Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
All of it, is my guess. In cities where Uber was regulated, it lost to the already existing taxi system.
I actually favour use of the locally developed Mr D app as opposed to UberEats so as to keep profits from leaving the country. I don't know what cut UberEats takes from each transaction, but if it's anything like regular Uber, which based on my discussions with Uber drivers (when I'm a rider) is something well above 20% which I felt was shockingly high.
In regards to the drivers, crime and dangerous road conditions are probably the most concerning elements for them and is largely due to a combination of apathy, incompetence and corruption within the police (an all too common problem with our government run organisations).
Every year I see an increase in the amount of lawlessness by other drivers on the roads. This is because traffic police (at least in Johannesburg) seem to only care about reaching job mandated quotas (for things like fines issued, which are rarely collected) and soliciting bribes. It's worse though, their typical strategy to achieve these is to set up road blocks, which not only have no meaningful impact on improving road safety, but they also result in wasting the time of many motorists. A trip which should have taken 10 minutes lands up getting delayed by 15 making you late for where you were going.
Talking about lawlessness, it's worth mentioning that I have somewhat often seen these courier drivers themselves be lawless by doing things jumping traffic lights.
SAPS (South African Police Service, the "general" police) don't deal with traffic, but are the ones meant to follow up on general crime such as thefts. They're also somewhat apathetic, but I have heard many times that when it comes to crimes reported by African immigrants they'll almost always do nothing, xenophobia is a real problem here.
I have a couple of interesting stories from Uber drivers, most of which were from neighbouring African countries.
The one driver had a South African neighbour which he saw would just sit around all day doing mostly nothing, so he told the neighbour how he managed to became an Uber driver and convinced the neighbour to do the same. After about a week, he noticed the neighbour sitting around all day again and when he asked the story, the neighbour said he found it to be "too much work".
So when it comes to low-skilled jobs, in my experience immigrants are less likely to be apathetic towards their work. This results in the indigenous people feeling that foreigners are stealing their jobs, when the truth is that they're losing their jobs to people who actually make a proper effort. This occasionally leads to xenophobic driven violence.
The other story from an Uber driver has a fun ending. He was explaining that he occasionally will do non0Uber work for cash, while this results in him netting all the money, it also comes with a risk of non-payment. So when a rider asked him if he would be willing to do a non-Uber lift on the weekend, the driver checked on his WhatsApp group if other drivers knew the rider. A few of them had the same story of that rider skipping paying them. So the driver arranged with the rider to do the off-app trip, but just told the other drivers where the pick-up location was.
The driver was later messaged by the rider saying something like "I had no idea you guys talked amongst yourselves, I had to pay a lot of money this morning!".
Another perspective is that the jobs are not good, or don’t pay enough. If the indigenous people are not doing them you can think of it like a decentralized strike, and immigrants are the scabs. If not for the immigrants doing the work the conditions or payment for that work might improve.
This doesn’t justify violence but I don’t think it would be wrong to be upset about the situation.
Annoying to share the road with them esp @ night when I nearly took out one in my SUV because he jumped a red robot coming from a store - no reflective vest and only a dinky headlight.
Some of the bigger retail outfits do provide life insurance cover.
Is there no limit to how low SV bros will sink?
Joburg, especially the inner city, is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Couriers are at risk? We all are. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a story of being held up at gunpoint somewhere around joburg, even the wealthy northern suburbs. Happened to me 4 times, twice in one week. Try convincing an armed mugger some other tit stole your phone already. Fun times.
I also suspect the author is kicking themselves over the timing of the release of this article.
> Lockdown has just been eased as Covid infection rates have plateaued
At the time of publication, our rates are very nearly the highest they've ever been.
Not one mention of the disgusting xenophobia demonstrated by the majority of city residents. Not. One.
I don't order from uber eats because, well they're cunts. Mr D is a locally registered business and is required to follow our very strict labour laws, so I happily order from them (although their app is not doing well lately).
