Latest news with #ReaVayaBus
TimesLIVE
3 days ago
- Business
- TimesLIVE
Rea Vaya rolls out 10 new buses, empowers women in transport sector
Johannesburg commuters can expect a smoother ride from Friday as 10 new buses join the city's Rea Vaya Bus rapid transit fleet. The boost comes from Litsamaiso, which operates phase 1B of the service, being appointed the preferred bidder to run phase 1A from February 2026 for seven years. The now non-operational phase 1A routes include a trunk line from Thokoza Park in Soweto to Ellis Park, complementary CBD routes and feeder routes in the Soweto area. Litsamaiso CEO Nelson Rikhotso said the new buses arrived at a critical time. 'This fleet expansion will enable us to meet increased operational demands in our routes. 'An efficient commuter service contributes to the stimulation of business productivity and the economy.' The new additions are part of a larger rollout, with the full consignment expected by April 2026. By June 2026, Litsamaiso aims to have 143 buses, bringing the total fleet to 304, creating a reliable commuter service for Johannesburg. During Women's Month, the company also announced a skills development initiative to train young women for strategic roles in the transport sector, including as technicians, mechanics and drivers. Rikhotso said the training is aimed at challenging the industry's male-dominated landscape and equipping women to become agents of change.
Daily Maverick
08-07-2025
- Daily Maverick
Purr and simple — walking with cheetahs across the plains of the wild Great Karoo
Purring big cats, wide open spaces and skies that go on forever – this is the perfect way to clear your mind of city clutter. I had spent a lot of time in the Jozi inner city, had a head full of skyscrapers and honking taxis, and was beginning to think that the fastest land mammal in the world was a Rea Vaya Bus on Commissioner Street when a colleague invited me to do the evocatively named Samara Cheetah Trail in the Great Karoo. I had never associated the Karoo with cheetahs, but the Samara Karoo Reserve near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape is one of the best places in the world to see these creatures that can run 80-130km/h, true claimants to the title of fastest land mammal. It's a glorious three-hour drive from Gqeberha to Samara. We left behind the ocean and port, the car factories and industrial zones, and headed into sheep and goat country. Angoras, merinos, dorpers. The small town of Jansenville is the centre of the country's mohair industry. We stopped at a sleepy shop that had lovely rustic produce, a rusty old car and squeaking windmills. The road cut through vast stretches of the arid Karoo, and we turned off to Samara about 50km before Graaff-Reinet. The landscape here is heartbreakingly beautiful, set in the foothills of the Sneeuberg, a mountain arc that stretches about 200km. Such geological drama – the space, the scale, the colours of gold and ochre, purple and charcoal. The owners of Samara, Sarah and Mark Tompkins, never even intended to live here, but then their first drive into the area changed everything. Plains Camp is a sexy little off-the-grid spot that sleeps eight in four tents. There's a central meet, greet and eat camp, a reservoir pool, a deck with seriously impressive views and an outdoor area for stargazing and fireside stories. The entire Cheetah Trail is about 30km, but broken into morning and afternoon walks in different parts of the reserve. We heard lions and jackals in the night and our first morning was cold and drizzly. We knocked back some strong coffee and headed into the sunrise. We were led by guide Chris Swanepoel and tracker Henrico Thys. Chris explained the basics: the reserve is home to the Big Five as well as 60 other mammals and more than 200 bird species. Samara has five different biomes, essentially five different vegetation types and landscapes. We set off in single file, and within minutes our heads were giddy with the enormousness of it all, the contrast between the wild mountains beyond and the tiniest little veld grasses and succulents, the tracks and trails of creatures, the scent of a wild morning. We hadn't gone more than 15 minutes into our walk when we came across a pair of cheetah brothers. Chris pointed out their engorged tummies – they had eaten well recently – and now they were doing a playful grooming exercise. We were so close we could hear them purring. What a moment. These guys are descended from the very first cheetah to be reintroduced in Samara in 2004, the first in 130 years. We watched them for ages and then continued our walk, eventually reaching the edge of the legendary Plains of Camdeboo. Camdeboo is the Khoikhoi name for green heights, referring to the presence of water in this arid landscape. The 1966 South African classic, The Plains of Camdeboo by Eve Palmer, is set here on Cranemere, Palmer's family farm of five generations. It is about an entire way of life, as someone so beautifully put it, suspended between dust and sky, endurance and change. Palmer's recreations of the landscapes of her early home are among the finest in Karoo literature, but our bunch rapidly descended into cliché – 'isn't this just bloody gorgeous?' – followed by a few astonished expletives. And eventually a delicious silent rhythm as we walked back to camp, the sound of purring in our ears. As we walked the reserve over the course of the weekend, the amazing scale of the Samara rewilding project unfolded. The first cheetahs in 130 years, the first elephants in 150 years, the first lions in nearly 200 years. We spotted a tail and trunk of the elephants that had recently arrived from nearby Addo Elephant National Park. The old elephant migratory route used to come all the way up here to the Camdeboo region, then back down the Sundays River to the coast. We saw vast herds of desert-adapted antelope – eland, oryx and springbok. We saw lions that had killed and eaten from an eland, lying in a rather inelegant fashion with their tummies to the sky, mouths open. We walked across ancient pans, among majestic giraffes and many tortoises. We walked across the plains they call the Serengeti of the South. We saw a river running for the first time in the season, after the rains of the night before. We were supposed to spend one night under the stars in a wild camp under the eaves of the mountain, but rain stopped play, so we gathered around a fire in the camp instead and listened to Marnus Ochse, Samara's general manager, tell us the incredible story of how you rewild an old farm. 'The first thing they did after buying the farm in 1997 was let the veld rest for several years,' he said. They took off all the livestock and, over seven years, bought up 11 farms that make up the 27,000-hectare Samara. More than 200km of livestock fencing went down to create an open system again. Elephants were reintroduced in 2017, black rhino in 2013 and lions in 2019. 'The return of the first lions was incredible for Samara,' said Ochse. 'When you bring back lions – apex predators – all other animal behaviour changes. 'Take jackals, for example. They are mainly scavengers, but if there are no carcasses around they become extremely good hunters. They'll go for steenbok and springbok lambs, and for goats and sheep, which is why farmers don't like them.' But since lions were reintroduced, the jackals have enough food because they scavenge off the carcasses killed by lions. 'So we've immediately seen an increase in our springbok population, the lambing especially, as well as our blesbok and steenbok population, and certain ground-dwelling birds.' Ochse told us how the arrival of the lions also changed the cheetahs' behaviour. 'They were quick to learn there was another, bigger predator around. The moment we introduced the lions on top of the mountain, the cheetahs were gone. They've changed where they move around, and they've changed their hunting strategies.' We slept with our hearts full of inspiration. And the next morning we drove across the reserve and up into the spectacular Sneeuberg mountains. The roads were steep and muddy after the rain, and we finally arrived at the very top of the mountain, greeted by lions and rhinos, to the welcoming sight of brunch and bubbles, with astonishing views of the Great Karoo stretching before us. To think this area was once home to one of the world's largest migrations – when millions of springbok, wildebeest, eland and quagga, an extinct type of zebra, roamed these plains in search of new pastures. There were herds of elephants, plentiful black rhinos and predators. We popped open the bubbles to celebrate Samara's passionate conservation undertaking that has seen the return of these species after an absence of more than 100 years. DM This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
