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South Africa is a country that, in recent years, has become more and more attractive to visitors from overseas. In fact, the country's tourism industry is booming, with travelers arriving every day by the plane-load. And they all come with their minds crammed full of the preconceived ideas that the brochures and travel agents expound. These ideas are pretty much shot down, however, somewhere between the airport and their hotel. See, most visitors to sunny South Africa come in via Johannesburg International Airport. And, in getting to wherever their eventual holiday destination might be, a good number have to experience driving on the roads of Johannesburg.

Johannesburg has a basic approach to public transportation. It's broke, and we cant fix it. So a large number of people living in the city, which is now one of the worlds largest, own their own vehicles. And they drive them whenever they can. Car pooling is pretty much unheard of, meaning that if youre in a car in Joburg, youre stuck in traffic. Even in the drive through at McDonalds. Add this to the fact that the average resident of Johannesburg has the disposition of a rhinoceros that has just backed into a thorn bush, and you get a very interesting situation indeed.

Johannesburg has often been referred to as the financial capital of Africa. It is perhaps because of this status that Joburgers do things fast driving included. The ultimate goal when driving in the city is to get there before the other guy, no matter what. Although speed limits are posted, these have a special sliding scale applied to them the higher the speed limit, the more you need to break it by. Adding one third to the number of the speed limit is a general guideline, but the actual unwritten rules are far more complicated. And, no matter how much you break the speed limit by, there will always be someone going faster. It might be good to try and set a new land speed record on one of Johannesburgs highways, because there will be some guy in a five litre Ford going faster than the test vehicle. Guaranteed success, Joburg style.

One would imagine that fast driving would lead to other areas of safe driving practice. But, then again, thinking seems to be the last thing on the Joburg drivers mind. No matter how fast you go, there will be someone on your tail. One of two theories seems to be at blame for this; drivers are either trying to improve fuel economy by taking advantage of the leading cars slipstream, or they are trying to minimize damage by keeping a small impact distance between their vehicle and the one in front of them. This tail-gating happens at all times, no matter what time of day. Should you, for example, manage to find a deserted stretch of road in Johannesburg in the middle of the night (as unlikely as it seems) there will be some guy right behind you with his high beams on. See, drivers in Joburg only switch to their low beams after they have blinded you. It makes dodging oncoming traffic even more interesting. This great speed also results in everything in the city being at most twenty minutes away. Ask any local for directions, and you will invariably be told, sometime during the explanation, that its about twenty minutes away. This time period is, of course, directly proportionate to the speed of the vehicle in question, but Joburgers tend to adjust their speed accordingly.

Impatience is the watchword. If you want to survive your Johannesburg driving experience, leave any modicum of patience at home. Driving in Johannesburg would have turned Mother Theresa is a curse-slinging, bird-flipping maniac within fifteen minutes. Dont wait for the person in front of you to change into first gear honk your horn as soon as the light goes green. In fact, you can even pre-empt it and honk when the opposite light turns amber. And dont give anyone a gap.