By PHAKAMISA MAYABA
A Soweto man rises early in the morning, washes, and heads to work. So far, this is a pedestrian – even mundane – routine anywhere in the world, and certainly doesn’t merit a feel-good write-up in one of the country’s premium newspapers, Daily Maverick.
Except that Brian Chauke’s gig – probably inspired by desperation as well as gruelling unemployment, with those on the margins finding themselves pushed ever closer to the precipice – is so unique as to be ingenious. It even gets the big cameras hurtling towards peripheral Diepsloot, Soweto, and impels readers to cast fresh eyes on the township gig economy.
To wit, Chauke’s job is to queue at ATMs. And when he gets to the front, he ‘sells’ his place to people further back, and then repeats the exercise all day long.
His asking price is R20, but he will accept less when the client can’t afford it. He is a godsend to pensioners, and does not complain about the R5 the elderly and infirm often offer him for the coveted number one spot.
He’s been doing this for 17 years, and has established a rapport with his clients. He has still not given up on the increasingly elusive promise of steadier employment. But in light of his growing age, the odds are stacked against him, and he may find himself slipping back into the ranks of the totally unemployed.
StatsSA’s figures for the the fourth quarter of 2024 show that unemployment has barely flinched at 31.9%. As usual, the figures are unkind to youths, with a shocking 4.7 million (44.6%) recorded as jobless.
The government’s main efforts to address this crisis are the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, the Expanded Public Works Programme, and a swathe of internships with the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) which – despite being considered a lifeline – have increasingly come under fire (even from trade unions) as indecent work that only benefit the bosses.
Internships have become synonymous with negligible absorption levels, and what is marketed as ‘on the job training’ often amounts to graduates being used as de facto tea ladies.
With this demotion naturally comes a sense of disillusion and dissatisfaction, a pervasive purposelessness, as these young interns are usually lumped back to their misery when the contract has expired, only to be replaced by other graduates who can expect to be met by the same fate. Against this backdrop, there has been a proliferation of people shoved into the territory of unconventional, even little-known, means to earn their keep.
In such circumstances, the informal economy is lauded as a boon, but trying to read about it on the internet opens up a whole new can of worms. For example, the investigative journalists at amaBhungane have found that, ‘behind the veil of fancy websites and seeming regulatory compliance … online trading platforms have one foot planted firmly in the illicit financial system’. It’s a world of fly-by-night money movers in which ‘thousands of people invested millions of rands and nearly always losing all of it after being misled and harassed into disastrous and possibly fictitious investments’.
Yet social media online trading is presented as a legitimate and glitzy affair, with traders constantly pictured beaming alongside capacious mansions and fast German cars. The scammers are just as active and, operating in a country of such vast disparities, they usually don’t have to do much to find gullible victims. This parallel online universe runs far deeper and can get uglier, particularly for the girl-child.
A Unicef office of research (Innocenti) study in collaboration with ECPAT and INTERPOL titled ‘Disrupting Harm in South Africa: Evidence on online child sexual exploitation and abuse’ makes for disturbing reading. The discreet nature of the internet makes it fertile ground for pedophilia and all manner of sinister cyber crimes.
As a result, according to Wikipedia, ‘generally, South African girls are trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.’ Furthermore 55.5% of ‘all trafficked people in South Africa [are] female and ‘more than three-quarters of all victims are between the ages of 12–25.’ The paper also finds that some of the trafficking is not coerced and that victims ‘enter on their own accord, as they are faced with economic hardships that leave them desperate for a better life.’
The upsurge in adult content platforms into which young people tend to disappear means that these deeds fly well below the radar of public scrutiny. Though not entirely gone, the ‘world’s oldest profession’ is no longer confined to truck pit stops or seedy downtown alleyways but thrives inside households and college accommodation.
In the Northern Cape, where the media are virtually non-existent, the stories are never told. But they lurk out on the highways and inside the shebeens and on the mouths of women who feel that they just weren’t empowered enough to have many choices available to them.
Of all the grim stories that a newshound sometimes comes across, theirs are the most raw and heartbreaking, usually told with the frankness of a person who doesn’t expect any more ugly surprises from life. This a series of stories I hope to cover, the ones that will hopefully give those who are positioned to make a difference something to think about.
Casual work in Colesberg. Image: the author.
But, despite these travails, many rural men and women are made of sterner stuff. Hard times often mean thinking out of the box and rising very early, ideally with a shovel in hand and the whole day to weed and sweat without blaming anybody. Like the gentlemen in our images, one jobless, the other on the dole. With the Easter festivities around the corner, being penniless is not the sort of station one would want to find oneself in. Thankfully, the generous rainfall of late has been good on their gig. The lawns and weeds stand knee-high and homeowners are constantly on the lookout for affordable hands to get rid of the muck. And just like that our team is in the game.
Or how about the nimble-footed young Rivaldo Afrika, guiding motorists into parking bays in town? To most people, he might be shrugged off as a pesky car guard, but he and his team are an enterprising lot. They’ll help you haul furniture, do an impressive paint or gardening job and if you happen to have a business along the street, they’ll keep it litter-free. And if you’re not too eager to jump back into your car, you may want to listen to their very moving stories. Trust me, it’ll make you whine less about your own misfortunes.
The industrious Rivaldo on the job in Colesberg’s Church Street. Image: eParkeni.
When they wrote that the kasi is a dynamic place, they weren’t kidding. So don’t be surprised to find barefoot kids knocking around a tattered plastic soccer ball next to a well-dressed man who is trying to figure out how to operate his drone. His new acquisition is something of a novelty, and his ideas about how to profit from it are endless. He could use it to videograph big events, after all — as things stand, he’d be the only one advantaged enough to offer aerial footage.
While at it, I suggest, he takes footage of the town as well, particularly the tourist attractions, and start some sort of social media page. It wouldn’t be anything innovative, but I doubt I’ve seen many locals in the business of promoting the town. He flashes a half-hearted grin. I’ll take it. It suggests that he’s at least half-thinking about it. And halves in the land of nothing are a great deal to go on.
FEATURED IMAGE: A casual labourer doing gardening work in Colesberg. Images: the author.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.