On Independence Day, Copacabana was packed with kombis which the cops seemed to be deliberately immobilising. Ask three people where you can catch a kombi to Hatcliffe and you’ll get four different answers. Fortunately for me, the second answer wasn’t too far wrong. Fourth Street was also overcrowded, but if you waited long enough your kombi would find its way out. Market Square is as bad.
The other day I tried to discuss some of this with a cop who is fairly senior in the traffic section. I got a reply describing carefully all the problems they are trying to solve and assurances that they have stopped a lot of corruption. I mentioned a few instances and got an admission that there are still a lot of rackets they cannot control.
But this traffic cop still justifies the policy that slows our movements down to a walking pace so that the cops can take the opportunities the problem offers for corruption. If your kombi gets you to your destination without trouble, the driver has paid his weekly subscription to the cops. I could hear echoes in that police officer’s answers of the old Rhodie talk about “maintaining standards”. Of course there have to be rules to ensure the safety and convenience of passengers, but if half the city’s kombis are immobilised at any moment because they don’t meet those standards, the city grinds to a halt and a lot of people are very angry and frustrated.
If we don’t have the capacity to meet the standards they set in a well-run city like Stockholm, maybe we should set our standards a bit lower. Travel won’t be quite as safe, but it will be as safe as we can make it and it will run. That should be the purpose of the operation.
The Rhodie cops weren’t interested in the safety and convenience of people who didn’t own cars. The way they hounded every township owner of an old Ford Prefect showed that they weren’t really interested in his safety and convenience either. Their road blocks and blitzes on bald tyres, faulty brakes and overloading were all about showing that they could stop us going about our legitimate business any time they felt like it. They were showing us who was boss and they sometimes actually told us so.
Now, although my traffic cop said you could always ask a cop why he is doing something, how many of us would dare to try, when his hand goes to his baton if he suspects you might have a question? Especially if he is a big raw youth he might tell you “Tiri muZimbabwe”, which is meant to shut you up. That seems to mean his Zimbabwe is the old Rhodesia with the boot on the other foot. The people kicking may now be black, but the ones kicked are still black and the fleas and lice in the boot that changed hosts with it are just as happy with a black bully as a white one.
Passengers might feel that a bully who knew a bit about traffic control was better than one who only knows how to extract bribes. Watch a kombi conductor sort out a traffic jam at a major intersection faster than the cops could and you might wonder why we have police at all.
And so they celebrate the anniversary of the wedding of Independence and Freedom even though the bride, Freedom, still hasn’t made her appearance. Is this what we suffered for?
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis