The Uber Driver

I am in Pretoria. He is Black. He drove me here from the airport in Johannesburg. He asked me where I am from. I told him I am Capetonian and asked where HE is from. He said he’s from Zimbabwe. A Ndebele speaker. He’s been here 13 years but doesn’t feel at home. I’ve always heard that Joburg is very xenophobic and he confirmed it. He is always reminded that he doesn’t belong here. He hates it and wants to go back.

But go back to what? No electricity, drought, bad governance? Cruelty and violence? Hospitalised patients having to go buy their own bandages and not getting proper care anyway? And that’s just the stuff I know of. I don’t know what he himself has been subjected to.

We spoke about how there are Zimbabweans in every area of the economy of South Africa. As he said, “Not here amongst us lowly Uber drivers, but even in Boards!” Very true! I told him that one of the most respected surgeons in the Cape is from Zim and I love him too. They are everywhere. They are working everywhere and working hard.

I told him how in the Cape, the White folk who talk about them talk about how hard they work and how fast and careful they are. Better than us South Africans. I’ve heard enough Xhosa speakers whining about their duties to believe it. They’ve come to work. They’ve come to work well. We want to do the bare minimum and get full pay. (In general)

Our other failing is pride. They will come with their degrees and will take any job that puts food on the table and be proud of it and work hard at it. Our people think menial work is beneath them so would rather spend years unemployed because they are waiting for jobs they studied for, rather than seek employment everywhere- cleaning, kitchen, waitressing, nanny etc . Then they end up like a sibling of mine. After waiting years for a ‘high’ status job and leaving the less skilled work that would have given her a salary higher than even cashiers make, she ended up getting that allegedly higher status job but earning much less than the au pair job I had suggested she try out for. We don’t think logically. It is not difficult to quit a nanny job. And it’s easier to use your time wisely and feed yourself.

That is how Zimbabweans think. All work is honourable. All work is necessary for someone to do and everyone needs to eat. If the job allows one to eat, why the pride? I bet many of our regularly protesting “unemployed graduates” are only looking for employment in the field they graduated in instead of looking for EMPLOYMENT. And so, the so-called foreigners come fill the gap which then makes our illogical South Africans angry. It’s so stupid.

Of course, that is a generalization. Some of us are humble. We will do anything our hands find to do while hoping something in our field turns up. And also, not all Zimbabweans have come here to work.

As he himself said, too many of them are criminals. They then give the rest of them a bad rep. Oh so true! At last he said it, so I didn’t have to! I hate importing illegals so they come and hurt us. We already have enough of our own criminals.

Another thing that shocked him was that there is no high class suburb where there are MANY black people in my province. But in Gauteng…There’s a huge thriving middle and upper class. As we drive past a mansion, he commented that it wouldn’t be surprising to find that a Black person owns it. That’s not the norm in our place. He says here, the White people tend to complain that “the Blacks own everything!” Man, in the Cape we don’t even go to restaurants like the way the ones here do. I went out with a White friend once and she was the minority in an upmarket mall. The sushi restaurant had more of us as customers than in the Cape where we are the employees.

South Africa is a land of contradictions. A land where hatred rules. Here, foreigners are hated way more than we hate them in the Cape. In the Cape, we are hated by everyone- Indians, Coloureds and Whites. And everywhere, we have internalised racism- where the black server, black cashier will be so respectful to the White customer but not to the Black one. Where security guards follow the Black shoppers but not the White.

And we both agreed that besides the Malawian gangs that have started brutalizing people in this province, Gauteng, they are out of all the foreigners here, the sweetest and meekest of all Black Africans. Keep to themselves, don’t cause problems, willing to work hard and no pride or arrogance in them. On the other hand, you’ll never see them in the Boardroom.

Hmmm

As for Zimbabwe itself? He blames the lack of cohesion, of having different cultures to what we have here, for his having two children with different women, none of whom are still with him. He said obviously it takes two to mess things up, but they just never saw eye to eye as he thinks he would have if they too had been Zimbabwean.

His uncle tried to go back to Zim after having lived here since 2007. As we said above, they don’t feel welcome and are hated. But after a year, he had to return. No money. The people have no money to spend. He tried again after saving money to start a different business. But again, he left and this time is in Germany. They want to be home. They don’t want to be in the diaspora.

His friend also tried. Failed. Sometimes he thinks of giving up too. Would you want to spend 13 years doing unskilled work in a country in which you are constantly reminded you don’t belong to? Never earning enough to buy property… Never earning enough to build a family.

We both laughed at how White folk keep saying we should not have Black leaders because they will mess the country up like Zim got messed up. He can’t fault them. Their country is messed up indeed! What we can fault are the dummies who don’t know anything about Zim and keep saying, “They should go home and vote out their ruling party.” Seriously?? The ruling party is ruling by force and violence. You can’t win a war in which only one side has weapons and isn’t afraid to use them. You can’t win when if a village has been known to have mostly opposition voters, the ruling post comes and stacks them for voting’ wrong.’ Zimbabweans can’t win when they don’t have a democracy but are instead ruled by despots.

Our continent is bleeding. So many beautiful countries but no jobs. The colonizers came, took over, established a new way of life but only kept the best jobs, best education for themselves. Best training only for those who were their descendants. And now we are stuck. We have politicians who want to live like ancient African kings and chiefs-complete rule, adulation, allowed to take anything they liked- instead of leaders who want to fix the economy, the infrastructure, the nation. We have many citizens, but little training.

We are stuck. But, I enjoyed the chat. I’m starved of adult conversation. I appreciated the long ride to Pretoria.