Joe, who was ecstatic to be given his story in a custom-bound A5 book!

Driving along one of the major routes through my neighbourhood recently, I noticed a newcomer to the ranks of local roadside entrepreneurs, and stopped to talk to him.

Joe, a slim and talkative man, has set up as an exhaust repairman and general welder in a corner patch, tucked beside townhouses and the freeway. I was curious to know his history and how he came to make his living this way, if indeed his work did provide a reasonable livelihood. He readily obliged me!

Born in Zeerust, Joe got a job there 15 years ago in a white-owned exhaust repair shop. His boss taught him a little bit here, a little bit there, and Joe learned his trade. But there wasn’t enough money in Zeerust and Joe decided to move to Johannesburg, where the only work he could find was casual labour as a gardener. Noticing other people working as roadside welders, he realised that if they could do that, so could he, and his aspirations took flight.Starting with the gas bottles, Joe slowly built up his informal workshop, buying pieces of mostly second-hand equipment as he could afford them. When you are earning peanuts as a casual labourer, the R450 or so for an oxygen cylinder and the R750 for a gauge are almost astronomically expensive!

But Joe managed it, and has spent the last 10 years working on the roadside, near a high school and small shopping centre in Randburg. This area, though, has become crowded with other vendors and vagrants both working and sleeping there, and also selling dagga. Police regularly raid there and regularly find plastic bagfuls of dagga, but the sellers are not often caught together with their stock.

Just a few days ago, Joe decided to move to this new patch several kilometres away. No one sleeps overnight here, and he’s cleaned up all the litter in the vicinity, so he feels that as long as he keeps the area neat and problem-free, he should have no difficulty with the townhouse residents.

Joe, once a casual labourer, now has a car and trailer to transport his workshop daily from where he lives to here. His portable workshop, very clean and tidy, includes two gas cylinders, with their expensive gauges, and 4 drive-up ramps set alongside an off-cut of carpeting. A customer with a hole in his exhaust (ouch!) can drive off the road onto the ramps, Joe will wiggle under the car and do his thing, and 15 or 30 minutes later the customer can drive off, more quietly. As well as exhaust repairs, Joe also does general welding and brazing - repairing chairs, light fittings, beds, whatever.

Joe’s work supports his widowed mother, his wife and his three children who all live in Diepsloot, most of the time. His wife suffers from asthma, so she has returned for a month or two to Zeerust to get away from the Jo’burg dust. Aged 13 to 21, Joe’s son and two daughters are all still at school, and he’s very proud of how clever they are.

Now, with the short winter days, Joe sets up at about 8:30 and works till about 4:30. In summer, he can work longer hours, and he has firm long-term goals to make enough money to be able to buy more efficient machinery and bulk stocks of exhausts, so that he can return to Zeerust, rent premises, and run a more formal business.