Victoria Mok from Randburg writes:
I was stopped at a traffic light waiting to turn left in Louis Botha Avenue when a taxi came through the green light, but then stopped right in front of me. I figured he would move once the traffic light changed, but he didn’t. There he sat, hooting for prospective passengers, completely ignoring the fact that he was now blocking the intersection as cars couldn’t cross Louis Botha into my road.
I hooted at him, but he didn’t budge. So I sat on my hooter until eventually he moved. At the next taffic light he pulled up next to me and started yelling at me. I told him he was breaking the law, blocking the road and that the rules of the road apply to everyone, and that’s when it got really interesting.
He asked me, “Why are you hooting all the time? Only monkeys hoot and make a noise for no reason, so you must be a monkey”. And then he said, “We know that the rules of the road are only there to protect you white drivers, so we don’t have to listen to the rules”.
I alternated between being furious at his absolute contempt for all regulations, not to mention the safety of his passengers, and fits of giggles that in the new South Africa, a black man can feel free to call a white woman a monkey.
Without reducing this to a racist fight, which is so not my intention, perhaps this could be a place to start educating taxi drivers? That the rules of the road exist for ‘their’ protection and safety, as much as the same rules facilitate ‘our’ convenience. That they are not merely some legacy of the Apartheid government, but actually there to help everyone. If they drove with more consideration, other road users would respond in kind and we would all be that much safer on the roads.
