City Search

By Kenneth Davison

Visiting South Africa can be a daunting task for many people around the world, but many people make the long flight here for work or holiday and typically they will stay in one of the main cities (Johannesburg, Cape Town or Durban).

Surviving in South Africa may seem daunting at first, but most tourist destinations or business hosts will give you a small run down on how to avoid becoming a victim of crime. There are the general big city rules you should apply, such keeping vigilant, don’t walk around alone at night and don’t show off anything valuable. Once you are fully into this mode of awareness, you can proceed to do all the fun things that South Africa has, some of which are very well known around the World.

I have recently had the privilege of working with two people from China who are in South Africa for three months. Upon arrival, the usual introduction to safety was given and they managed to relax once they realised that there are no armed gangs haphazardly wandering the streets of Sandton. But then a new problem arose, how do they travel around Gauteng if they cannot hire a car?

This problem was a first for me, and I quickly told them not to catch mini-bus taxis as we don’t want to put them under unnecessary stress, or run the risk of them getting lost. It would be possible to call a taxi-cab, but these can be very expensive if you want to travel long distance. The buses are another problem faced as many of the companies that operate bus routes do not make it easy to find them.  Eventually, an idea to use the Gautrain was made.

The Gautrain runs from the centre of Johannesburg to Hatfield in Pretoria. Conveniently, they have a number of stations spread between these points, making it easy to travel around the province. The price of travelling between Johannesburg and Pretoria is also fairly reasonable, so it seems like an ideal solution. Best of all, our Chinese guests would be able to walk or catch buses between the stations and the tourist attractions.

The idea was grand, they could catch a train to Hatfield in the morning, take a bus to the Union Buildings, explore some of the shops, maybe go to Loftus (China doesn’t play rugby, so a little unlikely) and then catch a train to Rosebank, have dinner and then go back to their flat/hotel. After much excitement about this plan, we went to www.Gautrain.co.za to download the maps, only to read that the buses do not run on weekends.

The trains run on weekends, but not the buses. I thought this was a bit ludicrous. Surely the buses run whenever the trains run, or you will get to the other station and then need to catch a taxi or phone a friend? I do understand that Gautrain is targeted at business people, and they must make a profit, but I would have assumed that the buses would run, even if there are far fewer trips on the weekend.