ABOUTOn a hot spring Saturday morning, Karabo Mashele led a group of female cyclists through the hills of a plush suburb of Johannesburg. “Come on, my ladybugs,” the 32-year-old shouted over the sounds of 4X4 cars overtaking racers. “You can do hard things!”
Twice a month, Machel, who only learned to ride a bike at age 29, leads Girls on bicycles random trips for 25 women aged 20 to 30 around Johannesburg or Pretoria. On other weekends, she and the core group join longer, mixed-gender trips.
Johannesburg, with population with a population of about 5 million, not designed for cyclists or pedestrians, with densely populated towns and sprawling suburbs connected by highways. Less than 1.5% of Golden City's commuters cycle to work, most of them migrant workers from other countries in South Africa, according to Njogu Morganma, who has studied transport in the city. Bicycles are usually seen as either a hobby for the elite or a last resort for the poor.
South Africa's metropolitan areas haven't changed much since apartheid ended more than three decades ago, when poorer black workers moved to work in wealthier areas from townships where the white minority regime had pushed their communities out. But Girls on Bikes and other young cycling enthusiasts are taking over the streets of South Africa's largest city.
It’s a dynamic that Titi Mashele is well aware of. In 2018, he founded the Banditz Bicycle Club to find a cycling community and now has a bike shop and hosts weekly Friends Night Rides. He also encouraged his younger sister Karabo to start Girls on Bikes.
“Seeing people of color on bikes in the suburbs is a political statement. Right now, in front of us, you can see the eyes and the way people are looking at us,” said Mashele, driving a support vehicle ahead of the Girls on Bikes 10km ride.
Karabo Mashele said she wanted to change the perception of cycling among black South Africans, recalling how children in Soweto thought of their group as tourists.
“I spoke Sotho or Zulu and said, ‘Yes, I’m from here. I'm just like you, I'm the same color as you,” she said. “It was a little sad, but at the same time I was like, 'OK, I have a job.'
At the other end of the Johannesburg cycling spectrum is spinning and the 'position culture'. It all started with cars – souped-up BMWs driving around in Soweto in the 1980s, towards the end of white minority rule, often at gangster funerals. Now it's a sport that attracts sponsors such as Red Bull.
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Percy Zimuto of the Sentech Croozers cycling club, named after the Sentech tower in Brixton, Johannesburg.
In recent years, children in Soweto have started riding modified bicycles. Crews consisting mostly of teenage boys such as Street fighters of Soweto And Bikerboystook over the village streets, fighting each other their mastery of tricks including donuts (spinning in multiple circles) and kitchen tricks (pedaling quickly to make a sharp 180-degree turn).
Often two frames are welded together with smaller wheels attached to them to make very long and low-slung bikes. Riders have to lean forward to pedal in the lowrider position that gives the Stance culture its name.
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Lesedi Musima of the Sentech Croozers cycling club in Brixton, Johannesburg.
In Brixton, a mixed-income area popular with artists, 20-year-old Percy Zimuto and 18-year-old Lesedi Mosima of the Sentech Croozers (named after a local telecommunications tower) showed off their creations.
They lowered the 20-inch frame onto 16-inch wheels, then added silver mudguards and huge forward-sloping handlebars shaped like antelope horns. Zimuto's bike was painted bright red, while Moshima's was orange and pink, with a grinning evil clown mask attached to a large tape recorder. While the frames cost just R50 (£2.15) at the junkyard, you can spend up to R3,000 on modifications.
“I saw the Stance culture as a way…to have movement and art at the same time,” said Zimuto, the team leader. “I felt like it was a way to really interact with more people because it’s — it’s so different.”
Zimuto, a freelance photographer, founded the team in 2018 after seeing spinning in Soweto. Most of the members left after high school, so he recruited 14 new Cruisers, who now range in age from 12 to 20 years old.
Recent trips included a 12 mile bike ride from Soweto's FNB Stadium through the old CBD to the new Sandton CBD towers, which styles myself “Africa's richest square mile.” The all-male team has also appeared in advertisements for a bank, a telecommunications company, clothing brands and KFC.
Zimuto said: “When I actually walk down the street without a bike, I'm an ordinary person. But when I walk down the street with a bike, I think, 'Who is that?' Who are you?””
