Getting Around South Africa: Fly the Long Legs

Start with the distances

Cape Town to Johannesburg is roughly fourteen hundred kilometres — a fourteen-hour drive at best, realistically two days with an overnight, across a great deal of empty interior. Cape Town to Durban is further still. These are not day trips, they are not scenic drives, and the country between them is largely flat, dry and monotonous. Travellers who plan a three-week trip taking in Cape Town, Kruger and Durban by road frequently discover that they have designed a driving holiday by accident.

The rule that fixes almost every South African itinerary is to fly between the regions and drive within them. Domestic flights between the three main hubs are frequent, competitive and take about two hours, and the time and money saved against a two-day drive is not close. Then hire a car at the far end and use it for the thing you actually came for — the peninsula, the wine country, the coast road, the park. Most well-shaped trips here involve two or three flights and two or three separate car hires, and that combination is both normal and easy to arrange.

The corollary is that one-way car hire is common and worth pricing early. Picking up in Cape Town and dropping in Port Elizabeth after the Garden Route is a standard arrangement, and so is collecting a car at a safari airstrip town. One-way fees vary considerably, so build the route first and then ask, rather than assuming a drop-off is free or prohibitive.

Hiring a car

Traffic drives on the left, and the default hire car is a manual — automatics exist but cost noticeably more and are worth booking well ahead if you need one. An ordinary saloon handles everything a normal itinerary requires, including Kruger's internal roads and the whole Garden Route; a high-clearance vehicle is only necessary for specific back-road and reserve conditions, and hire companies will tell you which. Fuel is widely available and stations are attended, with an attendant filling the tank, checking oil and cleaning the windscreen — a small tip for that is customary.

Two paperwork points are worth knowing in advance. If you intend to cross into a neighbouring country — several are within easy reach and some itineraries do — you must arrange a cross-border letter from the hire company beforehand, and this cannot be done at the border. Check the excess and what the standard insurance actually covers, particularly for tyres, windscreens and undercarriage, which are the things that are most likely to be damaged and are frequently excluded from the basic waiver.

Toll roads run on the main national corridors and are straightforward — cash or card at the plaza. The national roads themselves are generally in good condition, but road quality drops away sharply on secondary and rural routes, and potholes on those can be substantial rather than cosmetic.

How South Africans actually drive

There is a set of road conventions here that are near-universal, entirely informal, and never explained to visitors — which is a shame, because using them correctly makes driving considerably more pleasant. The main one concerns overtaking on single-carriageway roads: a slower driver is expected to move partly onto the hard shoulder to let a faster vehicle past, without stopping or leaving the road. The overtaker then thanks them by briefly flashing the hazard lights, and the driver who yielded often flashes headlights back. This happens constantly, it is genuinely useful on long two-lane roads, and a foreign driver who neither yields nor thanks is conspicuous. Do it only where the shoulder is clear and solid — it is a courtesy, not an obligation, and not safe everywhere.

Minibus taxis are the backbone of transport for most of the country: sixteen-seat vans running fixed informal routes, stopping wherever a passenger raises a hand, and operating on a business model that rewards speed and full loads. They will pull out, stop suddenly and change lanes with more decisiveness than you expect. The right response is neither indignation nor fear but anticipation: give them room, expect the sudden stop, and never assume one has seen you. They are not a hazard to be resented; they are a functioning transport network that a visitor is sharing space with.

Four-way stops are common at junctions where other countries would use a roundabout or lights, and the rule is strict first-come-first-go in arrival order — watch who arrived before you and take your turn. Traffic lights are called robots, which confuses visitors exactly once.

Load shedding, and what it does to a journey

South Africa has lived with scheduled rolling power cuts for years. Their severity has varied enormously from one period to another — some stretches have seen many hours a day, others almost none — so the only sensible approach is to check what the current situation is close to your travel dates rather than to rely on anything written in advance, including this. What does not change is the set of effects, and those are worth planning around.

The one that matters most to a driver: when the power goes, traffic lights go with it, and a major intersection becomes an unmarked free-for-all. The convention is to treat it as a four-way stop, and most people do, but it slows city traffic dramatically and it is the single biggest reason to leave extra time for an airport run. Fuel stations cannot pump without power unless they have a generator, so do not run the tank low during an outage window. Hotels, lodges and better restaurants overwhelmingly have generators or battery systems and will barely notice; smaller guesthouses and shops may simply close. Mobile networks can degrade in longer outages, which matters if you are relying on a phone for navigation, so download offline maps before you set out.

Trains, coaches and getting around cities

Long-distance passenger rail is not a practical way to travel here — the network that exists is slow and limited, and the famous South African trains are luxury products sold as experiences rather than as transport. The exception is the Gautrain, a modern rapid rail line linking Johannesburg's airport with the northern business district and Pretoria, which is genuinely excellent and the right way to make those specific journeys.

Intercity coaches are the practical budget option and cover the main corridors on comfortable long-distance vehicles from established operators, with the overnight runs being the way most people cover the big distances without flying. There is also a well-known hop-on hop-off backpacker shuttle serving the coastal route between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, which suits independent travellers doing that stretch without a car.

Within cities, ride-hailing apps are the default answer and are cheap, widespread and the way most visitors move around — they also remove the need to negotiate or to carry cash. Metered taxis exist but are largely a legacy option. Cape Town's dedicated bus network serves the city centre, the Atlantic seaboard and the airport, and is clean and reliable on those routes. Walking is pleasant in specific areas in daylight and is not a general strategy for getting around any South African city.

Driving safely, in proportion

The most useful safety rule in this country has nothing to do with crime: do not drive long distances on rural roads after dark. Unlit two-lane roads, livestock and wildlife on the carriageway, pedestrians walking on the verge in dark clothing, and slow unlit vehicles combine into a genuine and under-stated risk, and it is the single change that most reduces the chance of a serious problem. Plan to arrive before sunset, which in winter means earlier than feels natural.

In cities, the sensible habits are specific rather than general: keep doors locked and bags out of sight on the seat while driving, which addresses opportunistic theft at intersections; park in attended or secure parking rather than on quiet streets; and use navigation that keeps you on main routes rather than following a shortest-path suggestion through unfamiliar areas at night. If a satellite navigation system routes you somewhere that feels wrong, trust the feeling and stay on the main road — this is the one place where the app is not the authority.

Beyond that, the ordinary rules of an unfamiliar country apply and are sufficient. Vast numbers of visitors drive here every year without incident, the road network is good, and the country is genuinely one of the world's great driving destinations. Treating it as either risk-free or as a threat both lead to worse decisions than treating it as somewhere that rewards ordinary attention.