Two people most likely to kill me

My chances of dying violently are high. This is because South Africa is one of the most dangerous countries on Earth. I can identify the two people most likely to kill me.

Crime is the second most likely reason for my violent death. Friends and acquaintances have been murdered by criminals. Yesterday, my neighbours were robbed but fortunately they didn’t encounter the robbers. Nobody was killed, raped or wounded. They were lucky.

People walking the lovely mountains and beaches in Cape Town have been less lucky. They have been stabbed and murdered in the places we used to walk safely as children: on Kommetjie Beach, in the Kalk Bay Mountains and elsewhere. The gentle places are now deadly dangerous.

But my most likely violent death is on the roads. South Africa’s rate of death in traffic accidents is horrifyingly high. This is my most likely route to the morgue or the wheelchair. The roads are full of callous potential killers who break all the traffic laws, threaten your life and shout “f **k off” if you point it out to them.

Here are the two people most likely to kill me: the black man driving a minibus taxi and the white woman driving a SUV. During the festive season, both came close.

I was waiting at a pedestrian crossing. The light went green for me. I waited to make sure and then walked across. In the middle of the road, a taxi went straight through the red light and nearly killed me. Fortunately, he had the courtesy to hoot loudly for me to get out of his way. So I lived.

Then, on my bicycle, I stopped at a red light. It went green. Luckily, I never move when the light turns green. I wait first. Sure enough a white woman in a gigantic SUV came screaming through the red light at top speed, one hand on the wheel, the other on her cellphone pressed to her ear, smiling and laughing, and looking upwards away from the road. Unlike the taxi driver, she didn’t bother to hoot at me.

Neither would get convicted if they kill someone. The police would be too scared to take on the taxi driver. The white woman would hire a fancy lawyer to lie for her in court.