The extremely different driving styles of Nairobi and Cape Town

I don’t know if this is something unique to me, but every time I visit Kenya from South Africa and get behind the wheel of a car, I slowly but surely feel myself become a more aggressive driver.

Here in South Africa, where I have lived and driven for the last eight or so years, there is no need to drive aggressively, unless one is a taxi (matatu) driver or competing with the taxis. So every time I return, I feel as though I have to re-learn how to drive in a more civilised manner.

Despite a number of fender benders through the years, I have always been proud of being a fairly good driver. I like to think I am courteous and safe.

I learnt to drive as a teenager and when I was 17, went to a proper driving instructor and sat my first driving test, which I must admit I failed. I was nervous (I have never liked tests or exams of any sort), and as a result, I cut someone up at a roundabout and got confused about left and right.

However, I was determined to pass the test and I took a second one shortly afterwards and passed.

A few years later, school was over and I was back in Kenya, very excited about driving legally at home. However, I instantly noticed some major differences between driving in Nairobi and in suburban London. 

Drivers in Nairobi were about 10 times more aggressive, there were matatus to contend with, and, as the newspaper I was working for at the time reported, there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of people driving using licences they had bought and paid for without necessarily taking driving lessons or tests.

Thirty years later, I don’t believe much has changed. Nevertheless, always one to adapt quickly to new situations, I changed my driving style to suit Kenya and, while trying to be more careful than the next driver, fell into some bad Kenyan motoring habits, which were later to be encouraged by the total and utter failure of the traffic lights system. 

This failure was partly a maintenance problem and partly the incredible impatience of Nairobi drivers, who seem to have stopped paying attention to the lights, as well as an overwhelmed traffic police constabulary.

Here in SA, where they refer to the traffic lights as “robots,” there is still serious respect for the rules of the road, and the great majority of drivers are courteous and strictly observe the traffic code.

Every time I come back to my home here, I find myself driving as aggressively as the born and bred Nairobi driver that I am under the surface, and having to constantly remind myself that my fellow drivers are not out to get me. That a boda boda is not going to appear out of thin air and undertake or even drive on the wrong side of the highway, as I saw in Central Kenya when I was back, will get you arrested sooner rather than later. Unless you are a taxi driver in Johannesburg.