There’s nothing quite like the pedestrians of South Africa. What a mad cacophony they play on the streets of our towns and cities!
There’s nothing quite like the pedestrians of South Africa. What a mad cacophony they play on the streets of our towns and cities!
It’s in stark counterpoint to the staid and regimented walkers on the sidewalks of my native country, the USA. There everyone strolls along in step and waits dutifully for the little green men.
Where’s the fun it that? In South Africa people seem to prefer walking in the street, brushing their sometimes ample sides against vehicles passing by as if they were on a Formula One course rather than on a city street.
Perfectly good pavements, sometimes wide enough for three abreast, are abandoned for the much more exciting interactions one can have with hurtling hunks of steel lined on both sides with parked cars and bakkies.
Two, three, often four people walk, slowly, in the small space between the parked throng and the crazed drivers.
It’s quite interesting perhaps one of the biggest psychological and sociological conundrums of our time. I intend to conduct a survey to penetrate the thinking of these hectic pedestrians.
Given the need for a large sample size I haven’t quite found the time to do so. But I’ve asked a few why
they do it.
“Why are you walking in the streets instead of over there on that nice sidewalk?” “I feel safer.” Apparently the threat of muggers and rapists popping out from behind Mr Price is more prominent in their minds than the possibility of stupid and arrogant drivers with cellphones glued to their ears flattening them like cockroaches as they shake their booties down the street.
Another answer I’ve gotten is; “Because the sidewalk’s not nice.” Well, in Grahamstown at least sometimes that’s true, as the trees have so reconfigured the pavements that you can see people stumbling along like drunkards over the rugged topography.
You know how it is, people bull their way through barriers rather than follow the lines of least resistance. At least I do. But often the sidewalks are perfectly good routes for what they were designed for, even if a little weed-encrusted.
In Grahamstown a common mode is The Long Walk to Freedom, especially prevalent along New Street, where the passage from one side of the street to the other is never anywhere close to 90 degrees, but more generally just off linear, so that the little group will actually arrive on the other side nearly to the end of the street.
Things have reached a higher pitch in East London, where I am a frequent visitor. There is an unspoken game being played out between drivers and pedestrians there that is as fascinating as it is frustrating.
The pedestrians appear to be challenging the drivers as if they could (I call them The Slow Amble and The Defiant Eye).
One gets the impression that in their minds it’s also a game of courage and gallantry as they pass between the speeding lunatics in their overpriced pollution devices.
walking the lines between life and death, weaving between bumper and fender as if it was all nothing but a maze at a carnival. I call these The Maze Walker.
The crossings are as empty as a church on Friday payday as people choose more colourful walks of life. They’ll gleefully tell the tales of their survival over drinks behind shacks or at braais, or in restaurants, pubs or shebeens.
“That car just kept coming right on and I didn’t even miss a step! Just kept right on walking! Missed me by a hair!”
Well, for all its crazy vibrancy let’s not be surprised at the inevitable casualties of these games. With luck and a little bit of simple and uncomplicated thought perhaps more intelligent games in more appropriate venues will soon evolve in this most fair and wonderful tip of Africa. Let’s hope. But let’s not hold our breaths.
