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As a result of apartheid's 'social engineering', worker housing is often situated many kilometres from the urban centres and industrial areas. Consequently, droves of buses, painted in the livery of competing companies, shuttle between town and township. This sculpture comments on this situation. [Figure 66]

The big motor within the body of the bus centres the imagery in the mechanical. It acts as a metaphor for commerce and industry, the survival of which relies on the labour of the transported people.

However, there are no labourers inside the bus sculpture. This absence is intended to show the insignificance of the individuals transported in relation to the power of industrial society from which they are excluded. The individual loses his / her identity to become part of a faceless mass, dispossessed and easily replaced by a continuous influx of people. Images of transported people - vague and distorted - are repeated on a TV monitor that is part of the baggage on the roof. Photographs of these buses and the people they carry, taken by David Goldblatt, - The Transported: A South African Odyssey (Goldblatt 1989) - were used as reference for the video material. The sombreness and alienation of these photographs served as a starting point for the video. [Figure 67]

Considerable effort has been spent on details such as wheelnuts, the engine cowling plate, and cooling system. This detail supports the mechanical motif of the work. Although the bus is painted in the bright orange and green colours of the bus company, there is nothing stylish nor sleek about the image. Instead a sense of alienation and aggression prevails.

The wire cars made by black children were a further influence for the construction of the bus. Its bright enamel surface takes reference from an 'Orwellian' force governing the lives of those transported. As one labourer accounts: 'The PUTCO [Public Utility Transport Corporation] buses are not very well equipped. They are built just like trucks. There is no ventilation; there is no comfort on the bus at all. But if the company makes it more comfortable, it will be very expensive. We don't want that. We are used to it. It is the fruits of apartheid.' (Goldblatt 1989: 50)