerns—books, movies, actors,
etc. I think he had watched every
western ever filmed, including “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” about 30
times. Another time while waiting at a
taxi rank, a friend and I bought some delicious smelling chicken that a lady
was grilling on a wooden skewer. To our
surprise, the first bite had the strangest texture of any chicken we’d ever
tasted, and after asking around we learned that we had bought a stick of grilled
chicken gizzards. We were more than
happy to share these with a little boy sitting next to us.
My
experiences with kumbis have exposed me to a cross section of South African
life that would have been impossible to see from any other angle. Traveling in kumbis has been a great way to
join South Africans in the middle of their lives, share some of the same daily
frustrations with them, and witness some amazing ubuntu moments. It takes a lot of trust to get on a kumbi for
the first time when you don’t know where it’s heading, how long it will take to
get there, how much it will cost, or what anyone around you is saying. Time and time again, however, my questions
have been answered and my doubts waved away.
Who knows… I might even miss kumbis when my time in South Africa is
over.
