Thobile Skhosana wakes at 4am, spends 40 days a year in taxis to get to and from work

By car it is a 42-minute drive. For Thobile Skhosana, at the mercy of the vagaries of public transport, it is a two-hour trip in four taxis.

Her time spent travelling between her home in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, and her work in Wadeville, in the east of the city, amounts to 40 days a year.

Transport eats up 15% of her salary, or R1720 a month .

If she is lucky, Skhosana will be an eventual beneficiary of Gauteng's ambitious 25-year public transport master plan, designed to link taxi, bus and rail into a seamless, one-ticket journey.

It puts rail as the backbone of the province's public transport system, and is based on Gauteng's housing and economic development plans.

Gauteng's three metros - Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni - are rolling out bus rapid transit systems. But they do not have the connecting points that will enable commuters to move effortlessly about the cities during peak hours.

Gauteng transport MEC Ismail Vadi said the province had a "reasonably sophisticated" system in place, but very few people have a one-stop system.

Every day, an estimated 250000 commuters use minibus taxis. Said Vadi: "In the future, taxis cannot be the dominant force of the public transport. We need to change that pattern."

This, he said, could be achieved by modernising the rail system and bringing efficiency to the bus services, although even when all the services had been improved, Vadi said, it would be difficult to provide a service where a person gets into one mode of transport from home and it takes them straight to work.

"With the current spatial design, one will have to take more than one mode of transport to work."

Gauteng premier David Makhura said during his recent state of the province address that, as part of propelling spatial transformation, the City of Johannesburg was expanding the existing Reya Vaya bus rapid transit system to cover more areas in the city.

Johannesburg has invested R2-billion in the project. Multimillion-rand bus rapid transit projects are being separately implemented in Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.

But Skhosana has no faith in Vadi's bus service, which is available in Orange Farm. It was always full, she said, and unreliable. Instead, her journey to work involves a complex matrix of commuting.

Her first taxi - for which she has to get up at 4am - costs R7 and takes her to the main rank in Extension 2. That takes 15 minutes. Here, she waits for about 10 minutes for the minibus that will transport her to Johannesburg's city centre (R16). This is her longest journey of the day. Congestion in the morning slows traffic to a snail's pace until she reaches Noord Street taxi rank.

Here, Skhosana walks a few blocks to an informal rank that provides no shelter when it rains. This taxi will take her to Germiston. On a good day, she has a five-minute wait. When it's busy, it's 15.

Her trip to Germiston, in Ekurhuleni, is a R10, 20-minute ride.

Once at Germiston's main rank, Skhosana has one last trip - for R9 - before she arrives at Brazing Alloys in Wadeville where she will work until 4.30pm. Once done, she will retrace her journey, arriving home at about 6.30pm.

There is no predictability in her daily journey - if everything runs smoothly, her commutes will gobble up four-and-a-half hours of her life each day. If a taxi strike takes out one leg of her journey, she is held ransom to whatever transport comes along.

Skhosana prides herself on being a model employee, always arriving on time. But perfection comes at a cost. Her siblings and parents, with whom she lives in Orange Farm, are surrogate parents to her two children, who are in primary and secondary school. She tries to make up for lost time on weekends.

Favourite pastimes such as watching the soapie Generations have had to be sacrificed: "I must sleep at exactly 8pm. If I get tempted and watch the soapie, I struggle to wake up in the morning, and if I do arrive on time at work, I am very sleepy and less productive."

Skhosana holds out little hope that the relentless and punishing travel schedule will change any time soon.

Slumbering in a tin can at dawn

Joining Thobile Skhosana on her journey from Orange Farm to Brazing Alloys in Wadeville, Ekurhuleni, is an amazing experience.

Long before 5am, Orange Farm is abuzz with Toyota Ventures picking up commuters from other areas of the township to ferry them to the main taxi rank in Extension 2. The taxi drivers are in full swing .

Hawkers are selling sweets, having started their day at about 5am. The temperature in Johannesburg, expected to rise to 27°C, is just 12°C now.

But the commuters appear immune, dashing for the taxis that will take them to the heart of Joburg. Fortunately, there is almost no queue at this time of the day.

It is still dark. Shouts can be heard as queue marshals call for those going to Honeydew: "Asambe, asambe, eHoneydew ngala."

I leave at 5.38am and pay R16. After all change issues are resolved, absolute silence falls in the Venture. Almost everyone - dressed in the uniforms of security guards, nurses and retail stores - is asleep.

Heedless of his slumbering passengers, the driver ploughs through traffic, arriving at Joburg's Noord Street rank at 6.38am.

Five minutes later, another taxi to Germiston. The silence is slashed by Lucky Dube wailing I am a Slave. The trip is quick as the driver navigates the M2 East. We arrive at 7.15am. The rank in Germiston is bigger than the one at Orange Farm.

The driver, when told of Skhosana's eventual destination of Brazing Alloys, is philosophical. "I don't know that company but get inside and get lost."

We arrive at 7.53am. I can go back to my normal job and my car. Skhosana will have no such luxury.