Mayibuye bus company unveils its new face

Rebranding aims at building a fresh image which incorporates service excellence

We agreed where we should be going and the uniqueness of a new brand

The Mayibuye bus company finally shed its unwelcome association with apartheid Ciskei by unveiling a new brand identity on Tuesday.

In the final step of a long journey, the modern design was revealed at a launch at the East London Golf Club, but chair Pumla Nazo-makatalala said it had not been an easy road.

She said the biggest hurdle to any change was the company’s staff’s reluctance to accept the need for it, due to the fear of losing the positive reputation they had gradually built up over many years.

She said Mayibuye, now the Mayibuye Transport Corporation after the announcement, had gone through a traumatic change in 1994 with the dismantling of the former Ciskei.

During that period many people also resisted the change in operation systems and routes.

“Now Mayibuye has a brand new image, with buses branded in the new livery.”

She said the Eastern Cape was known as the home of legends and MTC would link itself to this.

“It is time for us to kill the negative history, which dates back to 1981 when Mayibuye took to the road. This was after the founding of the group in the Ciskei.”

Back then, she said, the company had been 100% Ciskei-owned and at its peak had 350 buses.

The vision of the rebranding exercise, she explained to the large audience, was to build a fresh image which incorporated service excellence, catering for dense and transit-poor rural and urban integrated communities.

Butise Makambi, acting chief director of Eastern Cape Transport Operations, said one of his department’s primary goals was to establish a reliable and affordable public transport system, one that was continually improving and focusing on excellence. “In the early phases of C-19 our citizens struggled to get from rural villages, far off the beaten tracks, to pay-points to collect their [grant] money.

“We appealed to three bus companies to subsidise transport costs to help these people, many of them infirm.”

He said MTC had not hesitated to offer its services.

“It was the sort of loyalty that should not be forgotten.

“We [the province] are developing a strategy that will, once accepted by the province’s treasury department, result in a recapitalisation of MTC.

“It will involve changing the act, but the end result will be far more buses on the roads. It will also see the new buses running throughout the province.”

Rebranding a company that has a long tradition was not easy and the goal was to retain all that had worked well in the past, Luthando Bara, of Lpg/lleblaq joint venture, said.

Once the company had secured the MTC contract, every aspect of marketing had been explored, identifying opportunities and threats, he said.

“We agreed where we should be going and the uniqueness of a new brand.”

The design rationale was to distance the company from the old homelands association and create a fresh image that would encourage a new generation of mainly younger people who would be happy to ride the buses, or as Bara said, “move easier”, which is the new slogan.