Uber drivers, like their predecessors the taxi drivers, are a font of knowledge. These are the people who could easily step into the seats of power, accustomed as they are to sitting for a living, and instantly lead the nation.
Let me preface this notion by stating categorically that I speak of the average Joburg Uber driver who's more often than not a voting member of the population. In Cape Town most Uber drivers appear to be of the non-voting variety (sadly, equally opinionated but lacking in the agency to effect their solutions).
In one week alone I've been regaled with the answers to all our problems at least three times. One chap told me they are because we're more identified with our various tribes and loosely agglomerated identities, stating that if we all believed in being South Africans as opposed to card-carrying Parks whingers like me, everything would be much better. We'd all be steering in the same direction, so to speak.
Then there was the gentlemen who felt that sorting out the lack of civic mindedness that leads to public peeing would do the trick. It used to be, he said wistfully, that you would get arrested on the spot for such infractions. Now you get asked for cold drink money (which, no doubt, leads to more peeing in public). I was tempted to suggest that public peeing has a lot to do with a lack of public transport and facilities at regular intervals for the poor sods doomed to walk the streets as opposed to catch an Uber from the ridiculous outposts they call home, but we were arriving at my destination so I didn't comment.
I'm sure that this is half the joy of these Uber governance strategies; they're a quick fix and over before you can say "implementation". But, hey, my Uber driver wasn't the only punter recalling the supposed joys of the apartheid state this week; apparently, there was some smarmy finance guy who brought up the "A" word as an example of better days. So what's to be done?
I say turn to the homeless for an answer. I accept that they're not fully equipped to steer us anywhere like the Uber drivers who have a lot of experience with steering wheels, but I can tell you what they do have: a capacity to jump into a vacuum and offer a service, entirely selflessly, for the common good.
I've mentioned this phenomenon once before, when I was struck by our collective passivity in the face of authority, even if it's just one with a flimsy yellow vest purloined from God knows where to signify the right to direct traffic.
But my thinking on the subject has evolved. I've been in a lot of Ubers that have been faced at an intersection with load-shedding robots (only in South Africa), a situation that's necessitated these self-appointed traffic officers of our country and, together, the Uber driver and I have done a lot of reflection on what it could all possibly mean.
These troubled individuals, who populate our street corners with all their tragedy staring us in the face every time we drive up to an intermittently functional robot, are rising above their own needs to offer help
My new thinking on the subject of Joburg’s most needy taking such an active and, frankly, inspirational role is that these are the people we should be looking to for the answers.
These troubled individuals, who populate our street corners with all their tragedy staring us in the face every time we drive up to an intermittently functional robot, are rising above their own needs to offer help. Every few hours they suspend their reason for being at the intersection, which is to eke out a couple of rands per day from a public who have probably run out of small change and the bigger coin years ago, and do something that elevates them to heroic stature.
It breaks my heart at every robot to think of all that human potential and all that goodwill going to waste when it shines so brightly in the semi-permanent darkness.
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