Terrible things happen in Pretoria. I was there a few weeks ago visiting an old friend, and he took me to this hippie sort of establishment called Bravo Pizzeria, where one was supposed to bring one’s own tipple and sit on the pavement like a tea stall in a Third World bazaar. I asked for extra olives on my pizza. It arrived resembling a black forest cake.

But that is not why Pretoria has been in the news of late, is it? Three people were killed when their drag race went horribly wrong on Voortrekker Road on 3 April. “We still don’t know if the dead people were bystanders or if they were passengers,” the Netcare 911 spokesperson said at the time. “Bits of the cars are strewn across a 50m radius.” That is pretty grim. They were able to make out from the wreckage that two cars were a Nissan 350Z and a turbo-charged Fiat Uno.

From this rather melancholy start, I am glad to report that the authorities are going about remedying this situation the right way. This is Pretoria we’re talking about. These are men who will turbo-charge a Fiat Uno. These are men who will then race against a Nissan 350Z without the necessary skills to keep their cars on the road. We are not talking about the sort of people who can be reasoned with. So the Tshwane municipality is exploring ways to legalise street racing. Bless their northern hearts.

The only pity to me is that they are thinking of legalising street racing in Pretoria. They could just as well legalise street racing under the sea for all the fun that Pretoria’s roads are. In fact, the entire Highveld makes for very unexciting roads indeed. Just take a look at the Golden Highway as an example. It runs straight and true, without much fuss, from Johannesburg to Pretoria. There is nothing peculiar about it. Nothing exciting. You may as well take the N1 north.

Look, if all you want is to be able to put pedal to the metal, nitrous oxide squelching and rubber burning, then yes, by all means have your street race in Pretoria. By all means trade Blou Bulle paint with the hairy chested man named Kobus. But that’s not what a good race is about. You want the road to be a challenge as well. You want to pit your wits against both your opponent and your environment. This is why Formula 1 is better than Nascar. The tracks are a challenge.

The best driving roads for this sort of thing are located either in the mountains of the Western Cape (the sort of terrain you get in and around the Zuurberg nature reserve) or in southern KwaZulu Natal, sandwiched between R617 near Underberg and Lesotho to the north. KZN is realistically better because there are no hippies to tell you not to disturb the fynbos with the noise of your turbo-charged cars.

Think of all those countless dirt roads that meander up to the Drakensberg, twisting, twitching and turning all the way up the side of the mountain – what glorious fun wouldn’t you have, blasting your way up and down those roads in a Mitsubishi Evo 10? In fact, you’ll be rallying, and not really street racing. The roads will loosened by the occasional rain, making the surface slippery at high speeds. And when you do slip off the road, there are massive gullies and cliffs to fall into. What a special and unique death.

But not all of us can afford a Mitsubishi Evo or a Subaru Impreza. For the less fortunate among us, in family sedans, there is the Gopalall Hurban Road on the east coast of KwaZulu Natal. The best parts of the road are between Nkwazi and the Tugela River. I drove on that road a few years in a Mercedes Benz C-Class. It is mad fun simply because it is such a poorly-made road. Unlike the N2 north, it follows the contours of the hills rather than smashing straight through them. And this is right next to the coast, so the hills are packed tightly together. Also, the road drainage in the little valleys is quite poor, meaning that when it rains, pools of water collect at the bottom of the road. I drove on that road in the middle of a summer rain and it was pants-shitting stuff. I’d bounce up at the top of the hill, feel the car go light in my hands, and then hit the downward plane into that big pool of water over and over again. More than once the car almost skidded off the off the road. It is a barmy, eccentric road and the best part is you don’t have to break the speed limit to experience that mad sensation. The fastest I went at any one time was around 115 km/h.

I feel sorry for people who have to make do with Pretoria’s sensible roads.