This video is part of TimesLIVE's “On shift” – a 10-part video series proudly brought to you by 1Life Insurance. Every Monday until the end of May, watch exclusive videos giving unusual insight into the lives and perspectives of people working in interesting professions in South Africa.
If you take a cab with Andre Terreblanche, you could be forgiven for assuming he’s an old-school band member stuck in the good old days. Perhaps it’s his grey, curling hair, glasses and Michael Jordan bucket hat.
Such an assumption would be far from the truth.
Andre, with his charming and youthful spirit, works deep in the dangerous taxi industry – and he loves it.
From his city-centre bedsit, he tells us how he shares his cab with thousands of strangers, enabling him to collect "a portfolio of weirdness".
Odd things also happen to him all the time, the most bizarre of which resulted in him almost being party to the smuggling of a protected species.
Andre feeds off the unpredictability of taxi driving. Not knowing who the next client will be creates a "gambling effect", which makes the job forever fascinating. "You just never know what is going to happen next."
He loves his job despite the dangers, including robberies and “ugly things” that occur on the road. His clients are the most “wonderful” part of his work, though.
Businessmen, robbers, drug dealers and politicians – Andre collects and collates fragments of different people’s lives, putting together a diverse social puzzle in his mind.
Some clients open up, some cry and some confess. But, he says, taxi drivers are not "moral keepers ... we just facilitate movement".
As soon as that client steps out, the intimate interaction is over and it is time to find the next one.
With plenty of life experience himself, Andre says this is the best job he has ever had. Marking his accounts in a creased notepad, he concludes: “It doesn't make the most money. But it’s not always about the money; it’s about doing what you like doing.”
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