The South African Road Safety Issue

While roads in the Cape generally seem safe enough when you’re bumbling along them, every now and then you do get an eye-opener as to just how dangerous they really are.

 

The other day, for example, we witnessed the upsetting sight of a hanging body being slowly cut out of the mangled wreckage of a car, which appeared to have flipped and steamed into the central reservation.

 

And everyone you meet seems to have a tale to tell of some gruesome incident from which there was no coming back.

 

I guess the thing is that you can get lulled into a false sense of security though because, on the face of it, South African roads are relatively easy to negotiate.

 

On the one hand, their lanes are bigger and wider to drive on and their parking spaces are roomier and easier to get into, presumably because there’s simply more land to play with.

 

On the other, drivers, in the Cape anyway, are generally less aggressive and more polite than their UK counterparts, although that can’t necessarily be said of large cities such as Johannesburg, of course.

 

In fact, rather than risk antagonising anyone, considerate Cape drivers even show you the courtesy of moving over onto the hard shoulder of single carriageways to let you pass if you’re going faster than they are.

 

Oh yes – and people drive on the left-hand side of the road, which makes it a doddle for the Brits amongst us.

 

The only downside, if you’re not used to them, is the US-style stop junctions. These involve an element of trust in that the first person to arrive at one has the right of way over the others.

 

Worrying statistics

 

Although you might thing that such a system would lead to abject chaos, it actually works fairly well – although inevitably some drivers are more observant of the niceties than others. So you need to keep an eye out.

 

The same applies to roundabouts, or ‘circles’ as they’re known here. While some drivers do undoubtedly follow the rules and give way to the right, a goodly number use them in the same way as stop junctions. So again, eyes need to be everywhere.

 

But that doesn’t necessarily explain the worrying figures put out by the International Transport Forum in its latest Road Safety Annual Report. It indicated that South Africa comes at the bottom of a list of 36 admittedly mostly developed nations in terms of fatalities.

 

Not the cheeriest of news for nervous drivers such as myself, it must be said.

 

But in 2011, the number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants stood at a massive 27.6 compared with a mere 3.1 in the UK and 10.4 in the US. According to the latest Road Traffic Management Association’s report this means that the number of people killed each year on the country’s roads totals about 13,800.

 

The figure is, in fact, only just shy of South Africa’s notorious 15,900 per annum murder rate, which is one of the highest in the world outside of war zones. As a result, road accidents cost the economy an estimated R307 billion (£19 billion) each year in everything from cleaning up the mess to lost productivity.

 

But I can’t imagine things that things are helped much by the fact that there’s no MOT-equivalent in South Africa to ensure a basic level of vehicle safety. Or that only about 30% of drivers have purchased any form of insurance.

 

The number of minibus taxis that are full to overflowing and weave across lanes way above their 100km per hour speed limit aren’t likely to improve the situation much either.

 

Unsurprisingly for those of us living here, however, it turns out that just over a third of all fatalities are pedestrians, with school children under the age of 15 years being particularly at risk.

 

Drive down any motorway or dual carriageway on your way past the vast townships of the Cape Flats, for example, and you’ll have the life terrified out of you by people running across them, dodging cars as they go.

 

Roadside entrepreneurs

 

I’m guessing that this is due to the noticeably inadequate provision of things like footbridges, which means there’s probably no other way to cross unless you want to go miles out of your way. The same goes for the lack of pedestrian-operated traffic lights and zebra crossings in more rural areas too.

 

But my Beloved saw the distressing upshot of such activity on the way into Cape Town only the other day. Not something that you’d wish on anyone, but there are roadside crosses and flowers aplenty that tell a similar story.

 

Another hair-raising sight is that of people wobbling their way along roadsides and even through lanes of traffic after a bellyful of booze or lungful of tik (crystal meth) in the difficult-to-see twilight or darkness.

 

Although you don’t see it every time you go out, it’s enough to give you heart failure when you do – you certainly need nerves of steel and eyes everywhere in such circumstances as the possible consequences don’t bear thinking about.

 

But despite all of this, roads aren’t just agents of death and destruction in South Africa. They’re also channels of entrepreneurship.

 

As a result, a familiar roadside sight is that of people sticking a finger out at passing cars. Although to the unpractised eye, it may look like they’re trying to hitch a lift, in reality they’re letting you know that they’re available for work.

 

But even more common are the road-hawkers. At just about every big junction you stop at and no matter how inclement the weather, you’ll come across someone trying to sell you something. Everything, in fact, from avocados and tennis balls to sunglasses and Zulu chieftain headgear.

 

If you’re interested, all you have to do is wind your window down, negotiate a little and it’s yours – although make sure you have the right amount to hand as most won’t give change.

 

If you’re not, just shake your head and they’ll move on. And there’s nothing particularly dangerous about that.

Hermanus: South Africa’s whale-watching capital

To cheer ourselves up following the misery of the ‘eight-day rain’, my Beloved and I made a spur-of-the-moment decision on Saturday to take ourselves off to our favourite place in the whole of South Africa (so far) – the lovely little, whitewashed town of Hermanus.

