HUMOUR

Ndumiso Ngcobo: Shut up & drive

South Africa is a fascinating anomaly in many senses. One of these is that we have a pretty large and complex (albeit stagnant) economy that successive governments have somehow never bothered to support by creating a public transport system. Notice that I didn’t qualify that with “an efficient” public transport system. This is because to all intents and purposes we’ve never had any type of public transport system at all. Not one even remotely adequate to transport the entire population, anyway.

This is the most bizarre thing ever. Even dung beetles appreciate that moving balls of poop from point A to point B depends heavily upon a proper excrement-transportation system. And this is why I’m personally eternally grateful that those pirates-cum-thugs at Santaco had the foresight to found the privately owned minibus taxi industry when they did.

Getting around this country without a private automobile is extremely difficult outside of the densely populated cities of Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. So when the Uber service first made its appearance on these shores, many of us were extremely excited. Transport on tap, at the click of one button on one’s smartphone.

And boy has the service lived up to its reputation. Few things annoy me more than spending 47 minutes driving the 20km between Rosebank and Midrand. I’d much rather spend that time on my phone having violent disagreements with my friends on WhatsApp and Facebook while someone else deals with the kamikaze pilots and other Einsteins who think K-53 rules are gentle suggestions.

But as brilliant as the Uber service is, generally, it’s not always strawberries and cream.

On my last working day in December I decided to have drinks with colleagues at Foundry, a stone’s throw from Uber HQ in Parktown North. I had to leave early for a standing dinner date with the BOM in Bedfordview, so I ordered an Uber. With my levels of fatigue at an all-time high that month, driving myself would have culminated in major pile-ups on Joburg and Cape Town highways.

But in retrospect, I should have cancelled the trip at the moment I laid my eyes on this driver. He was wearing black, extremely neatly pressed formal pants — the kind you can only find at Woolies. They had the kind of creases that I’m sure would slice a fly in half if any fly were stupid enough to land on them. He also wore a blindingly white formal shirt, buttoned up all the way to his neck — without a necktie.

I’m not an expert on these matters but I know the telltale signs of analretentiveness and sexual repression.

I hadn’t even buckled up when he started talking. Boy, did this fellow talk! He went on and on and on, giving me what I assumed was his CV. Every ounce of my being wanted to yell at the top of my voice, “Please shut your papen-vleis hole and let me enjoy the ride in peace!” But I’m not rude. Also, men in shirts that are buttoned up all the way can never be ruled out as suspects when investigating serial killers.

I have been driven by all kinds of Uber drivers, but I was still not ready for the chap who drove me in the early hours of the morning earlier that month. He kept ignoring his GPS and taking the longest way home.

Finally, I ask him what he was avoiding. Silence. So I ask louder. No response. And then the car starts veering off the road. That’s when I realised that he was fast asleep! Fastforward three minutes and I’m now that guy driving his Uber driver home. When I got home I had no option but to offer him a room to take a nap.

By this point, I was starting to think maybe this Uber business wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. And then I found myself trying to get home from

Melville and no Uber driver was accepting my trip. Someone told me the spot was a no-go for Uber drivers, so I went to a metered taxi and asked him to drop me off at the Engen on Empire Road. His response? “I’m not taking you to the Uber pickup spot.”

Finally I got another metered taxi to take me home. A battered Toyota Tazz without shocks. We agreed on a fare. And 10km into the trip he went into Cosatu mode, trying to renegotiate because, “But this is far, bro!”

And I remembered why I Uber.

I’m not an expert on these matters but I know the telltale signs of anal-retentiveness and sexual repression