tawandamusarurwa
I BURIED my face in my hands in shame at the Mbare Musika bus terminus on Independence Day when a tout suddenly started hurling expletives at an elderly relative I had accompanied there to board a bus to Mhondoro.
Her crime: She had refused to get onto a bus he was loading.
The bloke, who was reeking booze and donning sooty apparel, even threatened to smash an empty beer bottle he was holding on my head if I dared intervene.
To my chagrin, police officers who were within earshot continued with their business at the busy market despite being witnesses to a crime that was being committed in their presence.
“Tinokupedzerai mudhara. Kunonzi kuMbare kuno, tinokuitai yese yese,” the bellicose fellow ranted while advancing towards me and the hapless old woman.
It only took the arrival of other travellers intending to board the bus for him to turn his focus away from us.
Such are the happenings at the capital’s biggest bus station, where touts seemingly do as they please without fear of the law.
Called “an airport for the poor”, this place, where people board buses to various destinations across the country, is pregnant with drama and real-life events that demand acres of space to chronicle.
Some of the buses at the station, God forbid, will be so bedraggled that one would think their components will be held together by rust.
When the engines are started, one would be mistaken for thinking someone would have lit wet firewood in a braai stand. Ismoko yega yega.
There are drivers who spit loops of mucus through windows that one has to move with care. Some of the conductors and other bus crews relieve themselves in empty containers and throw them on the tarmac.
As I commit pen to paper, gentle reader, travellers and those accompanying them are routinely tongue-lashed by the touts, with those not so lucky being beaten up.
This has resulted in some people opting to seek transport outside the busy station, creating major problems along highways.
“I no longer go to Mbare Musika these days. It is very risky because, apart from being attacked by thieves, you are at risk of having your luggage destroyed by touts as they will be fighting for passengers. Some of those people are unruly and to spare myself the embarrassment, I simply do not go to that bus station,” an elderly woman who identified herself as Chihera said last weekend.
Her colleague also had a story to share.
“The touts are so mischievous. At one point, they started proposing love to me right in front of my husband and threatened to beat him up when he remonstrated. They told him to mind his own business, even if they were testing his resilience in the most difficult way,” she said.
As if that is not enough, some passengers have complained of being forced to board the wrong buses by the unruly touts, who even tear people’s clothes while pushing and shoving them.
“The police need to take action on the young men operating at Mbare Musika. I think they (police) need to disguise themselves as travellers so that they arrest this disrespectful lot. Drivers and conductors are part of the schemes as they will be trying to get their buses loaded earlier than others. These touts can dress you down in the presence of your wife and children.
“I once saw a woman being kissed by these hoodlums after she refused to board the bus,” Shephered Muziringa of Rugare told this writer.
Some unsuspecting passengers are made to pay full transport fares on buses that will be full of touts (vakajegera) and are delayed for hours on end by these touts.
“The blokes once delayed me to the point of missing my cousin’s burial. They made me pay the fare lying that the bus was about to depart, only to realise later that I was the only person travelling and all who were on the bus were touts,” he said.
It can be tough for the sick who are pushed and shoved, worsening their medical conditions.
If ever there was a time to end the menace at Mbare Musika, it is now.
Inotambika mughetto.
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Online Reporter