Army+of+the+unemployable,+Neva+Makgetla,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 03 November 2006
=Army of the unemployable offers chance for policy=


 * Neva Makgetla**

THE newspaper seller in my neighbourhood is an engaging 35-year-old man who, in his spare time, takes law courses at Unisa. He can only manage one or two a year, because at dawn every day he has to be on the corner, in rain or sunshine, and freezing in the winter.

Still, he proudly shows off his results and, when the university once more demands fees, occasionally asks his customers for extra support.

This looks like a textbook story of emerging capitalism. But let’s not kid ourselves. Sipho is not at all typical of the hawkers’ economy, which is mostly grimly hopeless, poor and overworked.

Analysing the lives of hawkers as reflected in the Labour Force Survey for September 2005 helps explain why SA’s informal sector is so small: ultimately, it can only attract the desperate, the otherwise “unemployable” who are still paying for our oppressive history.

Almost a million people worked in retail outside of stores last year. That means close to one worker in 13 is a hawker. In the informal sector the figure rises to one in three. Two-thirds are officially self-employed, but many effectively work for their suppliers.

Hawkers are found disproportionately in the former homeland areas, where they account for a third of total employment. The former homelands account for under a third of the total labour force and a quarter of national employment, but they support more than 40% of all hawkers.

So, is this a profession you’d want to enter? More than half of all hawkers earn under R500 a month, and 80% get less than R1000. In contrast, only one in five of all employed people earns less than R500 a month, and about a third get under R1000. Virtually no hawkers enjoy pension or health benefits.

Moreover, the two-thirds who are self-employed are not covered by the labour laws. To use Samir Amin’s concept, they are free to exploit themselves: they have no right to paid leave, severance packages, overtime or weekend pay, or even occupational health and safety.

And then there are the conditions of work. Most hawkers have to do without shelter from the weather, and have only limited access to other facilities — water, sanitation, food — while at work.

Don’t think this is a casual job. Most hawkers have extraordinarily long hours. Two out of five hawkers work more than 60 hours a week, against one in seven in the formal sector.

Given these conditions, the demography of the industry is unfortunately predictable. Some 96% are African. Two-thirds are women, compared with just 37% of the formal labour force. In the former homeland areas, almost three-quarters of hawkers are women.

Women hawkers face a particularly hard market, earning next to nothing despite the long hours. Two-thirds get under R500 a month. In the former homeland areas, that share rises to almost three-quarters.

Only agriculture and domestic workers have lower education levels than hawkers. The average hawker has eight years of education, compared to 10 years for formal employees and unemployed people.

Moreover, one hawker in seven says he or she has no formal education at all — almost twice the rate for the labour force as a whole.

In short, hawkers are drawn from the group many economists see as unable to participate in the economy — poorly educated, often rural, mostly women. They scrape a living as hawkers because they have no choices.

Hawkers get virtually no support from the state. Some municipalities provide some shelter and sites, but many also chase people off the streets in well-off communities. National programmes target almost exclusively small and medium enterprise, ignoring micro enterprise altogether.

In theory, hawkers could be helped by marketing and procurement co-ops. That would reduce their dependence on middlemen, who often charge high markups, and improve access to supplies and sales venues.

Such a strategy would, however, require state institutions and systems designed to empower people who are mostly unorganised, scattered and poorly educated. In contrast, our economics agencies were historically designed to respond to entrepreneurs with much higher levels of qualification and links to the formal economy.


 * Makgetla is sector strategies co-ordinator in the Presidency. This article reflects her personal views only.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A309139**

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