What bugs me the most though is that Uber Eats is somehow exempt from our labour laws. Not providing medical cover to employees who've sustained injury on site can land you in jail.
I personally believe we (Africa) should evict these blood suckers. The western world has stolen enough wealth from us. Voetsek now. We have good alternatives (IDK about bolt, but Mr Delivery is a local partner that adheres to the laws)
That is entirely predictable internet dynamics, which is why the site guidelines explicitly ask everyone to avoid it here. Please don't do it again.
That's a feeble victim mentality that you should consider re-evaluating. Not uncommon on the African continent and elsewhere (blaming colonialism etc), but it's obviously not as simple as that, and you know it.
The site guidelines explicitly ask you to avoid responding to flamebait with worse.
Nothing happening to the wealth of South African today is happening without explicit authorization by a political party that have had a legislative majority and/or super majority for almost 30 years. Pointing fingers at the west for what South Africans do to other South Africans won't fix any problems South Africa has.
It boggles the mind that someone can espouse the opposite when I even was on the receiving end within my first month there and taking all reasonable precautions.
> ...
> The western world has stolen enough wealth from us.
Hilarious :-)
The site guidelines explicitly ask you to avoid responding to flamebait with worse.
Well, yeah, practically textbook:
Popular definition from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/xenophobia ("Fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners").
In more detail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia - " It is an expression of perceived conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a desire to eliminate their presence, and fear of losing national, ethnic, or racial identity."
By your logic any criticism against any world event or fact would be xenophobic against those who caused it. That's silly.
Jirre.
South Africa has taken all the rope it had and hung itself with it. Sure the west stole enough from South Africa, but South Africans stole more from other South Africans than the west ever stole from South Africa, and they continue to steal from other South Africans, and will continue doing so. South Africa's biggest roadblock to prosperity is not the west, it is South Africans, and especially those South Africans who whip up political fervor and xenophobia by pointing to the other (e.g. the west) while robbing the rubes blind.
I think you can choose to not support a company that isn't playing by South African labour rules and rather support a local alternative even if the government is corrupt. And that doing a little bit is better than doing nothing, even if it's not a complete fix.
Apologies if I misunderstood, though - I do agree with you that there are bigger issues at play too in the country. But I do think it doesn't mean we shouldn't also fix the smaller issues if they are in reach. Low-hanging fruit and all that.
Fair enough, the point about not supporting Uber Eats is great. I boycott Amazon for example for similar reasons. I'm just a bit tired of hearing how awful the west is while any problems that the west creates for South Africa is negligible compared to the problems that South Africans create for themselves.
But yeah sure, fuck Uber eats, where I live (in the west) we don't even have Uber never-mind Uber eats. But again we have legislation that prevent them from operating here, put in place by politicians, who were voted for by the populace, same as in South Africa. So you know, the root cause remains the root cause.
South Africans en masse can claim they don't want Uber eats to operate there, but of course they would never stop voting en masse for shitty politicians either that keep screwing them over and that allow Uber eats to operate there.
But I guess if you are the kind of person who thinks lynching a Pakistanis and Nigerians will fix something, then probably it also seems like a good idea to boycott Uber eats while voting for politicians who allow Uber eats to operate.
If all our industry was owned locally it would be a huge boon IMO
Most here live a very simple life in rural africa and would probably be content to do so if it wasn’t for taxation and labour demand.
Sure we have our issues. Billions of rands poor out of this country, extracted by modern multinational neo-imperialists. If we blink the wrong way, the spectre of “loss of foreign investment” is always held above us. If we blink the other way, the rand is punished and ratings agencies come knocking.
I love my country and it’s people. I think we have enough to feed and house everyone. It often feels like other people are pulling the strings.
Well, stop for voting the people pulling the strings...
A quick example: The largest owner of land is the South African Government, and yet laws are pushed through to allow land to be confiscated from people of a particular race and "redistributed" to other people of a selected race[1].
