Work in the Township

The official unemployment rate of South Africa is 25%. This means that one person in four is jobless, something that has to be considered a huge catastrophe for any state.

The celebrated growth of the South African economy has been highly unequal in distribution and this is easy to observe when entering the township of Langa that is crowded with unsatisfied people not participating in the economic mainstream and that lack any prospect of getting a formal job in any future. Here, ANC has failed providing jobs for ten thousands of its citizens, and the unemployment rate is more likely to land around sixty, or even seventy percentage. The gap between poor and rich remains enormous in the country with the socio-economic increase in the townships since the end of the apartheid era being minimal, if any at all. Many people here have given up the search for work, and Langa is left poor and crowded with people of different ages drifting around without any stimulation or inspiration.

No human society can exist without work. Work structures the way people live and make contact with social reality and affects the individual's social status and mind. Without work it’s impossible to satisfy our cultural and material needs, but we have to “do something” to earn our living, something that requires some kind of effort. However, being unemployed is more than being without an income, work is also important for the psychological health and can help developing faculties of the human mind like consciousness, reasoning and perception. Mental accomplishment is fundamental for everyone and the lack of achievement can lead to depression and loss of self-esteem which often spurs social problems such as crime and xenophobia. Unemployment is therefore causing both physical and mental poverty.

In most developed countries there is only one economy. This is the so called formal economy which consists of businesses that are monitored by a government, that pay taxes and can adhere to union regulations. South Africa has two economies, one formal and one informal, and in Langa, it is the informal sector that rules. Working in the informal sector means that you’re self-employed and supervising yourself; you decide when to start work and when to go home for the day. This might sound nice for some ears, many people dream of being independent and self-made and many workers within the informal economy would never want to change their jobs for something in the formal sector. However, there are downsides with working in the informal sector as well, for example the lack of safety and reliability that you get from a monthly pay check.

As in most developing and developed countries, economic opportunities in South Africa lies in the urban areas, and this is the big reason for the rapid urbanisation and progressive migration to the townships outside of the bigger cities. Even though Langa is considered to be “full” and without any space for new arrivals, more shackles still pop up every week meaning that more people need to find jobs. In order to make a living here, innovation and creativity is most likely necessary and everything has to be seen as an opportunity. I find this fascinating and I want to give the reader the chance to get to know some of these people that through self-entrepreneurship and desperation managed to pull through and turn nothing into something.