They have been known to strike back. Striking Taxi drivers. They strike back. Ahh fuck. Old joke. Anyway. On with the show. Today taxi drivers all over Joburg striked (struck?) over the introduction of the Metro Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Link Transit system, or more accurately, local and national government's inability to address their concerns at the city bringing in hundreds of new buses and dedicated traffic lanes to cart people back and forth during the upcoming FIFA Soccer World Cup (football?). You know what I mean. 10 - 15 000 angry fucking taxi drivers walking down the streets of urban Jozi wielding knob-kerries and shouting machine gun verse as their war-torn victor leader had done before them (many drivers are zulus who support, and who are supported by? Jacob. Zuma. Him of the techni-color scapegoat).
Reports of violence filtered in. Strangely I didn't take the taxis in today. No I mean haha I didn't have to even if there wasn't a strike on because I was sitting in for an absent manager at one of our bookstores (my role now with the bookgroup is very ill-defined. It's like I do everything and nothing). Of course, it wasn't the taxi drivers who committed these acts of atrocity (one putco bus driver was shot, and some people who caught a meter cab were accosted. somehow. vaguely. hurt. over the radio) it was detractors to the cause, arbitrary third party influences who played foul of the ball.
It's funny like that. A group of people do something that acts as an opening for another group of people to push the limits of the law (reference: looters during anarchy/ emergencies; violent perpetrators during demonstrations) yet the original group who created the opening want no part of the blame. Fuck that. GUILTY. Motherfuckers. Probably those same cunts who shot off those rounds at Bree Street Rank I was talking about. Good luck to them. The Rea Vaya Rabid bus lynx is coming to maul them in their spring-sprung seats, in their filthy 20-hour-a-day moth-beaten shirts, hanging on to their monkey-wrench steering wheels flinging their rattle-traps along the roads like ketties. Or, the projectiles that come out of ketties, once you release them. ...fuck.
Not that I mind, I must be honest. I haven't caught a bus in years. I don't know why. My blood might be red but I must have a black heart. Maybe I really am an African. I think I need to ask Julius Malema next time we meet to shoot the hoop, spear the queen on the corner by his donought shop. Because, of course, most of what I know about the world I have learnt from Julius Malema. My homeboy.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
good news and bad news
I've got good news and bad news. The good news is there's another funny taxi story on the way. The bad news is it will have to wait until after the Taxi Violence.
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So today right... and I haven't been writing but I have been jumping, travelling, getting on and off more taxis than you can ever imagine. Green ones, red ones, blue ones, white ones white ones... I am coming home from Balfour, just around the corner from our Lyndhurst Bookshop warehouse, where I am now putting in some time for being such a great guy, anyway. I get through Noord Rank (what a story Noord Street Rank is... I must let you in) and make my way to Bree. At Bree Street Rank I'm crossing the road to the rank and I look right and there is an ambulance with flashing lights. I think nothing of it. I move along, keeping my distance, keeping my eyes on the ground (change, remember...) and I get to the Cresta line. Fucking cops. Everywhere. Not metros. Cops. Badges. Bastards. I'm like, HoKay I'll just get in here then... and I sit next to this cute little black number and ask, what's with all these cops. They are standing around at the head of the Cresta line, the taxi is even seated a couple of meters back. She doesn't know. Then, they haul out the yellow DO NOT CROSS CRIME SCENE POLICE TAPE, and we're all, hahaha, this taxi is going to go straight through that shit when it starts up (which it does, by the way, the cops just lift the tape up, knowing better). As we pass through the cordon I look around and on the ground there are coke cans and sprite cans with chalk circles drawn around them. What, have the cans like pegged, I wonder, until I see the AK47 shells lying next to them. Before the chalk lines were drawn the cans were used to demark the areas where they landed. Bit of a dunce move, there are fucking cans littered everywhere in Bree, in between the change.
We move off, leaving the shells behind (I know they are AK because the word stands out in Zulu - ask Zuma...).
Tomorrow I'll let you know what the good news was.
WHITE TAXI, by White Man Jumping
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