Category: this is south africa

Almost 10,000 cellphones confiscated

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Cape Town traffic police are closing in on their ten thousandth cellphone confiscation since they began confiscating cellphones in 2012. This isn’t a random thing though. No, they only take the cellphones off people who are using them while driving. You know, the ones who are clearly in contravention of Road Traffic Ordinance Regulation 308A, which prohibits a driver from holding a mobile phone or communication device in one or both hands or with any other part of their body while driving?

Those ones.

“The numbers are staggering and an indication that many motorists still refuse to acknowledge the dangers of using cellular phones while driving. It is astonishing to consider that people will very easily persecute drunk drivers for reckless behaviour, but cannot see the recklessness in fiddling with a cellphone while navigating through traffic,” said mayoral committee member for Safety and Security, JP Smith.

Look, this is Good. News. but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg, as I noted here.

And it seems that, as always, South Africa is high on the list of cellphone naughtiness while at the wheel – as you would expect given the impunity with which we treat traffic and/or any other laws. But it’s not just here that it’s a problem. In the US, the major cellphone companies have joined forces to produce the itcanwait.com campaign, and they’ve released some really good mini-documentaries to get with it:

It would be great if MTN, Vodacom et al. (Al being the only guy who’s still on Cell C) could team up and do something to try and reduce cellphone use while driving.
Although I think we’re still some distance from that tipping point whereby it becomes socially unacceptable to use your phone while at the wheel, I do think that people need something to remind them what tossers they are being, when in every single case – it can wait.

UPDATE: What happens to the over 6000 confiscated phones which haven’t been reclaimed? See this EWN report.

Trance Monkey Update!

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The monkeys are safe! Remember when we told you that the monkeys were going to go crazy by the doof-doof sounds of the Astral Circus party at Monkey Town in Somerset West this weekend (he said without taking a breath)?

Regular reader and (now) part time, informal trance party correspondent for 6000 miles…, AniB, got in touch this morning with great news:

That link takes you through to Astral Circus’ Facebook page, where they state:

I’m sure most of you have read the article about Astral Circus regarding how the sound is going to affect the monkeys and animals surrounding the venue.

I’m pretty sure they meant Monday’s post on here.

A sound test was done today and we’re happy to announce the sound doesn’t reach the monkeys therefore it will cause no harm to any of them.

THE PARTY WILL GO ON!
-SAME VENUE
-SAME TIME

See you on the dance floor.

Well, look. I’m glad they’ve done the responsible thing and tested the sound levels. And I hope that the SPCA are ok with the party going ahead now, but you can’t help but feel a little sorry for the monkeys. One can only imagine that they had been looking forward to several (or more) hours of chilled vibes kicking off with local bad boy (I actually have no idea if he is local, bad, or indeed a boy) Hoax and moving on to the likes of DJ D-rANg3D, Phixius, Satori, the hugely anticipated trance-off twixt Psyden and Erreur (“They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art”), before culminating with the magic musical dreamweaver that is Psyfunk.

Instead, all that they’re able to look forward to is some peanuts and (possibly) an extra banana on Sunday morning.

Unless, of course, we can crowdfund a few tickets for them…

“Trance Party Will Traumatise Monkeys”

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Really?

Yes, really:

The SPCA is up in arms about a trance party planned for Saturday night at a venue in Monkey Town in Somerset West, which is home to more than 200 primates.

What, Somerset West?
Oh, the monkey zoo place. Sorry. Carry on.

It has threatened to have the organisers arrested if they go ahead with what is billed as “an epic night of thundering bass lines and psychedelic melodies taking us into the blissfulness of each other’s minds”.

Pftt. Is anyone else just hearing the hand-wringingly awful:

Won’t somebody please think of the monkeys?

Without wanting to belittle the SPCA’s concerns in any way, and hopefully without any use of the word “killjoys” (oops), am I alone in thinking that the monkeys might actually enjoy a night of banging trance? Given that they are our closet relatives, and that some humans enjoy trance music, I think it’s worth a go. In addition, there are no lyrics for their puny frontal and parietal lobes to have to struggle with. (It’s also a well known fact that gibbons are well into the rave scene. So it’s really not that much of a stretch.)

But, no. The SPCA attempt to strengthen their argument for having the event cancelled with this line:

“We get repeated complaints from horse owners when trance parties are held in the Boland that the continual thumping and laser lights caused their horses to go crazy.”

