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If you intend renting a car, or traveling in a car, or just walking on the pavement in South Africa, you need to be aware of (and beware) the South Africa phenomenon called the minibus taxi. Travelling in one can result in anything from a ‘hail mary’ to a ‘goodbye world’, though it is hard to make generalisations as they follow no rules and can not be anticipated. They will stop in front of you whenever is convenient for them, they will pass you on the right, or by cutting in front of oncoming traffic. They will try to turn right from the extreme left lane. They will drive on verges and almost run you off the road trying to gap in. What they won’t do is give you any warning.

You may learn any new number of expletives in South Africa if you drive with your window open in traffic and listening to colourful names taxis and their drivers are called. It would be best not to repeat these in polite company even if your South African friend was the one driving at the time and yelling these words out of his window. Our road rage is taboo, at least when not on the road.

Don’t be startled by all the honking. Taxi drivers aren’t hooting at you, or even other road users. They are signaling to pedestrians that there is space available on the taxi. It’s a kind of “open for business” sign, except a loud and annoying one.

Do not antagonise taxi drivers. They have been know to ram people off the road and bitchslap them silly when angered. Some may carry guns. Passengers on taxis know better than to contradict a driver; they may be forcible evicted without a refund. They are not likely to come to your aid.

In Taxiland, a driver is competing with other drivers for cash, and the fastest one wins. The more passengers you carry, the money money you make. Taxis will cross a busy street from one pavement to the opposite side to pick up passengers. Passengers sacrifice convenience and safety for money too; a ride that would cost hundreds of rands in a one-person taxi is reduced to a handful of rands, through the inherent efficiency of cramming a 12-seater with eighteen people.

If you plan to use a taxi, and they’re both convenient and a great story to tell back home, the rules are simple. You don’t get to choose, so you may end up a in a brand new vehicle or something held together by chewing gum and the collective faith of the passengers. Don’t complain about this. Have change on you, because you’ll be pariah if you try to pay for a short trip with a R100 note. Once the taxi starts up, hand over your fare to the person in front of you. Don’t worry, it will reach the driver without going missing.

Most of all, though, be patient. Pretty much anyone you pass in the street will be able to direct you to the nearest taxi rank or pickup point (which will always be within walking distance, except in the most godforsaken rural areas), but that doesn’t mean you’ll be aboard a vehicle soon. This is the major, and often only, form of transport for much of our population, so queues can stretch forever, especially in peak times.

Right. Need to find a taxi rank to try out your skills? Here is a list of the major ones in Johannesburg: http://bit.ly/taxiranks

As a visitor to our lovely land, you might be well-versed in the use of escalators. Don’t fool yourself in thinking you know how to use these in SA. There are people who will tell you that by riding an escalator, you’re accepting some unstated rules of etiquette. These people are usually foreigners. They have escalators that run the length of a soccer pitch. And the foot traffic – let’s not even go there.

When it comes to escalators, South Africans don’t have any standard etiquette. It’s true. For us laid-back and nice locals, escalators are ways to get somewhere with the least effort possible. We like that – no effort with all the rewards. They are places to have a quick catch-up as you move past a friend going the opposite ways. Or to zone out. Or to make out on. It’s just how we roll.

So here are a few things about  local escalator usage to bear in mind.

Locals tend not to hold the hand-rails: who knows what’s been there before us. Ick.  If  these sharp-edged moving steel staircases suddenly stop working, all hell will break loose. It’s known to happen. There was a famous Joburg airport incident. Google it.

Another difficult thing about being behind a local on the escalator, is that we tend to stop unexpectedly. (Perhaps we’re chatting on our phones and need to find a pen to write down that pastry chef’s phone-number for the dinner party we’re having three months from now.) Don’t try to predict when this might happen or hope for the best. We’ll outfox every time. But whatever the reason, be prepared.

Some South Africans will vacillate at the entrance or exit of an escalator. You might be tempted to approach them and try to squeeze past. Don’t.  Still others will take the path of least resistance and cross the opposite lane of traffic to exit or enter the escalator. Again take it in your stride. Being calm is the key to using escalators here.

