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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

It’s not racist or sexist if it is true, and it is true that black women are the worst drivers on South African roads. Based on close observation over a number of years we can tell you, conclusively, that the black woman driver who is not a threat to herself and every other road user, that black woman is a treasure so rare as to mythical.

The black woman driver (or BWD, for short) can be divided into two major sub-species: the Oblivious Drug Users and the Premature Little Old Ladies. The former act as if they are high on anti-depressants or marijuana, drifting between lanes without indicating, turning across traffic, parking horizontally across three vertical parking spaces and (surprisingly often) forgetting to engage either the hand brake or a low gear when stationary on an incline.

The Premature Little Old Ladies, on the other hand, drive like pensioners well past their sell-by date, even though some are still teenagers. They are perpetually terrified and bewildered in equal measure, which causes them to sit at a stop sign for hours even when there is no other traffic in sight, turning on their indicator lights a full fifteen minutes before they intend to turn and crawling along the highways at speeds so slow as to be barely measurable with standard speedometers.

Between them these two groups are the most dangerous part of driving on South African roads. Just like the rest of the world we have the 105-year old men who can’t see over the steering wheel. We have the personal assistants who apply mascara and lipstick at the same time while changing highway lines. We have drunken louts who race from traffic light to traffic light. But by sheer weight of numbers the BWDs are way out in front when it comes to causing heart attacks, incidents of road rage and bumper bashings.

They are especially noticeable because they weren’t on the roads until just a couple of years ago. In what we shall laughingly refer to as the good old days, black women didn’t drive because they oppressed by the state, their families and society in general. Their liberation over the last decade or so has been swift, as has been their acquisitions of cars.

Why are the BWDs so bad at driving? We have a couple of theories, all of which are disgustingly racist and classist. Some of them come from cultures where they are still, effectively, second-class citizens. That doesn’t make for the kind of self-confidence required to hold your own on the mean streets of Johannesburg. Some grew up with virtually no exposure to private passenger vehicles, commuting instead on minibus taxis or trains. Some are ill-equipped to drive the 10-ton 4×4 war wagons they have been assigned, and are maybe also overly aware of the R750 000 price tag if it gets so much as a scratch on the glossy metallic paint job. Given the size of the market in fraudulent drivers licences in South Africa it is a certainty that many of them quite literally bought their licences.

Frankly, though, the reasons don’t matter. Just be aware that they are out there, ready to ignore the rules of the road and cost you a fortune in excess payments on your rental car.

South Africa has a force of dedicated traffic-law enforcers. We don’t hold with the model of the American sheriff, who can go straight from arresting armed robbers to writing out parking tickets. Around here a real cop is unlikely to pull you over for a traffic offence, unless you are wildly firing an automatic weapon into the air at the same time.

As for the traffic specialist, we not entirely sure what they do all day long, but here’s a hint: an ancient Afrikaans radio drama featured a character who would refer to traffic officers exclusively as “die Ridders van die Skadubome, which translates as “the (knightly) Order of the Shady Trees”. Most South Africans just refer to them as “speedcops”, because when ever so rarely spotted in the wild they are invariably manning radar speed traps. Mundane tasks, such as directing traffic when traffic lights fail at a major intersection during rush hour, are apparently beneath their dignity. And the danger of enforcing such silly rules as driving on the right side of the road (which, like all civilised countries, is the the left side of the road) among the drivers of minibus taxis, that is clearly beyond their pay grade.

So basically, don’t fret. You can do just about anything you like in your hot rented wheels. “No U-Turn” signs are for decorative purposes only, you can overtake wherever you see fit and posted speed limits are more of a suggestion than a rule. There are certain places infected with fixed-position speed traps, such as the stretch of highway between Cape Town city and the Cape Town International Airport. However, these will only get you slapped with a fine of a couple of hundred rand, which your rental company will happily settle on your behalf in return for a small handling fee.

This also holds for street parking. Especially in Cape Town and Johannesburg you will find that some popular restaurant-rich areas have inadequate parking. At night, in these areas, little things like no-parking signs and yellow lines are casually ignored, and nobody cares. As long as you aren’t actually blocking traffic from flowing at all, and you aren’t preventing another car from exiting, you can park pretty much where you please. The odds that you’ll get busted are miniscule.

Seeing this kind of behaviour by the locals often leads to over-confidence among first-time visitors – and that can be a fatal mistake. If you take this casual attitude within the walls of a private parkade at a mall, airport or stadium, you will very soon pay the price.

Just about all of the parking you use in South Africa will be private, even though the outdoor areas at shopping malls can often be free. By stark contrast to government traffic enforcers, the guardians of these private patches are a fierce, watchful and vengeful race. They glory in your anguish, and their favourite instrument of pain is the wheel clamp. Park anywhere outside of a designated parking spot, or dare to enter the hallowed ground of a parking bay reserved for the disabled, and brightly-coloured jaws of immobility will swiftly be attached to your rental.

That kind of thing can seriously ruin your day. The whole point of the wheel clamp is that its wielder need not hang around to await your return. You could well spend hours tracking down the correct official and negotiating your vehicle’s release. This will entail grovelling and the payment of a fine considerably more steep than that for breaking the speed limit on a national highway. Try to remove the clamp yourself instead and you face arrest for damage to property.

Take our word for it; you are better off spending the time to find a legitimate parking bay. The guardians of parking do not mess about.

To further the cutting-edge research first published in “21 things you can buy at South African traffic intersections”, we present: 15 things you can buy at the side of the road. For these you’ll actually have to get out of your car, or at the very least pull over to the side of the road.

(List correct at time of publication. No credit cards or travellers cheques accepted. Transportation is the sole responsibility of the purchaser unless otherwise negotiated and remunerated. Inclusive of value added tax (VAT), but no tax refunds available. All verbal guarantees and warranties are invalid unless goods are returned with original purchase receipt. No purchase receipt available.)

* Half-grown trees
* Braai mielies
* Cellphone airtime
* Bad art (wood carvings and oil-on-canvas, mostly)
* A gas refill for your car air-conditioner, and windscreen repair
* Exhaust repair services and tyres
* Mosquito nets
* Prostitutes (rental only)
* Furniture (wicker, wood, cushions)
* Mirrors (framed and unframed)
* Cigarettes and sweets
* Fruit of every description
* Raw seafood (snoek being most popular)
* Rolled-up lawn (the real thing, not fake grass)
* Tree-felling services