Stepping off your bus at what is supposed to be Zimbabwe’s top bus port, the Roadport in Harare, has become an awful nightmare.  Touts, vendors and other miscellaneous characters accost unsuspecting travellers as they go about the business of just getting out in one piece.

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I recently travelled to South Africa using the Greyhound coach service and was appalled by how bad things have become at the once gleaming centre of coach travel in the country. The place needs a makeover for a start, and then the city needs to look at a bigger venue for a bus port as this one has been overtaken by the growth in numbers of travellers and numbers of coaches using the premises.

Then it needs some order. As travellers disembark from their buses, they are literally attacked by taxi drivers and push cart operators offering their services.

To compound the situation, among the touts and taxi drivers were friends and family who had come to pick up some of the travellers.

As we were waiting for our suitcases to come off the bus, we were crammed around the bus with all manner of non-travellers, one who demanded the cigarette that one of the travellers was smoking. She refused to give it to him and he kicked up a fuss, calling her a racist.

Meanwhile suitcases started coming off the bus and people kept pushing to get to the front of the crowd so that they could get their luggage before someone else claimed it. The ticketing system used for indexing the bags is not very effective as the baggage handlers don’t even verify that the number on the stub is the same as the one on the piece of luggage before they hand the latter to you.

Once you get your luggage you have to push and shove through the crowd, pulling or carrying your bags while at the same time holding your pockets to make sure that nothing gets lifted from them. A veritable nightmare if you have no one to help you.

My suggestions: Can the taxi drivers, cart operators and other non-travellers please have their own waiting area so that travellers can collect their luggage in peace. Can we make Roadport a place where one will happily go to make bookings, travel, receive travellers, etc., without being accosted by all manner of ‘entrpreneuers’. Outside the terminal ok, no control there, but inside surely something can be done.

Park Station, Johannesburg. Sanity in a city known for crime. Can we match or better this Harare?