Prophet from China: 'If cars sin against thine wallet, pluck them out'

Question time before the blog: have you commuted in an SA “township taxi”? Would you/do you consider it to be your normal transport to and from work?

Good grief, no fricken waaayy, I thought to myself after reading Sarah Britten’s article on buying a BMWobble your cash flow (as in wobble your cash flow) now that she’s back in Joburg.

Sarah and I have got to know each other a bit online as fellow bloggers and as fellow ex-pats, I enjoy her down-to-earth friendliness and am thrilled to know things have worked out — as readers from her recent blogs know, she went through a very bad patch in Australia with retrenchment and loneliness (been there, done that, couldn’t afford the T-shirt).

I have not owned a car in five years: in other words, since I left SA. I owned various vehicles for about 15 years. If I never own a car again, I will be perfectly happy.

China has turned me into a largely non-materialistic person, and I never really was one … much. Most people here don’t own cars. I usually see heads of department and smartly dressed yuppies cycling or scooting to work. Parents cycle or moped their kids to school on the way to work. Buying a car here in Shanghai is a waste of money and, after that, a financial Thick ‘n’ Thirsty sponge. Between the buses, metro and taxis, you just don’t need one. Sure, the contradiction, you may quickly point out, is that China has overtaken the US in terms of car purchases. That has to be put into the context of the size of China’s population, and the massive differences in classes. I see, fairly regularly, spanking new Mercedes, nay, even Lamborghinis, parked near scruffy men on the sidewalk, hunched in vests and slippers playing a ritual game of cards at a cracked deal table, and they can probably barely afford a second-hand bicycle (and don’t seem to have a care in the world other than the next play of cards). Never mind the BMWs, the Bie Mo Wos as they are known around here (translation from the Chinese: “don’t touch me!”).

Owning a car in Shanghai, unless it really is for practical business purposes, such as deliveries, is stupid, stupid, bang your forehead against the wall dumb. Once we went in a car from where we live in Puxi to a place in Pudong and it would have taken us nearly half the time using the Metro and the cheap taxis readily available. Possessing a smart car in Shanghai has even more to do with image than Joburg.

I just revel in the pleasures and the relief of not owning a car. I wrote under Sarah’s blog, “can you think of all the ways you spend money having a car?” I said there were seven, and of course there are more:

1) Wear and tear (not accidents).

2) Accidents — the premium you still have to pay — and accidental scratches found on paintwork when coming back to your car, and oh, you could have been anywhere, not just the pub.

3) Insurance policy, unthinkable not to have one in large cities in SA. Hopefully they pay out when the worst happens.

4) Paying for parking.

5) Regular services to maintain guarantees. (I kid you not, I had to scratch my head for a minute, trying to remember what a “check-up” at the garage was called again.)

6) Parking tickets and other traffic fines (almost as unavoidable as rabbits falling pregnant in a rabbit warren).

7) We will lump assorted sundries under item number seven, such as renewing a car licence, designer number-plates, cost of car washes, oil, car polish, detergent, new floor mats, battery, car deodorant, that duck-Disney thingummy dangling from the rear-view mirror your daughter desperately wanted …

And all this, before you put a drop of petrol in the car and assuming you are not paying off the sucker through a financial institution that definitely makes a sickening profit out of you. Never mind that even if you only pay off the vehicle over three years, you ain’t going to get a return on all the money you spent on your “investment”. Fantastic newspeak that word, investment, when it comes to cars. And it is not, “sir, how may we assist you to get into more buckets of debt?” It’s “sir, we can extend your credit for you”.

You have to step out of that financially crippling paradigm in order to see the paradigm. It is very difficult for you to be able to see things the way I do, now five years out of the country, more than four of them in very different cultures and very different “standards of living” and much lower materialistic wants among most people. Sarah stayed for one year in a culture (materialistically speaking) very similar to cities like Joburg. Correct me if I am wrong.

I invite you to sit down and do the maths on what you, on average, referring to all seven plus items above, spend on your metal steed every year, then multiply that figure by twenty or thirty, depending on your age, which accounts for your car-philia only from about the age of 25 to about the age of 55. And it still does not take into account all the inflation which would require an actuary. So just work with a ballpark figure.

Oh, you’re back with the sums. So glad to see you did your homework. Makes you wince, doesn’t it?

And does your spouse also own a car? Multiply the final figure you came up with by two and pour a stiff one. Then, as I have said before in a blog, just imagine all that money being put into a real investment, property, or just an interest-bearing account.

Democracy and capitalism has truly found a way of keeping us slaves all but in name.

Sure, the following provisos have probably been going through your mind over and over as you read this: Needing a vehicle for business, such as deliveries and sales — and I was in the latter profession for a long time. Sure. Let’s just think for a moment, try that paradigm-shift thing the personal growth guys love to use.

How much money could I have saved if I had had a less demanding, less financially promising job, not had a “smart” car plus the “seven plus” items above or no car and did what matters to me most, teaching kids and writing? This is not a rhetorical question: I would have saved heaps. Sickening heaps. The other, more obvious proviso: if you are living in South Africa, especially the larger cities like Joburg with no real transport system, then you have to have a car, or at least a motorbike.

Of course you have to.

Absolutely. No other way.

Though I wonder how many people refuse to take township taxis to work and elsewhere because of the poor image association. That’s just a thought. Juuussst a thought. Think about that one carefully, as per my questions at the beginning of this blog.

In my first job I remember catching the third-class train in Cape Town to a taxi rank in Rosebank and commuting out to Langa. It did not bother me at all — hell it was cheap — until a babe I was dead keen on happened to see me once and I did feel embarrassed.

Final thought. In Joburg, what question does a person ask if they want to get an initial “feel” for someone new? Circle the correct one:

a) What are his interests?

b) How does he stand on abortion and care for single mothers?

c) What food does she like to eat?

d) What music does she like?

e) Does she like theatre and which genre of literature is she into?

f) What kind of person is he?

g) What is important, meaningful, to her?

h) What car does he/she drive?

Be honest. Think about why you choose that answer. And it is the traditional Jozi question, going as far back as I can remember. Who/what conditions people to ask that question almost always first? Do you think people in poor, rural areas of China or SA ask that question? Do you regard it as a superficial question or a valid question in terms of nurturing a proper sense of humanity in us all? What on earth has happened to values and what we base happiness on?

Open questions — perhaps too many at the end there — and, oohh, I am not a saint.