From KwaZulu-Natal to Kent: How a Kent local coped with living in apartheid-era South Africa thanks to his classic motorbike.

Jim Scott has owned a long list of motorcycles and scooters from age 16 onwards. In order to drive his wife, Sylvia, to work, he had briefly put biking aside, but he kept returning to his favourite pastime.

As a bus depot manager, Mr Scott had witnessed a lot of animosity between the trade unions and senior management so, he was looking for new job opportunities and happened to stumble across an advertisement that peaked his interest.

“It said ‘transport men wanted in South Africa’,” he recalled

“So I went up to London and had an interview. They said ‘if you’re successful we’ll call you and your wife back for another interview’. “When they called back, I said to Sylvia, ‘what the hell are we going to do if they offer us a job?’”

The couple would quickly decide to take the plunge.

“They offered us more than that, with a car, house, everything,” he told Forever Bikes.

South Africa became their home in February 1978, with Mr Scott running bus depots in Gamalakhe, Durban, and Pietermaritzburg.

Mr Scott’s time in South Africa, like many in the country, was greatly affected by the apartheid, with fights between factions from the Inkatha Freedom Party and African National Congress often occurring across the bus network.

Part of his job would include tackling the difficulties that came with this.

“You had to have two bus stations – you couldn’t mix the two groups,” he explained.

“We had to put steel backs down the bus seats because they would stick knives through the seat backs.”

“I remember the tech manager coming in one day saying he can’t keep pace with all the door locks that were being nicked off the driver’s cabs. It was costing us a fortune. It turned out they could use these door locks and handles to make homemade firearms.”

As his job became more intense, Mr Scott looked for something to take his mind off of things once he got home.

He would turn to one of the constants in his life, his love of motorbikes and got his hands on a Triumph Thunderbird. It would need a lot of work, but that was part of the appeal.

“I was working all hours – out there you work 28 hours a day nine days a week, permanently on call for accidents and incidents,” he said.

“I did the restoration as and when I could fit it in.”

“It was therapeutic,” he added.

“If you’ve just been shot at and had to recover a burnt out bus with 22 bodies in it, you need to come home at night and have something to do.”

“You go into your garage and you de-rust 40-odd spokes and it takes your mind off it, a little.”

Despite having to return to the UK every two years to get the spare parts that were unavailable in South Africa, he remained dedicated to the restoration, which wouldn’t be finished until 1999.

Mr Scott was proud of the final product but decided not to ride it in South Africa due to feeling progressively more unsafe while living there.

“Things got worse and worse,” he recollected.

“At night, you’d have steel burglar guards up, and you couldn’t leave a window open, despite it being 35C.”

“You’d retreat into your bedroom, lock every door, put your alarm on and go to bed. Somehow, someone managed to get into my house, and I woke up to find somebody at the end of my bed.”

“I went for him and chased him and, as I went through the house, he whacked me with a hammer.”

This felt like the tipping point for Mr Scott and his wife, with the biking fan stating; “Law and order had collapsed.”

“The house was broken into five times, you couldn’t go out at night, and we thought ‘this is no way to live’, so we decided to come back, which meant the bike had to be packed up and brought back.”

The couple would return to the UK, Kent specifically, in 2005 and Mr Scott was finally able to ride his Thunderbird.

Now he’s retired, the former bus driver still likes to work on motorbikes, but the Triumph Thunderbird remains his favourite with the retro ride having the honour of being the only bike that he doesn’t see himself ever giving up.

“I’ll definitely be keeping it,” he said.

“I like the look, and the torque on the thing – when you get it on song and it thumps along the road. People look at it and put their thumbs up.”

“When I kick the bucket, I’ll leave it to one of my two nephews, ” he joked.

A testament to hard work and a huge part of his life, we’ll be seeing Mr Scott’s Thunderbird on our roads for years to come.