An ancillary objective of the recent #FeesMustFall protests – apart from free university education – was an end to universities outsourcing cleaning and maintenance contracts.
South Africa's real unemployment rate is close to 40%, and not the "official", but misleading, rate of 25%. Its labour absorption rate is 43%, i.e., the percentage of adults of working age in formal employment.
Millions of unemployed, retirees, state pensioners and grant beneficiaries are also surviving on zero rand a month, or low amounts (except the few who have substantial savings that generate large annuities like R5 000 a month). They, too, have expenses and costs. And yet, we rarely hear about them, or if we do, it passes almost unnoticed and certainly not accompanied by “outrage” at their situation.
This is the problem with sensational reporting – that is, one that plays on the emotions and suppressed guilt of the hand-wringing, liberal middle-class. The far more serious, but frequently ignored, problem is that the poor – those who live in poverty, without any income and chance of a better life – and unemployed have no voice in this country and are not represented by anyone, except hard-pressed NGOs.
We know a poverty-stricken family of seven – single mother, two sons, daughter and the latter's three young children. Except the mother who has occasional char work, currently about R30 a day, none have ever had work.
The sons had to leave school – the older boy in matric – when the family were evicted a few years ago from their backyard shack. Half the family ended up on the street. They presently live in another ramshackle abode, but as far as we understand, the young men (about 21 and 23) are expected to work as labourers without pay in return for free lodging.
The mother has not reached 60, so cannot apply for a state pension. Until very recently the daughter (early 30s) only received half the total childcare grant due to her because the balance was automatically deducted for "electricity and airtime" that she had no knowledge of.
A while back the daughter was excited about a job offer as a packer – her first job ever – but that fell through when they insisted she first have a tax number before they employed her – this to a poorly educated person who has no idea how such things work.
I guess the company couldn't be bothered to assist the young woman on the small, first step out of poverty. As I see it, the family survive without hope.
These are real stories of people in genuinely dire conditions that ought to stir everyone to outrage, and not the manufactured outraged about employed but “low-paid” university, mine or factory workers or protesting university students, no matter how sympathetic we think their cause is.
Previously published in the Cape Argus November 5.
The Cape Argus ran an article about Patrick Maqhasha, a contract cleaner at UCT, who only had R100 left after expenses from his R5 000 a month salary. A follow-up story, ‘Support pours in for R100 UCT cleaner’ (November 2), reported offers of monetary and other assistance and outrage about his situation.
I’m puzzled by this reaction. It’s not that he has little money left after expenses – that's very common. But at the public's outpouring of assistance for him in particular when his reported situation is bad, yes, but not as desperate as that of millions of the invisible poor around the country.
I'm not unsympathetic to Maqhasha. However, as an employed person, even at R60 000 a year – the going rate for a cleaner – he is one of the lucky ones to have a job.
I’m puzzled by this reaction. It’s not that he has little money left after expenses – that's very common. But at the public's outpouring of assistance for him in particular when his reported situation is bad, yes, but not as desperate as that of millions of the invisible poor around the country.
I'm not unsympathetic to Maqhasha. However, as an employed person, even at R60 000 a year – the going rate for a cleaner – he is one of the lucky ones to have a job.
South Africa's real unemployment rate is close to 40%, and not the "official", but misleading, rate of 25%. Its labour absorption rate is 43%, i.e., the percentage of adults of working age in formal employment.
Millions of unemployed, retirees, state pensioners and grant beneficiaries are also surviving on zero rand a month, or low amounts (except the few who have substantial savings that generate large annuities like R5 000 a month). They, too, have expenses and costs. And yet, we rarely hear about them, or if we do, it passes almost unnoticed and certainly not accompanied by “outrage” at their situation.
This is the problem with sensational reporting – that is, one that plays on the emotions and suppressed guilt of the hand-wringing, liberal middle-class. The far more serious, but frequently ignored, problem is that the poor – those who live in poverty, without any income and chance of a better life – and unemployed have no voice in this country and are not represented by anyone, except hard-pressed NGOs.
We know a poverty-stricken family of seven – single mother, two sons, daughter and the latter's three young children. Except the mother who has occasional char work, currently about R30 a day, none have ever had work.
The sons had to leave school – the older boy in matric – when the family were evicted a few years ago from their backyard shack. Half the family ended up on the street. They presently live in another ramshackle abode, but as far as we understand, the young men (about 21 and 23) are expected to work as labourers without pay in return for free lodging.
The mother has not reached 60, so cannot apply for a state pension. Until very recently the daughter (early 30s) only received half the total childcare grant due to her because the balance was automatically deducted for "electricity and airtime" that she had no knowledge of.
A while back the daughter was excited about a job offer as a packer – her first job ever – but that fell through when they insisted she first have a tax number before they employed her – this to a poorly educated person who has no idea how such things work.
I guess the company couldn't be bothered to assist the young woman on the small, first step out of poverty. As I see it, the family survive without hope.
These are real stories of people in genuinely dire conditions that ought to stir everyone to outrage, and not the manufactured outraged about employed but “low-paid” university, mine or factory workers or protesting university students, no matter how sympathetic we think their cause is.
Previously published in the Cape Argus November 5.
Comments
Post a Comment