In jam-packed bumper to bumper afternoon traffic, at the corner of Modderfontein Road and Van Riebeek Avenue, stands a fellow armed with a coke bottle.
The bottle is filled with a mixture of dishwashing liquid and water.
Immediately when the traffic light turns red, a metallic grey AMG Mercedes Benz stops. The driver was busy on a cellular phone call.
In a split second, the fellow who only identified himself as Matome, sprays the windscreen of the Mercedes and starts wiping.
The driver hastily gets off the call to stop Matome from washing his windscreen.
He shouts, “I was at the car wash just now, don’t wash my windscreen.”
Too late, the job was already done and Matome is expecting a tip.
The driver insists on not giving Matome a tip for the service imposed on him. Matome persist and calls the driver “grotman”.
Just as the traffic light turns green, the driver finally decides to give away a few coins.
This is the daily hustle that Matome, and others like him, go through daily, just so they can survive.
Sometimes they have to take a few punches from motorists.
“Some of the motorists jump out of their cars to fight us. We are not here to fight. We wash windscreens and we do not force motorists to pay. If they do not have money we do not mind, but a lot of them know us now and they always give us money,” said Matome, speaking in Sepedi.
On average, Matome and his crew make about R160 on a good day.
Just as Matome was speaking, his co-worker Mahlatse asked the NEWS to stop metropolitan police officers from harassing them.
“This is where we work, and we are not doing any crime. Tell the metro police to stop chasing us,” he said.
He quickly dismissed any talk that window washers are complicit in smash and grab incidents at traffic lights.
“It never happens here. These people know us and they trust us. Smash and grabs happen after 5pm, when we have gone away. It is some of the people who work with us and it usually happens next to the Edenvale Hospital, not here,” said Mahlatse.
The spokesperson of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD), Edna Mamonyane, said growing calls of criminal incidents and smash and grabs have prompted the JMPD to work together with the SAPS to clamp down on windscreen washers.
“We had a press briefing and announced that we are going to be targeting areas where smash and grab incidents have been reported,”said Mamonyane.
Through investigations, the JMPD has found that women were targeted, harassed and robbed by windscreen washers.
She said there was an incident in Grayston Drive were a woman was sprayed in the face with water and verbally abused.
