The Turn Out

This past weekend was full of surprises. Nyaks, my cousin aka Malome (Malom’a the Guccis) and I had travelled to a town (Hlotse) in Lesotho for tombstone unveiling. We had great experience from diarrhoea episodes that led to my backside burning to “ unlawful traffic fines” and multiple tyre bursts.

We used the Ficksburg boarder gate to get to Hlotse. The admin at the boarder was interesting, but not so hectic. I had forgotten about the covid test, infact I thought because I am fully vaccinated I will just present my Covid certificate and cross over. But no, it is still required that I produce the covid test. So here I was stuck and not quite sure what to do…

Deflated, sitting in a car with a lowered seat and half asleep, I hear a bang on my window, frightened and annoyed I open the window and a lady holding a green turpaware mug with black tea is standing right by me and clearly knows what my issues are and asks how she can help…arghh me being me I narrate the story to her and she responds by saying “I hear you maar how best do you think ‘we‘ can to deal with the situation, I’m sure you don’t want to turn back to Johannesburg“…

She calls me to the office, asks me a few questions and directs me to a gentleman who then takes my passport stares at me and passes me over to the other gentleman that was on the phone, this guy signals me to walk with him to the other side of the boarder, we walked till the end and boom I was in Lesotho, just like that.

When we get to the other side, he hands me his cell number and instructs me to call him at 13:00 on my day of return (which was the next day).

Indeed the next day I call him and true to his word he is there, we exchange minimal greetings and walk together casually towards the South African side, he greets several other people, swiftly transfers me to one lady who also quietly walks me to the other side. No drama, no exchange of words except the fee equivalent to the Covid test broken into few R100s.

This people have mastered a broken system so well it saddens me that I contributed to all that.

Lesotho

We inevitably got stopped twice by the Lesotho police on account of expired license disk. We were threatened to be detained till Tuesday.

And this is how it went about; few kilometres into Lesotho we are stopped by a traffic cop, he does the car walkabout, asks for a licence and cites a long legal quote in line with the contravention of Section 14 of the Lesotho road traffic act…(we didn’t know what that was until he pulled the driver (Nyaks) out and tells us that we have the right to be silent and call our lawyer). It turns out our licence disk had expired and we were being fined.

Prepared to take the fine, he scribbled something on a note book and leaves us there to attend to other cars. We ask about the fine, and he tells us he will be detaining us till Tuesday. Alternatively we can leave the car right there and take a taxi to wherever we are headed to. We pleaded with him for a good 30 plus minutes till we got into an “agreement“ and drove off. In a space of about 50kms we were met with a road block…

Murphy was not on our side.

We wanted to make a turn but didn’t know where we’d be going to and whether there were any alternative routes to take. We faced our mountain and slowly drove towards a female police officer this time, who politely asked us to step aside.

I didn’t wait for another legal quote , I walked to her and confessed our sins, this time it took us less than 10 minutes to conclude the talk and we drove off and were safe.

I called an advocate I know and related the story and wanted clarity on Section 14, which he laughed it off. Clearly the traffic cop has been watching a lot of Netflix and wanted to exercise his newly acquired knowledge on a GP registration car knowing right there and there that we would not be acquainted with any of the laws and yes he invented Section 14, he said it so well we too were convinced and impressed with a knowledgeable traffic cop.

Past the cops; when we thought we’ve seen it all in one day and are happy and relieved to be driving back home we are faced with another hurdle. We clearly didn’t know what was ahead of us.

Delays

The road between Ficksburg and Vereeniging is not so great. It is full of potholes and patches, so the drive was a cautious one having had the rain. We left the boarder at about 17:00 with an estimate that we will be in Johannesburg at about 21:30….that did not happen as planned. Upon our return we hit a huge pothole in Arlington between Senekal and Lindely. Oopsie did I mention that we didn’t do the pre-trip inspection and only realised that we didn’t have all the necessary emergency tools. We had a Jack but no wheel spanner! So we couldn’t change our tyre. Should we have performed car inspection tasks before we embarked on our trip we could have atleast ensured that our vehicle is ready for the adventures we faced and saved us the trouble and time. Nevertheless we stopped by the side of the road and put on hazards and waited for cars that could help. As we wait, I saw spot lights from afar and jumped out of the car to stop this oncoming car for help. A couple in a white Toyota double cab stopped which they shouldn’t have…since they were rude and not helpful and stood there just to stare at us despite our cry for help and after a good 4 min they drove off…ouchhh

Instead of being mad at them, I cut them some slack, thinking it is late, and people would really like to help but are not trusting anymore due to the deteriorating security and safety in our country making it difficult for motorist to offer help especially on a narrow dark road.

