By: Dave Abrahams
Cape Town - Mainstream bikers are a widespread community, united by their passion for riding.
The way club members support each other is a fine illustration of ubuntu, the African concept of community that is really closer to an extended family.
But it is also true that bike clubs - and their provincial associations - don’t talk to each other very much. For all that bikers are united by their lifestyle, there’s not enough ubuntu among their mainstream umbrella bodies.
So concerned riders from a number of organisations reached out to fellow bikers across South Africa for the first national Ubuntu Run, bringing together bikers from all clubs, of all ages, genders and backgrounds, to speak the common language of roaring engines on a mass ride.
Any law enforcement officer will tell you that when bikers take to the streets in ‘rolling mass action’ they don’t burn things or break things, they just make an awful lot of noise.
And that’s what happened on Sunday morning when hundreds of riders gathered in the truck park at the Winelands l-Stop on the N1 outside Cape Town, much to the amusement and amazement of the truckers - for the Cape Town leg of this national movement .
UBUNTU MEMO
Members of at least a dozen clubs – as well as many who weren’t club riders but had heard about the run on social media, turned out on a variety of machines, from agile sports 400s to 1400cc muscle bikes, cruisers by the hundred and even a half-ton, 1832cc six-cylinder Honda Rune, joined hands and banged shoulders in the universal bikers greeting.
After a briefing from the president of the Straw Dogs and a blessing from Pastor George Lehman of the Bikers Church, the ride took off, marshalled by the Think Bike road crew and escorted by the Metro EMS motorcycle medics, on a 277km route that took them over Du Toit’s Kloof to Rawsonville and Villiersdorp and back down the N2 to the Buyel Embo village in Khayelitsha, where MK of Bravehearts read out the Ubuntu memo.
“Where there is Love there is unity,” he said. “Where there is Respect there is unity of purpose. Where there is Honour, there is unity of direction!’
“You are my brother, you are my sister! In you I see your soul, not your possessions, not your skin pigment, not your position in society.”
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