Bribing a Traffic Cop

On Thursday, I engaged in a quintessential African experience – I bribed a traffic cop. But first, I have to explain a driving custom that occurs here. If you’re on a two lane road that has a good, broad shoulder, and someone wants to pass, you pull into the shoulder to allow the faster driver to pass. It’s very polite thing, and something that I like quite a lot.

So on Thursday of last week, my Birmingham friend, Jeff deGraffenried, and I were driving to Cape Town. We were smack in the middle of the Free State (formerly the Orange Free State), which is a vast expanse of flat plains or very broad rolling hills, with a few mesas and hills thrown in here and there. This province is very agricultural, and all we could see for miles and miles – or kilometres and kilometres --- was field after field after field of maize, or wheat, or sorghum, or sunflowers, with a few cattle or sheep thrown in here and there. We’d passed Bloemfontein (population 390,000, and maybe the 5th or 6th largest city in the country), and were on our way to Philippolis, a not quite mid-way point between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Philippolis (pronounced fee-la-PO-lis) was founded in 1823 and is the oldest settlement in the Free State. According to Jeff’s Lonely Planet, there are 75 buildings within the town that have been declared national monuments. One of those is the library! We arrived there about 4.30 pm and had time to drive, and then walk around town a bit. It’s a strange sort of place. You can see that the town was once pretty prosperous (my guess would be from 1880-1940), but now it has a bit of a ghost town feel. The streets are very neatly laid out, and some of the houses were (or still are) quite lovely, but the place was empty empty on a Thursday afternoon. Famous author Laurens van der Post lived in Philippolis (perhaps was born there, I haven’t verified that), and apparently some of the South African intelligentsia gathered here in the 1920s-1940s. But the death knell for the town came when the N1 was put in (1972), and all the Jo’burg to Cape Town traffic that used to come through was diverted away from town.

The bed and breakfast we stayed in is owned by two retired teachers, Jens and Naomi Friis. They live on a quiet dust road on the edge of town. They serve breakfast (and dinner, if you book in advance) in the dining room of the house in which they live, but the guest rooms are in two houses two doors down from their own. They bought these 2 old houses, restored them, and put in beautiful gardens. Our garden had cosmos, marigolds, roses, other flowers I didn’t know, an orange tree, and several fig trees that were loaded with not-quite-ripe figs. Drat! I love fresh figs! I wish I could go back there in another month, when I think the figs will be ready.

But back to the bribery. We were maybe an hour or more from Philippolis, and there was a big 18 wheel truck in front of us. He pulled over into the shoulder so that I could pass, which I proceeded to attempt. As I was passing, I saw that there was traffic coming from the other direction, so I speeded up in order to make it in time. Whew, done, no problem.

And then, just head, we see a traffic cop jump up into the road from her hidden vantage point under an overpass, point at us and then point towards the shoulder, clearly indicating that we should pull over. I really thought she was getting me for speeding whilst going past the big truck, but it turns out that what I’d done was cross over a “barrier line” while passing the truck. I was so busy passing the truck that I had not seen the barrier line.

I won’t go into all the details of the conversation that ensued, but let me say that I might have been willing to take my lumps (and ticket) and pay without arguing, except that when I pulled out my international driving license, her tune changed and she said that I must follow her to the local police station to pay a “spot fine”. I’ve heard some unpleasant stories about people following cops to the station – nothing scary, mind you, just that it took a lot of time and money – so I decided that I would attempt my first bribe. So, I asked her what we could do to make this go away. I could tell right away that she was interested, and that helped boost my confidence. Jeff picked up on what I was trying to do, and he asked her if we could pay for a “warning”. I don’t think they have official warnings here, as in the U.S., so this was a good approach. She said that would cost R500. At first I was indignant, because the one speeding ticket I’ve had here was only R200, but Jeff reminded me that she’d said the ticket at the police station would be R2,000, so I finally gave in and handed her the money.

I called Colleen later to find out if that cop had ripped me off, and she said she thought it was okay, given that the actual fine might have been R2,000. She was also angry that the cop took a bribe, and she thinks I should report her, and pretend that I didn’t realize it was a bribe until someone told me afterward. I think I won’t do that. :)

However, I think I am going to look into getting a South African driving license!