We were left alone in the dark, cold and wet.

Help

I am on Vodacom and the network/signal was weak, however i managed to search for the nearest filling station on google maps which happed to be 3.4km away. We drove slowly with hazards on and damaging the rim in the process.

The road was bumpy, very dark, wet and muddy with more potholes. About 800m to this set filling station, we spotted the Police Station and started to thank our gods.

When we arrived at the police station I went out to ask for help. Every door was closed. Literally closed with the office signage staring at my face. I walked around the building shouting “koko!” “Knock knock” “anybody home” with no sign of response. I landed at a broken handle and knocked and heard “come in”. There I was, met with two female officers who are not interested nor concerned. I ask for help and they just stared with “so what do you want?” kind of look.

One lady is not engaged at all and looks at me through the loose face mask. The other tells me to wait a bit and wait for the male police officer who just stepped out. “Sit and wait for the police van that will come through the gate. That will be him” she said and continued with scrolling through her phone. I wait a bit by the cold stainless steel bench and quickly stood up and decided to go wait in the car. 15 minutes later the van drove into the police station and I ran to it. Two male police officers got off and I greeted and asked for help. One disappeared and the elderly one (could have been in his mid fifties came to check the car and brought the wheel spanner), but it was the wrong size. He then said we should wait a few minutes as he has to attend to a complaint at the nearby farm. He will then pass by his house to pick up a suitable four wheel spanner to assist us. That was a few minutes before 20:00 and we waited in the car hopeful with the comfort that we were in a safe space…the Police Station. We waited for a good 2 hours in the car, I was nibbling on Doritos Cheese Supreme flavour the entire time.

The police van entered the station at about 22:18, with a four wheel spanner. With the hope and thought that he will be helping us change the tyre. Nope, he transformed into a lecturer, he gave instructions step by step on what to do and not even lifted a finger to assistvin changing the tyre . We fiddled with the spanner, tyre and bolds in the dark with dim light coming from the yard light and van till we tightened the bolds, thanked him and drove off tired yet relieved that we’d soon be home and sleep.

Still driving on the dark road with potholes, 19km before Petrus Steyn I am driving this time and try to avoid the pothole only to hit another and loose two front tyres (including the newly replaced one) and the left rear tyre at a go. There was no escaping, potholes expanded on the road and I was scared.

Needless to say, four tyres were gone in a space of an hour. We sat in a car cold and scared waiting for the tow truck to come to our rescue R57 is a dangerous road. As far as I remember this road has been in this bad state ever since. I am just wondering what Ngwathe Municipality is doing about it? Anyway, along the same road there were four other cars (Iveco, Chrysler, BMW and Honda Civic) that were changing tyres in the dark obviously attending to the similar tragedy of a tyre burst.

The tow truck arrived at 00:51 and we spent another hour navigating loading the car on the flat bed. We didn’t have the tow hook ! Lord how complicated can this be? I thought it was there end but some inexplicable calm dawned upon me. I tried not to think of the rands and cents, instead focused on our health and safety. I was freezing and tired. We ended up driving the car up the tow truck which kept on rolling. After settling the car on the flat bed, Nyaks and Utata jumped into the truck, and we hit the road.

I hopped onto the truck front seat!!! Father Gawd, I was going to drive in this truck for another 3 hours plus till we get to Johanneburg, and I cannot stand the folly men sweat smell in this truck, I could still smell it strongly through my mask.

UTata (the tow truck driver) had Khozi fm on full blast in the wee hours and I wished the truck could fly me home so I can be rescued from this smell and atleast get some rest and be able to prepare the kids for school in a few hours.

When I got home it was 04:45 I was exhausted. Thanked God for the grace, provision and security. I had a pounding headache that lasted the entire Monday . You can understand it‘S bad enough having car trouble in our local neighbourhood – or even in your own driveway. Then try and imagine the damper this tyre bursts put on us traveling miles away. Tyre bursts are deadly, we were lucky that it was not fatal and are grateful. We will surely prepare better next time to avoid some of the unnecessary drama we experienced.

• I do not condone the first part of the trip and regret participating in the mess. I would like to hear how you would have managed it?

• Driving at night adds to the challenges many motorists face, avoid it by all means. But how can we rebuild a safe place where people are able and willing to help without fear of being taken advantage of / being robbed?

• If you are already not doing it, I suggest that we all go back to K53 pre trip inspection especially when you are traveling long distances. Be ready and prepared for any kind of emergency.

• Did you know you can claim from the municipality for damages caused by potholes on their roads?

It‘s a Wondrous Wednesday!

Likha~Biso