 

The ‘eight-day rain’, as it’s known locally, is a Cape phenomenon that takes place every winter in August and, as its title intimates, consists of eight depressing days of relentless, torrential downpours.

 

It’s desperate – the UK’s got nothing on this, particularly because, despite having three months of winter each year, Cape houses really aren’t set up to cope with the cold.

 

As a result, you freeze your bits off in a way that central heating makes unthinkable at home. I’ve never worn so many layers in my life. In fact, I can barely get through the front door at times.

 

Anyway, having spotted a break in the clouds, we zoomed into the car and took off on the hour and a quarter journey from Stellenbosch to our lovely, whale-watching destination extraordinaire.

 

Hermanus prides itself on offering what it claims is the best shore-based cetacean-spotting in South Africa. It even employs an official whale crier, allegedly the only one in the world, to blow his curly, dried kelp horn in a series of Morse code-like sounds to alert passers by to the whales’ location.

 

A dash and a dot for New Harbour, two dashes for Fick’s Pool, three dots for Roman Rock, that kind of thing – all of which are spelled out for easy understanding on the sandwich board that sits over his navy blue raincoat (at this time of year anyway).

 

The present whale crier, Wilson Salakusana, does the rounds along the town’s coastline between 10am and 4pm from June to December and, somewhat gruesomely, wears a hat with a bit of whale’s tail stuck in it too.

 

Happy whale-watching

 

But the crying tradition was actually started in 1992 by one Pieter Claasens, who used to dress up as a parrot, but retired in 1998 and, sadly, died two years later.

 

Such was his reputation, however, that by 1996 he was apparently invited to star as guest of honour at the UK’s annual Town Crier’s competition, which that year was held in Topsham, a suburb of Exeter in Devon. He also was made an honorary ‘Town Crier of Britain’ to boot.

 

As to the whales being cried about, of the nine southern hemisphere species that pass by South African shores, the ones that you’re most likely to see in the Walker Bay area are the southern rights.

 

Southern rights were given their name because, rather ghouslishly, they were said to be the “right” ones to kill – they were slow enough for rowing boats to approach, floated when dead, which made them easy to handle and process, and yielded large amounts of oil and baleen, or the so-called whalebone used in old-fashioned corsets and the like.

 

Thankfully, as it’s been illegal to cull them since 1935 when they were given the dubious honour of being the first large whales to gain special protection, their numbers have risen to the tune of about 7% per year.

 

And the safeguarding appears to have paid off. As we checked into our charming, if rather over-priced, ‘Misty Waves’ boutique hotel and went to gaze out of the window of our sea-view room, what should we see but a whale wafting its tail at us, not once but twice. To be swiftly followed by a full-on breach as she leapt out of the water to say hello.

 

We were stunned. And delighted. Over-the-moon in fact. And even though we only had a few spouts and the odd tail-sighting to show for our trouble after that, we simply couldn’t tear ourselves away until the sun went down.

 

At which point, it was time for an amble along the seafront to the old harbour to treat ourselves to a triumphant dinner at what both of us consider to be the best restaurant in Hermanus – the Burgundy.

 

Unexpected finds

 

Housed in a couple of the original village’s oldest stone-and-clay fishermen’s cottages, which now comprise a National Monument, it’s a cosy spot and comes complete with open fires, tasteful French-style décor and relaxed and friendly service. The cuisine itself is of a predominantly seafood bent and, just to gain even more brownie points, most of the ingredients and wines are sourced locally.

 

At the other end of the spectrum, however, and certainly not what we expected to find in a well-heeled, upmarket place like Hermanus was Bo Jangles, the upstairs hostelry that we were directed to on deciding to go for a post-prandial bevvie.

 

Although as I found out later, it’s considered more of a late night bar/club than anything, it’s also the only option in the vicinity and reminded me very much of the smoky, old pool dives that you come across in the US.

 

Full of men in leather jackets drinking beer, pie-eyed kids in denim showing off – and six-packs of ‘Choice’ condoms in the ladies loos. All very sensible, it must be said, in a country where one in 10 of the population is HIV positive.

 

Another unexpected-for-Hermanus find, and regular haunt of ours, however, is the ‘Funky Vibes’ music shop. Situated right on Main Road, you really can’t miss it – not only do the vibrant sounds of reggae, dub and ska fill the air as you stroll on by, but its frontage is chokka with all kinds of tie-died T-shirts, brightly-coloured Indian cotton trousers and bags in Rasta shades with Ganja plants on them.

 

And its owner, David Lowe, is just as flamboyant. A regular twice-a-week fixture on ‘Whale Coast 96 FM’ (7-9pm on Mondays and 8-9.30pm on Fridays), he very patently loves his sounds and has sold us some great stuff, our fav to date being the eponymous debut album of Hollie Cook, daughter of Sex Pistols’ drummer, Paul Cook.

 

It really is amazing what you can find when, and even where, you least expect it. Weather notwithstanding.