Chandapiwa Baputaki
12 January 2009
When people buy cars, they often feel the need to redesign them to match their personalities and attitudes.
Some order mag wheels and a repaint job. Others might want features like flames, super chargers, wings, spoilers or tail pipes.
The combi drivers have taken the exercise a bit too far. Instead of going shopping to upgrade their combis, they paste countless stickers inside the combis, many of them very offensive.
They carry messages that are demeaning to the passengers, and some actually offend the customers.
There are messages like: "No heavyweights in the front seat". Imagine if you sat there before you saw the sticker, only to see it well into the journey.
In one of the combis travelling from the Gaborone Station bus rank going to Maruapula was lined with degrading stickers on both sides. They read: "Small houses wanted, see the driver for more details". "Girls with nice legs sit in the front seat". "Protect your teeth by paying," and "The combi is protected by the mafia".
"Some of these stickers are degrading to women and they are offensive. They are violent; these people are always looking for a fight with the passengers. I have seen this one about girls with nice legs and I fail to understand what the driver was trying to say. It is unfair on women," said Ontlametse Phuka.
She stated that there should be a law that protects the combi users against abuse by the taxi drivers. "This is emotional abuse. And this business of taxi drivers beating up girls wearing short skirts starts from this kind of behaviour seen from the messages they choose to communicate through their stickers," she said.
According to the chairperson of the Gaborone Taxis Association, Gobe Matenge, they do not have a law regulating the kind of stickers that are permitted in combis.
He said the stickers that the passengers see are an expression of the drivers' attitudes. If passengers have a problem with the stickers, they should confront the driver of the combi.
The problem is that the passengers risk loosing their teeth as suggested in the message of one of the stickers that says, "behave so as to protect your teeth". According to Matenge, the general feeling is that such stickers are not abusive towards the passengers. "The messages are not all irrelevant, but they show some grievances that the driver has," he said.
Public Relations Officer in the Ministry of Works and Transport, Charles Keikotlhae, pointed out that there are no regulations that determine the kind of stickers that drivers are permitted to place in their combis.
"Even though there is no defined law, the drivers must ensure customer satisfaction in their combis," Keikotlhae said.
After the December surprise strike by the taxi and combi drivers, a commuter wrote a letter to Mmegi saying: "We all know that the combi operators are a rude and somewhat aggressive lot. They are generally rude to both commuters and fellow road users alike.
'They honk everywhere and use abusive language at will. By the way, only rude people treat their customers with contempt. Rude people do not think twice about waging a strike unannounced. So no surprises there'.
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