As long as the majority allows things like that they will remain poor and impoverished.
It's been over 25 years that South Africa has had State-mandated and State-enforced affirmative action to benefit the 90% majority at the expense of the 10% minority, and yet the 90% majority is still clamouring for more.
[1] It makes more sense for the South African Government to give out land that they actually own, not land that is held by someone else.
It is also remarkable the extent to which these land confiscation programs focus on the nation’s farms, as if the leaders’ vision of a prosperous future was simply subsistence agriculture: two acres and a cow for every family. The proceeds of a program of taxation can be invested in health and education and infrastructure, the foundations of future prosperity. It’s hard to do that with seized land; few will be fool enough to buy it off of you.
On the other hand, a campaign of land seizures, fêting ethnic resentment, is much more effective at feeding the ruling party’s political power, so, there’s your tragedy.
Oh! But perhaps you mean those heady years of growth during the Great Leap Forward itself, where the nation became so prosperous that ~45 million people starved to death.
On a more general this is similar to the arguments with libertarians who hold property rights up the highest, ... but only from now, ignoring the blatant disregard for property rights in history which cemented todays economic structures.
I don't have good answers how to deal with wrongs of the past, but it's clearly not simple.
But definitely voting for less shitty politicians won't fix it right ... I mean god forbid someone puts a stop to the uninhibited looting from your political class who are elected time and time again with legislative majorities or super-majorities. Definitely xenophobia is a much better solution ... lynched any Americans lately, maybe that will solve it, or is that something South Africans reserve for other Africans and Pakistanis?
It is not stealing if it is by definition not stealing, but at least you can say that you never voted for the singular political party that has enjoyed an legislative majority (and sometimes supermajority) for almost 30 years ... right? I mean it is better than chance you did, as the majority of South Africans who can vote have at least once in their lives voted for said party, but not you for sure, and definitely not your parents, that would be ludicrous to suggest.
> Most here live a very simple life in rural africa and would probably be content to do so if it wasn’t for taxation and labour demand.
And you definitely never voted for the political party that set the tax regulations.
> It often feels like other people are pulling the strings.
Must be, can't be the voters, obviously the majority of the voters who voted for singular political party that has enjoyed an legislative majority (and sometimes supermajority) for almost 30 years have no say in how the country is governed, that would just be fucking stupid to suggest.
I guess as South Africans who voted for the politicians who sell South Africa out to anyone willing to pay while stuffing their pockets, the majority of South Africans have no clue what I'm on about.
I mean at least Russians can claim that their voting system is horribly corrupt, but South Africans claim with a straight face that they, en masse, do not in fact support the policies instituted by the politicians they elected and who who are so blatantly corrupt that it would make Putin blush.
No, that is all the west's fault. Apologies if I delayed you from a xenophobic lynching with my crazy talk, or was it the burning of another university?
I don’t think you can downplay the role of foreign capital and multi-nationals In South Africa’s economic problems for the past two decades - for example the role that The Guptas, McKinsey and KPMG all played in looting the state.
Who made that possible? The voters, who voted for Zuma and the ANC and gave them a legislative super majority, who then in turn gave the Guptas all the power that they managed to get and either looked the other way or more likely were complicit in the Gupta's corrupt dealings with KPMG and McKinsey.
Without South African politicians selling out the South Africans who voted for them, the Guptas, KPMG and McKinsey would be entirely irrelevant. But I'm sure these facts won't prevent South Africans from lynching some more foreigners.
Firstly, I am referring to the whole continent. The west didn't just destroy one nation, they took us all out (except Botswana, and hey wouldn't you know it: They're mostly fine. Strange that, must be a fluke). It's ridiculous to think we would have self-corrected after the colonials left, especially in a few decades.
