If my interactions with e-hailing services were a boxing match, the result would be Uber/Bolt by brutal knockout in the ninth round. I’ve fought the good fight but it’s time I accepted defeat. About 30 years ago, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians recorded a song that went I quit and I give up. Well, it’s time I give up.
There are many annoying aspects to e-hailing that we’ve learnt to live with. The tardiness of some drivers, the lack of courtesy and, sometimes, the hectic body odour. But these are to-be-expected parts of using public transport.
After all, I’ve found myself in the back seat of a minibus taxi from Pietermaritzburg to Greytown with two live chickens on my lap, staring at me until my guilt about the fate awaiting them forced me to share my NikNaks with them.
No, don’t be daft, I have no idea whose chickens they were. They were dumped on my lap by the manager at the Masukwana Taxi Rank. And this, I fear, might just be at the core of the ... intriguing metamorphosis in the e-hailing space.
I first noticed the phenomenon in Durban. Let’s start by describing it before we name it. These apps are programmed in such a way that the driver has no way of knowing where you’re off to until they arrive to pick you up. It makes sense why it’s designed that way.
In Gauteng, for instance, the poor operators have, over the years, respected this feature. That means that even if all I want is a 500m trip around NeverWatts Park yelling into a loud hailer: “A curse upon you, thieves of light!” while mooning the building, the driver would have to sit there quietly in a pressed Pringle shirt and fawn chinos and drive until the trip is over.
In my hometown of Durban, they don’t play that. The first thing that happens at King Shaka International Airport after you hail a vehicle is an immediate text: “Sho. Uyaphi?” (Yho! Where to?) You need to respond carefully to this question. If you’re going too near, to Sibaya Casino or thereabouts, consider the trip cancelled. It’s not worth it. If you’re going too far, such as Hillcrest, you might suffer the same fate. Or get asked to make it a cash trip.
Here’s some unsolicited advice: if this request for a cash trip is agreed to, you’ve opened yourself to a whole other experience.
I remember it like it was yesterday. After agreeing to a R400 cash trip, my driver arrives in high spirits, no doubt excited by this stroke of luck. The drivers in my ’hood seem to have a uniform; the neatly pressed long-sleeve shirt and formal chinos. Not so much in my hometown.
He was in one of those unfortunately named white vests with pores called the wifebeater, garish beach shorts inspired by the colour of puke after a Seven Colours Sunday lunch and a pair of flops. When he lifted my bag into the boot I spied what looked like a furry black rodent under his armpit. I know that the black mouse was dead because I smelled it as soon as he closed the door. Then he switched on his car stereo with a USB memory stick and the Durban sound of igqomu crashed against my fragile eardrums at 200 decibels.
While frantically rummaging through my satchel for ear plugs I heard him yell something like DJ Tira’s signature cry. Ten seconds later I understood what he meant. We drove into a Sasol filling station where he spent about 10 minutes socialising with his people on the forecourt. By this point I was starting to experience a familiar feeling though I couldn’t put my finger on it immediately.
That was not all. We off-ramped on the N2 South and drove into the Nandi Drive Petroport where we proceeded to park with the engine idling for a good two minutes until I asked what we were waiting for. “Oh, I told you at the airport that we have to pick up my girlfriend.” And that is how it came to pass that I found myself in the back of an Uber watching two lovebirds feeding each other Streetwise Five.
In their defence, they did offer me a wing, which I declined even after the missus explained slowly that they had five pieces, but there was only two of them, therefore the heavens had conspired to give me a KFC lunch.
These unvetted guys I often use could easily drop me in those sugar cane fields in my boxers and shorts. Who would know?
Let’s pause this story here.
Do you remember when I said I had started to get a familiar feeling? By the time we were driving past The Pavilion Shopping Centre I had figured it out. The déjà vu was years of depending on minibus taxis as my means of transport. Everything about my driver screamed “Inanda Rank driver”. This is when I coined the term “Santacorisation”. Every element of the minibus taxi experience was there: the attempt to extract the maximum amount of money possible from me, the lack of rigour in appearance, the feeling that if you say one word out of turn you will be reminded that you’re in his car, and possibly get manhandled before finding yourself on the side of the freeway with a piece of cardboard with “Hillcrest” written on it.
It's back to 1994 for me, when I used meter cabs in Yeoville/Hillbrow/Braamfontein, watching those red digits flashing on the dashboard with a strange old man who smells of Humbugs and stale urine, driving an old Ford Sapphire, idling at the traffic light.
These unvetted guys I often use could easily drop me in those sugar cane fields in my boxers and shorts. Who would know?
But, ja. Uber/Bolt need to acknowledge that the Durban experiment has failed.
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