Taking the good with the bad…

AN EFFICIENT, polite, no-bribeshere traffic cop gives me a R2 000 summons for crossing a solid white line. On the summons is a phone number for the Mpumalanga traffic administration in Machadodorp.

She says: “This is representations, they will reduce your fine.” She does not say “may”, she says will. That phone number, and others, deliver dead ends. I’m near Machadodorp, I’ll drop in.

I compose my representations, seeking diplomatic ways to say that a solid white line is silly at a place with a kilometre of clear vision.

The traffic administration sign is big, yellow, and exceptionally clear; many local signboards have faded into mottled abstract art. But it’s broken. The arrow points downward as if signposting a tunnel to Seattle.

Which is more than it could point to on the surface. There is no traffic administration whatsoever, not even a kiosk.

Helpful people assure me that the Belfast Magistrate’s Court is my target. And the big clear sign to an imaginary administration? They shrug, smiling beatifically. Belfast’s potholes versus tarmac struggle is history. Potholes won. In the main road, I stop to sightsee. A fellow tosses his ice cream wrapper on the pavement. Avoiding Mr Uptight Whitey’s litter lecture, I do Mr Uptight Whitey Lite, retrieving the wrapper to drop it pointedly into a bin.

There’s no bin. There is no bin on the block. Ice Cream Guy watches quizzically as I traipse his metropolis with his wrapper between thumb and forefinger. Across the road is an upturned oil drum. I add the wrapper to its overflow pile, trying to glower at Ice Cream Guy.

He’s lost interest. Oblivious, he tosses his ice cream stick on the pavement.

At the courthouse, I pass through a broken metal detector. A policeman sends me out, to another entrance. Must be for an operative detector, I take it. It’s not. This one is also broken.

I’m shown to a closed, private-looking, door. I knock. No response. My guide insists: just enter. That’s against the grain, but when in Rome…

In a tiny room, a seated woman is talking Zulu on a cellphone, eyes at my waist level. Summons in hand, I await an invitation to sit. Without looking at me, her hand flutters towards the summons in a hurry-up gesture.

I present my summons. She keeps talking into the phone. I register the words “800, alright” and continue waiting for her call to finish. She looks up sharply. We’re in sudden eye contact. We are two human beings. Something’s changed. She says: “I’ll make it 800, okay?”

Damn! I have my representations mentally prepared, several paragraphs!

R1 200 discount is more than I expected, but she has asked a question. I reply “perhaps 500, you see the white line was…”.

Laughing, she says to the phone: “My friend here breaks the law, and I give him 60 percent off and he wants more, what do you think of that?” She returns to Zulu and waves me away, blowing a kiss.

A new friendly person shows me to the cash hall, where amid eight unoccupied desks, one woman is on two phones. She mimes me an I’ll-be-with-you-ASAP.

When she gets to me, she is not just a correct civil servant doing her job. She’s an instant warmth, in distinctive African manner, making a lawbreaking stranger feel like a dear friend.

An explainer, too: “Representations means that if you pay in time, it’s 800.”

What an Africa-morning this has been. Gigantic human uplift, albeit not always instant, alternating with clichéd Africa-downers from broken roads to broken equipment to whimsical rules to not knowing the pavement from the bin.

Is it greedy to want the lift without the downers?