Remember What Mama Said...

As a loyal blog reader, you will know that traffic is a big issue in South Africa. Like the British have to talk about the weather, South African’s cannot possibly have a conversation without at least briefly discussing traffic.

Many of my colleagues live in Joburg and face a 50km drive to work every morning – an hour on a good day, anything up to three hours on a bad one… Fortunately, I live the perfect commuting distance* away from work and it usually takes me just over ten minutes to get to the car park.

But the other day, traffic was a lot worse than normal and the entire CBD of Pretoria had come to a standstill. The traffic news (essential morning listening) had not mentioned any accidents, broken traffic lights or strikes – yet nothing was moving. Argh!

I had travelled about a 100m in twenty minutes when I finally saw the reason why hundreds of cars were parking, rather than driving on the streets. I couldn’t help but take a picture…


For no apparent reason, workers had decided to block off two of the three lanes of one of Pretoria’s largest roads during rush hour. But rather than work fast to re-open the lanes again as soon as possible, the guys remembered what their dear mothers had taught them:

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and you should not skip or rush it!”

And so they didn’t, but took all the time in the world to eat their sandwiches, drink coffee and chat while life in the rest of the city was put on hold. TIA!

* Even though commuting is one of people’s least favoured activities, people seem to derive some utility from driving to work. Researchers found that the optimal commuting time is 16 minutes. A survey showed that a third of respondents preferred a commute of over 20 minutes and seven percent wished their commute was longer! At this point I would like to suggest a move to Joburg or Pretoria…!