This, however, is the most important thing to know: do not mess with a South African already riding the escalator. As a rule, we don’t stand to one side and let people pass by. Not because we’re difficult; we just don’t have escalators that demand that kind of commitment. And it is a commitment. If you come from a city with a subway, get over it. Welcome to SA; don’t anger the locals.

If you’re in a hurry, what do you do? Stand and wait or push past?  Sigh loudly or clear your throat? There is a way out.

Luckily for all visitors, this is where the nice comes in.  In the spirit of Ubuntu, if you ask nicely (we’re very fond of nice) we’ll happy let you pass on by. No bloodshed. No problem.

Just remember to choose wisely. If the big guy in front of you is snogging his girlfriend – don’t tap him politely on the shoulder. Saving those few seconds is not worth it.

Updated; first published 09 April 2009

The omnipotent Professor Mamba (& Associates) is a spectacular and heavily marketed urban version of the sangomas – also known, in less politically correct parlance, as witch doctors – that dot the South African landscape.

Magic medicine and curse-work is a profitable and vibrant subculture in South Africa. As a tourist you’d have to go looking for it, in township markets or in rural villages, but it is pervasive if not obvious. We sometimes refer to it as the magic market, which is similar to the black market only more underground.

Professor Mamba is also, apparently, more benign than some. Like just about every magic tradition the South African version also has a dark side, and some practitioners play on both sides of the fence. There is muti (medicine) that requires ingredients found only deep inside the human body, and some rituals require sacrifices; no prizes for guessing what kind of sacrifice is most powerful.

Almost all African magic relies on the intervention of the ancestors, who are both powerful and very helpful as long as you give them the respect they require. But in more modern blends of magic there is a greater emphasis on herbal potions and fringe science. Instead of throwing the bones to see into the future you may find a sangoma throwing crystal fragments and reading the pattern in those.

A word to the unwary: if you require the services of somebody like the eminent Professor Mamba, tread carefully. Stick to practitioners that work from public places where you feel comfortable, and avoid ingesting anything you can’t readily identify. Some of the strongest muti contains battery acid, for starters.

Here is an extract from the long list of services Professor Mamba has on offer:

His specialities include, but are not limited to:
…
5. Remove the black spot in your hand that keeps taking your money away.
…
7. Introducing (Mulondox) blend for enlarging the penis in both length and girth of the tissues and muscle thus increasing size. It naturally releases suspensory ligaments from the base of the testicles making it big and strong on a permanent basis with 100% erection capability.
…
11. Ensure excellent school grades even for children with mental disabilities.
…

18. Bring supernatural luck into your life to win chance games like lotto, Casino dice, black jack, machines etc.
19. Bring you to see your enemies and make demands on them using a mirror.

UPDATE: Enter Professor J.J. Ssali
07 September, 2009

It could be pure coincidence, or perhaps they are using the same advertising agency. Far be it from us to suggest that anything less than proper or medical is happening here. But we couldn’t help notice the extraordinarily close resemblance between the abilities ascribed to Professor Mamba five months ago and those now within the grasp of Professor J.J. Ssali.

Ssali, it seems, can also identify your problems before you tell them, although it is not entirely clear whether this is a psychic ability with which he was born or whether this power derives from the ancient wizardly methodologies he has mastered.

According to his marketing material Prof Ssali is regarded by many as one of the greatest healers on the planet today. Like Prof Mamba he seemingly believes that increasing the size of the male member is the most important use to which his art can be put.

Here is a sampling of Ssali’s claims:

The speciality includes:
…
Remove the bad spell from your life which keeps taking away.
…
Make you see your enemies in the mirror and make demands on them.
…
Bring super natural luck into your life

UPDATE 2: It’s raining magicians! Please welcome: Prof. Lumumba & Ali, Prof LS Lutta & Mama Muna, Dr. Shedwa, Professor Wakho and Prof MB Mobutu
18 October, 2009

Either Professor Mamba started a wildly successful franchise, or his magic extends to cloning himself, or he is being shamelessly ripped off. Besides Mamba and Ssali we have managed, over the last couple of weeks, to collect no less than five different fliers from different magicians headquartered in different parts of Johannesburg and surrounds.

