Caroline Ndlovu will never forget her first driving lesson, and if she does, the millions of people who have seen it on social media sure won’t.
The Dunoon resident set social media ablaze last week after a video of her taking a driving lesson went viral. So far, across various platforms, it has clocked up more than 2.5 million views.
In the video, Joshua Rubin, of Sunset Beach, takes Ms Ndlovu on one of their driving lessons and hilarity ensues.
Ms Ndlovu, 32, works as a domestic at the Rubin home and has been employed by the family for about 12 years. She started working for them when Mr Rubin was about 10, and they have grown close over the years, like brother and sister.
Mr Rubin is a photographer, and he and Ms Ndlovu have been recording each other for about 10 years. Watching the pair interact with each other, you can tell they are as thick as thieves.
Ms Ndlovu said she had grown used to being in front of the camera because Mr Rubin recorded everything, so she wasn’t really shocked when he wanted to record their driving lessons.
Born in Tembisa, a township on the East Rand in Gauteng, Ms Ndlovu moved to Cape Town because she liked what she saw of it on TV, especially when characters from soapie Generations travelled to the Mother City.
So when she was 16, she moved to Cape Town and lived with her uncle in Parow. But after he moved to London, she moved in with another uncle in Dunoon. She felt more at home there and said it had more of a “vibe” than Parow.
But it was hard to make ends meet, so she did odd jobs and later started working as a domestic to put food on the table.
Ms Ndlovu has always had dreams of her own and the one dream she wants more than anything is becoming a chef.
Mr Rubin said he shuddered at the thought that one day they would all have to move on: he will eventually move out of his parents’ house and Ms Ndlovu will pursue her dreams, and this chapter of their lives will come to an end.
Before all that though, there is a new project the two are working on. They will be creating their own YouTube channel and the first thing on there will be Caroline Goes to the Gym.
As the name suggests, the series will follow Ms Ndlovu as she attempts to shed a few kilos.
The two said they had not realised that their video would cause such a stir, but they are happy that it has and that it is breaking barriers.
“There is a lot of racial tension especially on social media and I think the reason why the video speaks to so many is due to the fact that they see such a good relationship between us. We didn’t even see it like that at the time because we just see it as Caroline and Josh,” said Mr Rubin.
“When I started working here, I would look at them like they are white people and I’m the black person. But now I look at it quite different because I see Joshua like me, and there is no difference,” said Ms Ndlovu.