But horses aren’t monkeys. Horses are notoriously miserable animals with no opposable thumbs who are generally more into show-jumping and the Industrial Goth scene. They’re obviously going to be irritated by trance’s 4/4 time, 32 beat phrases, time-keeping downbeat kick drum and regular open hi-hat placed on the upbeat or every 1/8th division of the bar. That and the complete lack of challenging fences in the arena.
No wonder they go crazy.

Monkeys though? I reckon that’s right up their tree. And who wouldn’t want to be taken into the blissfulness of a chimpanzee’s mind, anyway?

C’mon SPCA… give it the green light. Just this once. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Next: Overberg Overrun By Lunatic Music Monkeys.

The Bends

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…continuing from the adventures of yesterday’s post.

No, not the 1995 Radiohead album (although now I’ve thought about it, I’m going to have to have a listen to that), nor the divers’ nightmare of decompression sickness (which I’m still not going to try, despite mentioning it).
No. More specifically this bit of the R61 in the Eastern Cape.

Just south of the last infamous Lusikisiki speedbump is this Superspar billboard:

R61 - Google Maps - Google Chrome 2015-07-14 094852 AM.bmpYes, that’s a screenshot from Google maps. And yes, I should have stopped and taken a photo myself, but I was traumatised from 4 hours of Eastern Cape driving and I needed to get to a beer.

The sign says:

Only 133 bends to go

presumably until you reach their store (we never did).

133 bends? You might think they’re joking, but then you hit this ±20km section of unstraightitude (and that’s a bend every ±150m):

Lusikisiki - Google Maps - Google Chrome 2015-07-14 090736 AM.bmpTwixt the rolling hills of the southern Transkei, it ducks in and out of numerous valleys before heading down to the mighty Mzimbuvu River. And yes, it is ever so bendy. You might think that it looks rather fun, but given the situation I was in when heading down here (several hours in and needing that beer), it was actually rather tiresome.
It was also filled with potholes, damaged armco, broken glass and loose gravel.
Which was nice.

Thankfully, I wasn’t driving my car.

Quite what Superspar think they are doing by quantifying and glorifying this horrendous stretch of (partial) tarmac – let alone linking their brand to it – is quite beyond me. As I mentioned earlier, despite going through the 133 motions as instructed, we never did find their store. Given the mood I was in after all that driving, that was probably good news for their continued trading.

The Lusikisiki Speedbump Conundrum

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A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of driving through some of the Eastern Cape: specifically the region formerly known as the Transkei. It was an eye opener of note – the roads crowded with children, goats, dogs, donkeys and potholes. Most of the journey was through the unique rural landscape, but we also travelled through the towns of Bizana, Flagstaff and Lusiksiki. The former two were busy, bustling and dirty; the latter – a hilltop settlement developed from a military camp established in 1894 – was more notable for its huge number of apparently unnecessary road calming measures.

No driver particularly likes speedbumps, but I think that the majority of us can understand the need for them in certain places: near schools, pedestrian areas etc. What I didn’t quite understand was the need for 79 (seventy-nine) of them (and 31 rumble strips) on the R61, in and around Lusikisiki. The majority (though not all, as keen mathematicians will note) of the speedbumps were arranged in groups of 6, perhaps 50 cm apart. Having watched minibus taxis repeatedly slowing to a near standstill to traverse these devilish sets, I can attest to the fact that they are a particularly effective way of slowing vehicular traffic down.

But, as I mentioned, slowing it down for no apparent reason whatsoever. Even when you leave the town and are heading back out onto the roads snaking south towards Port St Johns – the speed limit back up to 80kph, there’s yet another lot – in the middle of nowhere. It was almost as if they’d been put there for the sake of putting them there – or because someone needed to be paid for something tangible. Look, I’m not suggesting that the local municipality is in any way corrupt, but it’s kind of tough to work out what other reason there could be for so much utterly pointless work being done when the whole area is so severely impoverished.

Hmm.

I was reminded of this anecdote:

Some years ago the mayor of a small rural town in the Eastern Cape visited his friend, the mayor of a similar town in Zimbabwe.
When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Zimbabwean mayor, he wondered aloud how on earth he could afford such a house.
The Zimbabwean replied: “You see that bridge over there? The government gave us a grant to construct a two-lane bridge, but by building a single lane bridge with traffic lights at either end, I could build this place.”
The following year the Zimbabwean mayor visited the Eastern Cape town. He was simply amazed at the Eastern Cape mayor’s house: gold taps, marble floors, diamond doorknobs; it was marvellous.
When he asked how he’d raised the money to build this incredible house, the Eastern Cape mayor said: “You see that bridge over there?”
The Zimbabwean replied: “No.”

Indeed. There’s no new bridge in Lusikisiki, but there are speedbumps for Africa… and beyond.