But it is not their differences that make them interesting. Quite the opposite.

Three of these five newcomers claim to have single-handedly developed the breakthrough Masai Gel that is so powerful a penis-enlargement agent. It took each of them thirteen years of research, and they had to go to “amazing lengths” to find the ingredients, so expect to pay a premium. The other two are somewhat more original; one retails “Sokoto mixture” (“special for weak men in bed”) and the other peddles “Ntego Improved Cream” (“suitable for all ages”).

Three make a point of pointing out that “all whites, blacks, coloured, Indians, etc” are welcome, and we’d assume that also includes foreign visitors. Those same three will also charge only R100 for a consultation,

Now to the typical (slightly superior and somewhat ill-informed) offshore observer this may not seem like a big deal. Darkest Africa is a place of mystery and magic, after all, and South Africa is pretty mature commercial environment; combine the two and you get a heavily marketed magic franchise, right?

Not so. For many decades witch doctors were about as easy to find as drug dealers; there was one around every corner, but they kept a low enough profile to avoid the authorities. They attracted customers almost entirely by word of mouth or, to keep an open mind, through some magical attractive force that they emenated. After 1994, even with sort-of kind-of partial recognition of traditional healers by medial authorities, a couple of these practitioners set up storefronts and hired receptionists, but they could hardly be said to have gone mainstream.

Now we suddenly have websites, outlets that claim to be open 24 hours a day and a strong indications of commoditisation. Something fundamental has shifted in the magic market, we’re just not entirely sure what.

To see the full fliers, check out the Howzzzt photo stream on Flickr. All our original images are available under Creative Commons license there.

South Africans are probably a little more superstitious than average on average, given that witchcraft and sorcery and magic are very real for a significant part of our population. But it’s not just out in the rural boondocks that you’ll find this to be true. Any reasonably sized urban mall will provide proof that we believe in things beyond the ken of science.

A reasonably large mall, you see, is likely to come with paid parking (which has its own perils). Most of these have self-service payment points scattered about the place rather than human cashiers at the exit. And every single last one of these vending machines will be defaced by scratches that range from barely-dented-the-paint to ruts so deep they threaten the structural integrity of the whole thing.

Any time a vending machine refuses a coin, eight out of ten South Africans will vigourously rub that coin against the machine before trying it again. And again. Some will continue, rubbing ever more vigourously, for five or six repeats before giving up and fishing out an alternative coin.

Why? Because sometimes it works – or at least seems to work. Perhaps it is just a change in the orientation of the coin or the force with which it is inserted the second or third time. Maybe the rubbing actually raises the temperature of the coin sufficiently that it expands just enough to be passed as authentic by the machine’s mechanism, although that seems highly unlikely.

We would look to the psychological rather than the mechanical for motivation, however. There is an element of aggression and the pleasure of doing violence to the recalcitrant machine, but not so much violence as to be held responsible for an act of vandalism. There is an element of theatre, aimed at those impatiently waiting in the line behind, showing that every attempt is being made to rectify the problem and allow everyone to be on their way swiftly. There is also sheer force of habit.

Even so, that person rubbing a coin on a metal surface to somehow transform it is almost certainly the driver of a car. A driver is, by default, literate, or else would not be able to obtain a licence. The SA education system is in dire trouble, but we do still provide a modicum of scientific teaching to everybody who passes through the doors of a school. A rational person knows that, statistically, their time would be better spent reinserting the coin without the rubbing, or just using a different piece of currency. An educated person would verbally apologise to those in the queue behind, as this is a far better way to defuse embarrassment at causing them some slight inconvenience. An aggravated person would kick the machine at just above ground level, where security cameras are unlikely to pick up the satisfying dent a well-shoed foot can make.

Yet we rub coins, and nothing short of the extinction of the coin seems likely to make us stop.

So if you see these strange markings on vending machines, don’t fret. They aren’t an indication that you are in a bad part of town and they aren’t some sort of gang-related territorial marking. It’s just a sign that South Africans are somewhat eccentric.