More than 50% of black women remain unemployed.
Her shirt embroidered with the logo of fast-moving consumer goods company, *Nokuthula’s violated body and neck marked with strangle imprints was discovered in the veld by a passer-by, not long after she was killed. Nokuthula was on her usual 7km walk from home to the main taxi rank in Katlehong, heading to her place of employment.
She made her trip about two weeks ago, but never reached her place of work. Nokuthula belongs to the most economically vulnerable group in South Africa. Her tragic collision with death comes just two weeks prior to the release of bleak figures by Statistics South Africa on unemployment. These were preceded by the release of crime stats by the South African Police Service, confirming an increase in contact crimes by 11.6%, including murder and sexual offences. Nokuthula is a glaring illustration of how institutional failures harm millions of black women.
“Unemployment among African women remains over 50%”. This headline could never attract readers and listeners in the mainstream media, because society has normalised the plight of black women being poverty, unemployment, gender-based violence and other grinding socio-economic conditions. The bland headlines from Stats SA data show that the unemployment rate dropped to 32.7% in quarter four of 2022.
The unemployment rate according to the expanded definition of unemployment, which includes those who have given up looking for work, decreased by 0.5 of a percentage point to 42.6% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
We have become accustomed to the “quarter to quarter numbers game” without disaggregating the statistics and understanding the people who make up these numbers. These cosmetic truths by economists and statisticians blind us to the genesis of the deep dysfunction characterising the state of the nation. The tragic murder of Nokuthula was a stark reminder of the people robbed by the reality behind these statistical facades. Let’s disaggregate these statistics using Nokuthula’s untimely death.
The first failure was that of local government. This sphere is the most perverse demonstration of how a hollowed-out state affects the daily lives of people.
The route Nokuthula walked and where she met her fate is home to one of the failed legacies of the 2010 World Cup. It’s a skeleton of what was once a soccer field. Now overgrown with weeds and bushes, it has become a danger hazard which the residents have been complaining about to the municipality for years. It is an eroded parasitic state. Local government is expected to deliver services but could not cut grass because the supply chain process is marred with corruption and hindered by the internal politics of outsourcing. The chairperson of the South African Communist party, Blade Nzimande, coined the term tenderpreneurship to describe this practice. This simple service would have ensured visibility on Nokuthula’s route.
The second failure is the power outages that have become an abnormal norm. Eskom’s failures have had a severe effect on crime in people. Risking her life, Nokuthula started her journey on foot in the early hours of the morning and relied on street lights. Her murder coincided with load-shedding at a time that disregards workers who start their day before 6am.
The third failure has to be that of rail infrastructure. Nokuthula walked from home to the taxi rank, whereas in the not-so-distant past a train passed through the area. This allowed many like her to catch a train, which was far more affordable than taxis, to commute to industrial areas such as Wadeville, Isando, Germiston and Cleveland. Evidently an underpaid worker, as many are in the fast-moving goods sector, working class people risk their lives to mitigate the cost of transport. Catching a local taxi to the main taxi rank will eat from an already stretched wage.
Another failure is the government’s inability to contain inflation. Wages in South Africa do not meet the cost of living. Many like Nokuthula must find cost mitigating ways to survive the tide of capitalism. While the Competition Commission has been hard at work exposing corporate cartels responsible for price fixing and overcharging in the food sector, this has not reflected in the price of food. It becomes a compliance exercise where corporations who can afford it, pay fines and subsequently recover the cost from the pocket of the consumer.
The Eskom reality has also exacerbated inflation. With the cost of food and transport on the rise, Nokuthula ended up taking this risky route to work.
Then again, what is the value of Nokuthula’s life in the mainstream economy? Millions like her are scavenging for subsistence in the second economy, as former president Thabo Mbeki once alluded. An economy of survivalists, feeding off the scattered morsels of the first economy. Nokuthula’s preventable death illustrates the impudence of politicians, tenderpreneurs and corporations who use the corruption template of the previous regime. It shows how infrastructural and institutional failure harms the lives of millions of people, now passively normalised.
Nokuthula’s death is a reflection of the ramifications of a failed state, a parasitic government drowning in a whirlwind of governance morass and ethical erosion. Her story demonstrates that most black women who find employment also find themselves in precarious conditions. This makes a mockery of what the ANC theorises in its strategy and tactics. — that black working-class women should form the primary motive for change as those triple oppressed on the basis of race, class and gender. Yet here we are on the eve of commemorating 30 years of the democratic dispensation with “no longer alarming figures” showing that more than 50% of black women remain unemployed.
Sara Smit, in her 22 February 2023 column in the Mail & Guardian, headlined “Jobs, dreams and why we should care”, affirms the survivalist conundrum caused by our economic crisis which robs us of the ethos of humanity. She states: “South Africa’s economic crisis has robbed us of so much more than just jobs. It has also limited the breadth of our dreams and deprived us of our capacity for care. These are two underestimated elements of a healthy economy, which ought to influence labour-related reforms.”
Who cares about Nokuthula’s suffering and inhumane conditions endured? She is replaceable, and a new shirt with an embroidered logo awaits another new worker to continue with production.
* This is a pseudonym.
Gugu Ndima is a social commentator.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.