It is 9pm at Park Station in the Johannesburg inner city on the eve of the first weekend of the month – and everything just looks different.
It is a Thursday evening, a day that most people who travel between Johannesburg and Durban use to visit their loved ones.
I was about to take the Citiliner bus to the coastal city. I noticed that there were no queues at the bus operator's ticket offices, so no-one was still trying to secure a ticket.
A day before, when I bought my tickets, the queues were also unusually short, about three to five people in the lines on average.
The price of the ticket had dropped to R200, from about R350. It was cheaper than a taxi, which costs R320 for a single trip between Johannesburg and Durban.
In disbelief, I asked the woman selling the tickets if the bus had ablution facilities, as I could not believe the price.
“Yes, it has. It is still the normal comfortable coaches sir, do not worry,” the friendly lady said.
Back to the day of the trip, there was little activity in the place where people normally wait for the buses. At the beginning of the month, people normally pack the area and there would be no space to sit. This time just a few passengers were there.
Even the young men that make money by helping people with their luggage were loitering around with almost no customers requiring their assistance. A new normal indeed.
The bus was about 75% full, something usually unheard of for this time of the month. It is always packed with people carrying large luggage.
All the seats towards the back were empty. Some of the passengers appreciated that and they went to occupy the empty seats in order for them to be able sleep comfortably during the night trip.
Memories of these trips on the same bus for the past 14 years flashed through my mind: the people I met, some that I have kept in contact with and others that I never met again.
These flashes came to me as I reflected on yet another closure of a business that had been thriving for many years, more than three decades, in fact. Its end has come and now I will have to look elsewhere for a convenient, reliable and decent public transport to my home town of Durban.
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