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I WAS home for the holidays and I realised that there are some things that will never change. I decided to take the commuter taxi as my transport of choice just to tap into the vibe of the moment. To catch up as it were.

The one thing that immediately struck me was how commuter omnibus drivers and touts had not improved in their degree of obnoxiousness.

The vulgarity of commuter taxi drivers and touts is the stuff of legend.

In an article, I wrote: “I am convinced that for one to be employed as a kombi driver/tout is the ability to deliver 100 swear words per minute. Possessing a valid driver’s licence is not necessary”.

For lack of a better description, they are rude, crude, vulgar, immature, utterly corrupt and very loud. Their lack of etiquette is legendary and seeing them in their element would convince one that the sun shone from their backsides.

Regrettably, nothing has changed. This is even though they are said to have gone through some PR and customer care training. In one ear and out through the other, I suppose.

The problem remains at the very foundation. A serious deficit in elementary education for many of them.

My experience in Bulawayo two weeks ago took me back to the days when the “emergency taxi” was introduced. A bit of history will suffice at this stage.

With the steady decline of the public bus system, the government was forced to look to alternatives to alleviate the passenger transport crisis.

As the economy took a predictable knock, commuters found themselves having to scramble for transport. It was quite a sight to see nurses, teachers, school pupils and everyone else in a scrum to get into the rickety Peugeot 404 station wagons.

A toxic combination of mismanagement and corruption was taking its toll on the public transport provider — Zupco. For years, the backbone of the urban transport network, the company was systematically failing to provide an efficient service.

This called for a temporary solution that would allow the urban population to travel.

Enter the “emergency” taxi into the fray. A slight “tweaking” of transport legislation saw the birth, by caesarean section, to a class of pseudo-entrepreneurs whose brief was to take commuters from point A to point B.

They were supposed to be a stop gap measure, hence the absence of basic standards under which they should operate.

Overnight, saw the resurrection of the most dilapidated of ramshackle contraptions masquerading as vehicles. The ancestors to the current kombi huffed and puffed around the city like the steam engines ferrying passengers between the high density residential areas and the city centre.

The Commers and the Austins, with wooden benches for seats, caused untold damage to the ozone layer before they were replaced by the ubiquitous Peugeot that became the flagship of the taxi operators.

If we thought that this was progress in the transport sector, we were mistaken. The condition of the vehicles was atrocious. This put them in the middle of the radar of an increasingly corrupt traffic police force.

This was in addition to the fact that to break even, the tshovas, as we affectionately called them, would be packed to the roof with desperate passengers.

These mobile coffins soon made their mark as accident statistics rose alarmingly.

The owners lived by the slogan that, “Utshovakagcwali” (The tshova is never full). In one recorded incident that became legend at the time, police officers counted no less than 16 bodies crammed into one station wagon at a roadblock. That could have easily qualified for the Guinness Book of World Records if they had submitted that.

As the tshovas deteriorated from constant abuse, so did the driver’s treatment of their passengers. The introduction of touts or owindi made things worse.

The touts were hired ostensibly to make things easier for the driver who was supposed to concentrate on what he was employed to do. The role of touts was to ensure the car was full and that they collected the agreed fare from the clients.

The problem was the absence of any standard qualification for the job of a tout. It’s a historical anomaly inherited from the rural buses of yore. The bus touts were always despicable characters unless they graduated into the more admired occupation of being the driver.

Because of the need to cut costs and maximise profits, we assume, emergency taxi owners employed anything that the cat dragged in. The unfashionable job of a tout attracted the scum of the earth that did not exclude pickpockets, thugs, vagrants and drug addicts.

The obvious gap between commuters and touts soon led to inevitable clashes with the latter asserting authority by being able to determine who among those desperate for transport could climb on board.

At worst, an individual could be barred from boarding any other taxi just because of ubumbulu (arrogance). Explaining the tout’s definition of what constitutes ubumbulu would require a whole article of its own.

But the truth be told, the power of touts rose quite alarmingly as transport woes increased.

Dirty, scruffy and smelly touts soon ascended the totem pole, high enough to attract the amorous attentions of desperate women and silly schoolgirls. The victims and products of this era are too numerous to mention.

When the Peugeots died a natural death, the roomier and far smarter kombis took their place. We all hoped that the drivers and their touts would be motivated to clean up their act. How wrong we were!

Unsuspecting commuters were lured into the flashy kombis by deceptively polite touts. Only to be verbally and sometimes physically abused once inside.

The police made things worse by soliciting for bribes at unofficial “tollgates” dotted around the city.

Whatever the police levied on the drivers, it would be taken on the passengers as if they had a hand in all this. Tempers became frayed and touts became willing accomplices in terrorising their clients.

Sadly enough, no amount of complaining to the owners and the authorities has ever eliminated the problem. Attempts by government to arrest the rot has always hit a brick wall. The city council has made commendable strides in bringing sanity to the industry.

It’s a social problem, says one analyst. If people continue to rely on commuter transport, passengers will find themselves at the mercy of the drivers and touts. No amount of evangelising or complaining will ever erase the problem.

Unless of course the economy picks up, and the government reverts to its responsibility of providing and facilitating proper, affordable transportation.