Pump attendant pays for fuel, gets eight years of salary as reward

A petrol pump attendant was rewarded 490,000 South African rand (Dh121,000 approximately) after he paid for fuel for a woman motorist who had forgotten her wallet.

The woman, who would have been stranded in the dangerous outskirts of Cape Town had she not filled up the fuel tank, was surprised when she found out that she had left her wallet in her office.

Nkosikho Mbele, 28, was working at a Shell garage when a woman named Monet van Deventer pulled over at the petrol pump. She soon realised she had forgotten her wallet and asked Mbele to stop filling up fuel as she had no money to pay. But Mbele did not want the 21-year-old woman to be stranded in the notorious Khayelitsha township in South Africa, and paid 100 rand of his own money to fill up her tank.

The young woman driver took to Facebook to share the story and set up a crowdfunding page for Mbele, which got him over Dh121,000, equivalent of the salary he would earn in eight years. Mbele, who currently lives with his two children, his mother and brother in a small shack, said, “The lady had no money to carry on her journey safely. I know how dangerous that stretch of the N2 is and my faith in God told me that it was the right thing to pay for her to travel. So I bought fuel for her.”

He added that he had not expected a massive reward for helping the woman. “I was just happy to see her drive away knowing she would arrive where she had to get to safely and I had no idea that I would have my life so blessed in return for what I did,” the petrol pump attendant said.

But Mbele now fears for his safety with his newfound wealth and has asked the crowdfunding site to hold on to the money and use it to build him a house, pay school fees for his children, and pay his bills.