The west created power vacuums, committed coups to remove leaders who didn't want to hand over land and money (and instead wanted to invest it into our own future) and pulled us into wars we had nothing to do with, just to further their own commercial interests. It's not just mineral wealth that was taken from us. They also divided the land they didn't have any right to amongst themselves. Some good arguments about how responsible the west is for the middle east's current crisis. I also feel like this argument ignores a lot of the CIA's activities over the past 5 decades...
America's wealth was greatly enhanced by the railways built by the slaves they stole. How much of that came back to Africa? Oh yeah, none of it. That counts as wealth theft, but I'm happy to agree that this starts to get messy quickly and isn't very productive.
I have to laugh at the 'The west stole enough' line. They nearly stole everything, and it continues to this day. The gold, the fucking Cullinan Diamond, the minerals used to create phones. They all come from labor in Africa, and very little of the generated wealth comes back. That seem balanced or appropriate to you, or does it seem there's a power gradient? We all know about the supply chain issues at companies like Apple, I'm not sure how you can argue that the damage isn't still ongoing.
> South Africa's biggest roadblock to prosperity is not the west
The west excludes us from global economic activity all the goddamned time. In extreme cases that includes assassinating leaders who want to punt them out of Africa. And hey, look at that, Shell is busy sonar blasting our coastline for fucking oil. Great. You think we're gonna see any of that money? Not a chance. Nevermind the destruction they're causing, at least the westerners can drive their cars around. But hey, we should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, right?
Here's a nice example: Take omicron. The west banned travel from here because we reported it first. This is pretty simple to work out: We are world leaders in infectious disease management, due to the amount of infectious diseases we have to manage. Experts in the field have been explaining this to (apparently) deaf audiences for a while now. It's not great to have so much experience in identifying and managing infectious diseases, but we do. The west could (and should) learn something from us. I learned the other day that _nothing_ has killed more Americans in the same timeline as COVID has, not even the civil war. Admittedly I doubt that civil war claim and I suspect we just don't know how many people died as a result of the war. Still, COVID is up there.
A lot of the west seems to think Africa is just fundamentally flawed. We're not, it's just hard to act independently or in our own interests under the capitalist boot.
To be fair, it's not just the West. China is busy creating the next silk road through crafty debt tactics. Once again: Something the West could do to help us, but won't. Which is going to cost you a great deal more in the long run (we're used to poverty, I don't see modern America handling it well).
----- EDIT
Removed a lot of "you's" because I am not actually upset with anyone in particular. But the west has 0 understanding of what they did here, they elected to whitewash history instead. Plenty of scars to disprove the narratives.
It's also worth noting I'm a white south africa. I know a great deal about this whitewashed history because most older white south africans spout it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Happy to continue this debate, I really don't mean it to be aggressive (but I love this country and I will passionately defend the defensible parts of it)
1. The slaves were (largely) in the south until the abolishment of the instutution in the mid 1860's. Despite railroads being a Northern business("free as in freedom" labor) well before then. The heyday of railroad construction through out america began with the well know northern robber barrons of the 1870's 80's and 90's. In other words, no, slaves did not build the railroads; poor people from anywhere did; whites, recently made free(and poor) blacks, and in the american west, asians.
2. (As i understand it, someone show me otherwise) Africans who were shipped to America were not stolen from Africa. The western part of the continent was experiencing the introduction of the idea of nationalism. Certain west african tribes went on a warring land grab, and stole from other west africans. The conquering ethnicities didnt want the subjected ethicities around, and traded them for various goods at port to american northern shipping business. They, in turn, sold those individuals to southern traders in exchange for raw materials which then went on to the northern merchantile industry to then trade various final goods to nationalists in west africa for...
Anyway, just my two cents.
And yes, while that is true to some extent, it is not the whole story.
> America's wealth was greatly enhanced by the railways built by the slaves they stole.
IIRC (and wikipedia agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade) the slaves were bought by the west. The theft was done by native Africans for the most part.
Africans enslaved other Africans and then sold them.
Should the west have refused to buy those slaves from Africans? Certainly, but it was not the West that, for the most part, enslaved and then sold the African slaves.
