Four unemployed men from Pienaarspoort hard at work.

Four unemployed young men from Mamelodi decided to not only make some money, but help out their fellow residents when they jumped in to repair an impassible muddy dirt road.

This came after motorists got stuck in the mud after heavy rain in Pienaarspoort in the far east of Mamelodi.

Meshack Chuene (26), Thabo Ndlovu (30), Simon Tsebe (31) and Jan Madisheng (37) live right next to the affected main road that leads to Donkerhoed.

They saw that motorists and taxi drivers were struggling to drive through the muddy road and decided to do something in exchange for small change from motorists using the road.

“Taxi and truck drivers as well as motorists were complaining about the road every day,” said Madisheng.

“No one was willing to help since the area is still developing and waiting for proper infrastructure. So we decided to help out by covering the muddy road with dry soil as well as filling the big potholes to prevent small cars from manoeuvring in the muddy road.

“The gravel road was getting worse by the day with the heavy rains over the past two weeks,” said Madisheng.

“On Monday, a taxi driver was stuck on the muddy road at 04:00. We managed to help push his taxi to a dry patch using gardening tools and he gave us money for helping.

“The municipality gave no indication of fixing the roads. So we saw an opportunity to make some money,” he said.

“With the money we could put food on our table. We work the whole day from 07:00 to 19:00, guiding motorists to drive easily through the mud without getting stuck.”
Madisheng said they are unemployed and are struggling to find any jobs.

Tsebe said even though it wasn’t a full-time job, they could at least make some money for their families.

“We rely on the kindness of the strangers who drive past while we fill the potholes. We appreciate every cent they give us,” said Tsebe.

He said some of the motorists didn’t appreciate what they did, but said they would continue to assist the motorists because they really needed the money.

“Our wish is for our government to create permanent jobs for us so that we can do more for our families,” said Tsebe.

“If the government ever decide to fix the road, we hope they would consider employing us.”

One of the taxi drivers, Dan Masemola, told Rekord that “we appreciate these young men’s efforts to help fix an obvious problem”.

“Our passengers were beginning to complain when we refused to drive through the mud because we were afraid that we might get stuck or break something,” said Masemola.

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