Today I’ll prove that the adage “not all heroes wear capes” is spot on. I’m going to give you a tutorial on how to drive an automobile while black and living in a township. We, the people who grew up in such areas, are no longer restricted to driving within the boundaries of those apartheid labour camps. This means we’re spreading our kasi driving style far and wide.
Just this past week, I found myself at the corner of Winnie Mandela Drive and Peter Place waiting for that little green arrow. A VW Polo GTI approached me from behind, went around me, and then sped through the red light. I knew instinctively he was from the township. I was proved right when I caught up with him three minutes later. I didn’t need any confirmation: the Polo had heavily tinted windows, four noisy exhaust pipes, 17-inch wheels, and a lowered suspension. When I got a closer look at the driver, I saw his window was all the way down, his right elbow was sticking out of the vehicle, only his left hand was on the steering wheel, and his cranium was leaning so far back that only half of it was visible. Unsurprisingly, his Dickies-hat-covered head was bopping along to the booming sound of Tshwala Bami, the amapiano song that spawned the global TikTok dance craze.
We kasi folks have created our own driving culture that has nothing to do with travelling from point A to point B. In this regard, we’re identical to our brethren from Compton, Inglewood or South Central LA, where cruising on the highway in a bouncing low-rider Buick Regal is an integral part of black culture. In the unlikely event you’ve made the underside of a rock your domicile for the past 30 years, look up hip-hop billionaire Dr. Dre’s 1993 track Let Me Ride on YouTube for an illustration of the phenomenon.
What the rest of the population doesn’t understand is that, for us ghetto rats, driving a car has little to do with convenient transportation. The primary goal of owning an automobile is to impress everyone with how cool you are. Sure, if you’re a guy from the township, impressing girls and, by extension, improving your sex life is a major motivator. But that requires you to exude coolness from every pore while behind the wheel. If you’re a country bumpkin from Ngqamakhwe or Musina, you might want to pay attention.
To achieve a high “cool quotient”, the first thing you need to do is obtain a driving licence via your “connections”. A childhood friend obtained his licence at the age of 28 after failing seven times in the five years after he graduated from university. He was the subject of endless ridicule and contempt at shisanyama gatherings because — hello? — who doesn’t know you buy the damn thing? Guys would brag loudly about not even making the trip to KwaNdebele to get theirs. They just gave their cash to some driving school instructor to fetch their licences from a licence kingpin by the name of Phahladiri. I know some more than competent drivers from my ’hood who went this route because it wasn’t cool taking driving lessons and subjecting yourself to a driving test.
The next step in attaining this driving “cool” status is to not, under any circumstances, wear glasses. No self-respecting driver from the hood wears spectacles. It’s just not done, unless you’re comfortable with being called ibhari/impatha/setlaela/moegoe — variations on mampara (it’s difficult to look like a cool borderline thug driving with bifocals on). That’s why you’ll be hard-pressed to spot a minibus taxi driver who wears spectacles. That’s a shortcut to being bullied and ridiculed at the Noord Street taxi rank.
What the rest of the population doesn’t understand is that, for us ghetto rats, driving a car has little to do with convenient transportation. The primary goal of owning an automobile is to impress everyone with how cool you are
I don’t need a scientific study to know that the incidence of short-sightedness, farsightedness, night blindness and other eye conditions among taxi drivers and other kasi dwellers probably mirrors the rest of society. According to global statistics, 62% of the world’s population requires spectacles, but I’d be surprised if 1% of taxi drivers and fellows from Thembisa and Alex wear glasses. When I take the London Road off-ramp to Alex, I leave my driving sensibilities from the burbs at the Sasol filling station and switch to “kasi driving mode”. A part of that is naturally assuming I’m surrounded by a few hundred people driving cars blind as a bat because glasses are uncool.
Another dead giveaway that you’re a visitor to the township is driving with your seat belt on. If someone from Soweto borrows your car, you’ll find the safety belt fastened to the buckle and tied behind the seat (to avoid that annoying beeping noise). People buckle up behind their backs because driving while strapped to your seat to avoid flying through your windshield at 160km/h and using your skull as the last line of defence against the tarmac increases your mampara status by about 132%. So does sitting up straight — you need to be lying back at about a 45º angle. Driving with both hands on the wheel is another sure sign you probably grew up herding goats in the Jozini countryside. We don’t do any of those things while driving through Atteridgeville.
As promised at the beginning of this column, if you follow these pointers, your kasi social standing will shoot up. Having your brains splattered across the tarmac because you were driving blind as a mole while not wearing a safety belt is a fate significantly better than being a living, breathing moegoe with four eyes and two hands on the wheel.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.