> And hey, look at that, Shell is busy sonar blasting our coastline for fucking oil. Great. You think we're gonna see any of that money? Not a chance. Nevermind the destruction they're causing, at least the westerners can drive their cars around. But hey, we should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, right?
Who'd you vote for?
Because I can all but guarantee that the Shell paid money for whatever they are doing, and if you are not seeing any of that money, it is going to the leaders who sold Shell those rights.
So yeah, "The West" is buying resources at fire-sale prices from Africa, but they they're paying your leaders, and if you don't see a cent of that money, it is not the West's fault.
If your are unhappy that the resources are being mined relentlessly and you are getting nothing in return, then ask yourself where that money is going. If you think the land is being destroyed, ask yourself why you voted in leaders who took the money in exchange for destroying the land.
> But the west has 0 understanding of what they did here, they elected to whitewash history instead. Plenty of scars to disprove the narratives.
I'm South African, always have been. We have plenty of scars, but a significant number of them are self-inflicted. We vote along tribal lines (white man bad, black man good) and are then surprised when we don't see a cent of all the money going to our politicians.
I would bet money that the majority of the revenue of mineral sales actually goes to South Africans and not foreigners, and I would even bet money it is more than 75% of the revenue.
Maybe; I don't really know the details behind the sale of mineral rights but I DO know that they are never given away for free and that usually they are sold to the highest bidder. Maybe in the case mentioned by GP (Shell) the mineral rights were sold below what the market would have borne.
My heart breaks for the South African masses; and then I talk to them, and every impoverished person I speak to is certain that they would be worse off if they voted differently. Vote another party in power? Never - the party that has failed to govern South Africa effectively since 1994 is still in power!
South Africa's poverty is, at this point, self-inflicted. I have more than a few ideas on how this can be solved, but none of the solutions involve a) Race or b) kickbacks, so you can forget about SA digging itself out of this hole.
My heart used to break for them, but really, why shed a tear, this is what the South African masses vote for, and this is what they get good and hard, and god forbid anyone stands in their way of them getting it as good and hard as they possibly can get it before civil war finally burns the country to a cinder, at the very least they can find comfort in knowing south africans would have burned most of the county down before a civil war erupts:
- Why are South Africans burning schools in Limpopo? (https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-36225502)
- Why Cape Town's trains are on fire in South Africa (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-45990981)
- South African university set ablaze in student protest (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/25/south-african-...)
Burning their country down seem to be their national passtime, or at least while they are not lynching foreigners. But I'm sure one of them will come along to blame the west for this also.
Surely the righteous West could’ve freed those slaves and not fought to keep them for centuries?
If you read the wiki link further, you’ll see that they paid Africans to find slaves, because they couldn’t survive on their own - amidst warring tribes and diseases. They would transport slaves as cargo, resell them throughout the West, indenture them in plantations and factories, make a racial caste that would propagate for centuries, mistreat them and kill them, and so on. It’s absolutely insane to frame colonialism in a callous manner such as you have, in 2021!
> Because I can all but guarantee that the Shell paid money
This should be investigated by the Western govs that Shell works with. Everyone knows this is happening all the time. How are they allowed to bribe poor countries, in the first place?
> you are getting nothing in return, then ask yourself where that money is going
Politicians in the West are also equally corrupt, on all sides, and none of their earnings are distributed to the people. What kind of weird argument is this?
> I'm South African, always have been
Doesn’t matter. You still seem to misunderstand colonialism’s effects, and post modern colonialism as it stands today.
Where did I claim that the West was not at fault?
(The rest of your argument relies on this sort of strawman so there's no need to respond to it).
Your whole post relies on blaming SA for what happened to them, using their fellow SAfricans who exploited them (alongside the West) as a fall-guy. That’s a very unfair characterisation of colonialism and its modern effects, like I claimed in my post.
