Minibus overloads permitted at a fee
When the police started enforcing the law of threes instead of fours on minibus seats; I almost believed in our system that all was not lost after all. Indeed, the checks to ensure adherence stopped the sardine-like package of commuters. The fizzling of the enforcement is another typical example of police overzealousness. All those police officers who were eager to punish minibus drivers for overloading are nowhere in sight—turning a blind eye for as little as K500.
Last week, I was on one of my many travels and on one errand, I hopped onto a minibus. Oh, it was chaotic and one was lucky to sit on the full size of the behind. Notably, the least many people did was place one side on their seaters on a quarter inch of the chair while the other part struggled to balance the rest of the body. You can imagine those passengers carrying babies or burdened with their luggage as there was hardly any space to place cargo.
All the while, the driver kept stopping to pick more passengers while the conductor antagonised us to keep shifting for more space. The aim was to pick everybody on the roadside, disregarding the symmetrically seated people whose dignity was thrown to the wind for purposes of business. And all the while, no matter how filled up a seat was, the conductor insisted on sitting, almost on passengers’ heads as he continually tortured them with bodily odour emanating from his underarms in the course of fare collections. Still, he expected his abused ‘packages’ to assist him in collecting fares from the hard to reach. Whatever happened to customer care and respect of the law.
Wait a minute. It gets hotter. On approaching a police check along the busy road, I personally heaved a sigh of relief that as Martin Luther King’s “free at last”, our freedom was nigh. Before that, protests of overloading fell on deaf ears and yes, you guessed, I took the battle solo. My fellow passengers must have deemed me troublesome, but I continued the protest. Well, upon arrival right in the hands of the law enforcers, the conductor simply got out to meet one of them at the back of the minibus and without a verbal exchange, a K1 000 note did the talking. We all saw it and I was at it again, tormenting both the conductor and the driver for selling our souls with that one note. I spat all the venom with the hope of retaining sanity. I hoped to get the support of the rest of the passengers, but alas. I turned out the criminal amid all the circus. Everybody seemed at home.
What happened to the enforcement that characterised our roads to uphold the dignity and safety of passengers? What are people doing about this moral wreckage? What about those police or traffic officers with sanity what are they doing about this disrespect of the law by colleagues and operators? Have we quietly reverted to the fours that caused accidents from overloads? Are we awaiting a tragedy to do the needful? People, this is our right!!!
