Plying Trade as a Minibus Loading Master

Unless you heavily rely on private transport or you have been living under a rock, the sight of young men fighting for a customer at a bus terminal is not an uncommon sight.

In this business, the clever and the stronger get the bread at the end of the day.

Top Revs was extremely fortunate to talk to one of the loading masters at Shell Service Station at Ondangwa who told the tale of men using the combination of their natural intelligence, charm, strength and violence, if need be, to lure potential customers into their bus.

Shimpweya ‘Chau’ Iyambo has been loading buses for 16 years now. He says he started when he was a teenager. “There is no other job I did apart from this one. As you can see, everyone has to find a way of surviving,” he says. Loading a bus to the capacity can be a demanding and frustrating job, according to Chau, especially on ‘dry days’.

These are days when customers are scarce. On such days Chau and others would use every feat possible to get customers.

“Sometimes a fight can even break out and you will see guys exchanging fists,” he added, laughingly while answering a call from a taxi driver who informed him that two Windhoek-bound customers are on their way.

Chau and others have individual taxi drivers who bring customers to them. For every customer brought, the taxi driver is guaranteed N$10.

“I have my guys here (taxi drivers), they never take people to anyone except when I am not working that day.”

You can be forgiven for thinking the loading guys own the bus.

“I am ready to drive now! Only three people are missing. Get in, we will go now,” he tells the two customers after they were dropped off. 
In fact, the owner can be either at home or relaxing somewhere until the Quantum bus gets full.

When asked how much he can make on a good day, Chau said for a full bus, he gets between N$700 and N$800, depending on the generosity of the driver.

This he does not pocket alone. He has to share it with two or three boys who help him ‘scavenge’ for customers. They are responsible for spotting anyone with luggage from a distance and quickly run to them, grab their bags and ensure they do not fall into the hands of their business ‘foes’.

Though Chau implies he has been always ethical and honest in his work of loading customers, he added that sometimes when times are hard, unorthodox methods have to be applied to convince people to get into the bus quickly.

One of the methods is to use friends and his boys as decoys and make the bus look full when in fact it is not. Any traveller will be duped into thinking only two or so people are missing for the bus to hit the road while in fact there could only be only five ‘real’ passengers in the bus.

As the bus starts getting full, the decoys will start disappearing from the vehicle. They are also entitled to some sort of remuneration, either in cash or kind. “It’s ‘zula to survive’, my friend,” he says.

During the interview, this reporter also had to also act as a decoy while being driven around the filling station looking for customers. Though sometimes fights can occur between rival ‘loading masters’, unity and comradeship prevails among them. Beers are shared and they do not allow a bus from outside the town to load on their territory. “No one from outside town is allowed to load here. Those guys from Oshakati know it very well,” Chau says.

Criminality and trickery is also rife in this industry. Since the loading masters know each other and can load any bus they are contracted to, some can make a quick buck by duping customers to pay the money to them, pretending to be the drivers of the buses.

They then disappear into thin air. The real loading master will then be left at the mercy of the tricked customer.

Such cases can sometimes only be solved when the police gets involved.

Chau says though the public have painted them with a stroke of black paint, they are just good people trying to make a living.

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