Further, similarly to the way you dismissed the West for purchasing slaves, you skipped over Shell getting away with bribing the poorer previously colonised country.
No, I did not claim that, I am saying that the voters in South Africa are voting in policies based on color and racial lines, not based on their self-interest.
> Further, similarly to the way you dismissed the West for purchasing slaves,
I did not dismiss the West for purchasing slaves (I said that they should not have), I merely pointed out that native Africans were enslaving their neighbours (and worse) well before they started selling their slaves to the West.
> you skipped over Shell getting away with bribing the poorer previously colonised country.
I did not;
1) No accusation was made that Shell was bribing anyone,
and
2) I pointed out very clearly that mining rights are usually SOLD to the highest bidder by the state. If the state does not then use that money for its citizens, you can hardly blame the source of the money. Since the state is legitimately elected by the voters, the voters have only themselves to blame when their leaders (whom have been in charge for the last 30 years almost) take all the money.
This is something that bothers me too. The west seems to be totally ignoring China's activities in sub-Saharan Africa.
> The west excludes us from global economic activity all the goddamned time.
And yet you fail to cite one example of this. I don't see how this is true, but by all means, maybe try again and cite an actual example. And just for clarity, an example of restricting travel in a god damned pandemic is not an example of "systemic economic exclusion", it may be an ill conceived policy choice, but the west is also not responsible for your pathetically low vaccination rate which likely helped the new variant come into existence.
> And hey, look at that, Shell is busy sonar blasting our coastline for fucking oil. Great. You think we're gonna see any of that money? Not a chance.
Definitely the voters who vote for the politicians who license and allow this have nothing to do with this, right?
> It's also worth noting I'm a white south africa.
Nope, not worth noting.
I’m not from Africa nor am I from America so I don’t think I have a horse in this race but I think this is the sort of rhetoric that the guy is critiquing. It has a clearly skewed understanding of the power differentials of the pandemic and then blames the nations with less power for being able to pull less strings.
Firstly, it makes total sense to me that preventing travel from a region just because it discovered a variant, when that region is apparently world reknowned in its ability to study infectious disease, is a policy born out of ignorant xenophobia. There’s no evidence that this thing started in the regions that were banned or that omicron hasn’t already spread internationally at that point, only that one of the nations with a world class variant detection system sounded the alarm.
Secondly, damn are we really gonna blame colonized countries on low vaccination rates when vaccine access is still being hoarded, it’s production still close sourced, and antivax movement is still strong in western nations?
A stupid but justifiable policy from the past 2 weeks cannot be a good example of why South Africa is spiraling the toilet. Sorry. Pick better examples. South Africa has been spiraling the toilet way before COVID.
> Secondly, damn are we really gonna blame colonized countries on low vaccination rates when vaccine access is still being hoarded, it’s production still close sourced, and antivax movement is still strong in western nations?
Who exactly is South Africa colonized by currently? And further:
- EXCLUSIVE South Africa delays COVID vaccine deliveries as inoculations slow ( https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-... )
- South Africa Asks J&J, Pfizer to Stop Sending Vaccines “It is entirely owing to hesitancy,” Crisp said. “We have plenty vaccine and capacity but hesitancy is a challenge. Unfortunately it means that many unvaccinated people may have an unhappy festive season and will possibly result in hospitals being congested.” (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-24/s-africa-...)
- South Africa's low vaccination rate is NOT a supply problem and vaccine hesitancy is stifling demand so much that it had to delay delivery of doses, say experts - but the rest of Africa still needs more doses ( https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10248699/Low-vaccin... )
Let's not pretend like South Africa has a vaccine supply shortage, because that would be a lie.
My understanding is the only reason SA even sounded the alarm was that they were smart enough to proactively be scanning for variants aggressively. They frankly did the world a favor and the world responded by assuming those poor African fucks are gonna dirty everyone with their disease.
Do you not get how viruses work? Many western nations has or had travel restrictions from other western nations.