The State of the Nation and an empty taxi

I gave the gaaitjie a raised eyebrow as the van came to a stop and he opened the door. "Mowbray?" he asked and pointed down the road.
I looked into the van; empty.
"Ja," I say finally, after I see a tariff sheet stuck to a window by vaguely transparent layers of sellotape, "you just look a bit suspicious with an empty van, makes me nervous you know."
The driver laughs and tells me " ja no you mus' be careful." He pulls on his cigarette and the smoke bounces lazily over his arm and out of the window.
"I know," I reply, and settle into the sweating pleather seats.

We sit in a silence broken only by the gaaitjie's shouts, his head breathing in and out of the open window, his neon safety vest folded over the chair in front of him.
"It didn' use to be this empty," the driver starts to say.
"Uh?" I offer an interested grunt in reply.
"Ja no, it is only now the las' few years that it's so." He is wearing a cream T-shirt with a thin orange stripe running the width of his back. There is a small hole in the fabric over his left shoulder, it looks like a mosquito or a fly but after staring at it--almost transfixed--I realize it moves as he does.
"So why?" I ask him, shifting my attention from the minute piece of skin, "what happened now for the van to be empty?"
"People, they lost their jobs. I used to work in sales, for thirteen years I worked in sales and then even I got retrenched."
I "mmm" in response, "that's bad luck."
He nods in agreement. "Ja, so people lost their jobs. They got packages you know, packages and they've got a bit of money so they think they gonna buy a taxi and make money." He laughs, shakes his head like we all do. "But you don' make money so." I can see his sunglassed face in the rearview mirror, he shifts his attention between my reflection and the road.
"You see, say you put in a fifty rand petrol in Wynberg, then you drive to town and you pick up maybe one maybe two maybe a couple of people and that's so thirty-forty rand, maybe you make your fifty rand. But no more."
"Is that what it costs? To get the taxi from the one side to the other?"
"Yis," he nods emphatically, "a fifty rand."
The lights are red at the at the pedestrian crossing at the Nando's. The gaaitjie whistles and calls to the people sitting, standing, paused on the pavement. No response. The lights turn green and the driver shifts the horizontal gearstick forward and up.

"So why do people do it then, why do they buy the taxi?"
"They don' know. They jus' think they gonna make money." He slows to let a car on the left come into his lane, but the car hoots and its driver waves to him to move on.
"Hy gat omdraai," the gaaitjie says.
"Ja," I agree, "he wants to turn around."
Our van starts forward again.
"You see, it wasn't always so. The guys who started here, who were the first ones on this route those years ago: HEY!" He exclaims and starts laughing again. "They made money those guys. They live in the nicest houses, they drive in the nicest cars. So people see that and they think I'm gonna be in a house so and drive such and such a car, but that was then, you know?"
"Ja," I say, "I know."
I get out at the McDonalds and maze around the huddles of school children sitting waiting on the pavement for their bus.

Zuma described the State of the Nation last night. Mixed reviews really, on both Zuma and the state. Me; I like to see the taxi half full, even when it's empty. So aluta continua, I suppose.