The situation has changed for foreigners since 2007 when I relocated to South Africa. In my first week, I went to three different interviews and I signed my employment offer letter on the 8th day of arriving in South Africa. At that time many corporates could still employ foreigners without IDs. After the 2008 financial crisis I started noticing changes as many corporates no longer employed foreigners without IDs.
Some companies will now only employ a person who became a citizen prior to 1994. The situation extends to many fields for example it is very difficult for a foreigner to secure articles training contracts that are required for a person to become a registered lawyer or to become a Chartered Accountant. The situation is different in the unskilled and semi-skilled sectors. It is no coincidence that Minister Tito Mboweni specifically mentioned waiters.
In Zimbabwe civil servants currently earn around R1 000.00. A farm worker in South Africa who earns a gazetted monthly wage of just over R3 000 is earning more than what the Zimbabwean government pays its doctors. Due to this desperation Zimbabweans will come and outbid South Africans in the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs such as truck drivers, domestic employees, supermarket and hardware workers, security guards, waiters, petrol attendants, casual construction workers, informal jobs etc.
As I went through social media comments after what Minister Mboweni said yesterday, many Zimbabweans were saying employers prefer Zimbabweans and Malawians for those jobs because they are hard workers. I don’t agree with that, before we had influx of foreigners South Africans were doing those jobs for years. The only issue now is that there are foreigners willing to accept unfavorable employment conditions and very low pay. In Zimbabwe when the economy was doing well especially in the 80s, Mozambicans and Malawians used to be employed mainly as farm workers, plantation workers, domestic workers and mine workers. The world over menial jobs are snapped up by desperate and mainly undocumented immigrants.
The gazetted minimum wage of domestic workers is over R3 000 per month yet thousands of Zimbabweans are employed in South Africa earning R1 500 and working very long hours and at times going for weeks without off days. If you go to a number of Spar shops the situation is the same. In many trucking companies especially those that do cross borders they mainly employ foreigners because they are the only ones desperate to accept harsh employment conditions of working long hours and being paid mainly commission.
In restaurants waiters are not paid a salary by their employers instead they survive on the tips paid by clients. I found out that if you included the tip when you swipe your card, the restaurant will not pay the waiter the full tip and now I carry cash to pay the waiter directly and then swipe the rest for the meal. Waiters also work very long hours. It’s no secret that very few South Africans will accept those exploitive employment conditions in the restaurant industry.
It is illegal to employ foreigners in the security guards industry, however there are loopholes that enable foreigners to be employed illegally in the industry at very low salaries and exploitive conditions. Some security companies employ foreigners for wages as low as R1 500 per month yet the official wages is almost 3 times that. Security guards are supposed to work 4 days, 12 hour shifts and rest for another 4 days. Foreigners are made to work continuously without taking any off days.
The Labour Relations Act specifically covers all employees including illegal immigrants, if you have time you can study the case Discovery Health Ltd v CCMA & others. According to section 23 of The Constitution everyone has the right to fair labour practices. Most illegal immigrants are not aware of their rights so they endure exploitation and by accepting rock bottom remuneration and exploitive employment conditions they disadvantage black South Africans who have to compete for such benefits thereby increasing resentment further. I once read a story of a Limpopo commercial farmer, who would employ illegal immigrants as farm workers and when it came to paying their wages, he would cause them to be deported without pay.
You begin to see why there is resentment towards foreigners in the townships and informal sectors. Poor South Africans doesn’t have much bargaining power because there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented African immigrants ready to replace them at less than 50% of the gazetted wages.
The resentment also creeps in to the middle class. In many big corporates they have to follow employment equity legislation, there is very few foreigners employed as compared to the sectors I mentioned above. Promotions in the corporate sectors also normally follow employment equity. Because there are very few immigrants it means a few immigrants also rise through the ranks of management. The biggest beneficiary of employment equity legislation has been White women and Indians and not Africans and Coloureds citizens.
About 10 years ago at work a Zimbabwean was promoted into management, I was passing by a black South African lady who was then our diversity chairperson. The words she used to describe that promotion was full of hate, she said the appointment didn’t count. I understand why she felt that ways,26 years after attaining political freedom, blacks and Coloureds are still not well represented in in most sectors of the economy except maybe in State owned enterprises and public service. It seems to me she would have stomached that appointment going to a white male instead of an African immigrant.
Last year there was an incident at University of Cape Town where Dr Shose Kessi a black Tanzanian lady was voted as a new Dean, a black South African Dr Lwazi Lushaba voiced his disappointment that a black South African lady had lost that appointment to a foreigner and only got 27% of the vote. Dr Lushaba was reprimanded and was accused as being Xenophobic. I think we need to look into that from another angle. The pace of transformation has been very slow in these previously white Universities and now this appointment now goes to African immigrants at the expense of black South Africans.
Around 2014-2015 during another phase of Xenophobic attacks, a workmate who is married to a Zimbabwean man was visibly upset coming from the balcony during her lunch break, she was mentioning her husband’s name saying where do they want me to put him. I then asked my then boss what had happened, it turned out that some of the workmates had mentioned that all foreigners must go back to their countries of origin. Being married to a Zimbabwean that lunchtime conversation made her quite upset.
In early 2013 whilst waiting for my permanent resident permit, my family had gone back to Zimbabwe and I was considering going back home for good if we did not get our permits. I would go to see my family in Zimbabwe every two weeks. On this Sunday afternoon I was given a lift by a gentleman from Musina to Pretoria. The guy was coming from inspecting his franchise store in Musina, he told me he was director in a government department. He started telling me how he hated Nigerians and every time he sees a project proposal with a South African partnering a Nigerian on his desk he doesn’t approve it. I figured out he hated other Africans as well.
South Africa is experiencing its worst unemployment levels. The unemployment of black youth according to Stats SA is over 53%, so it makes sense that it has to prioritise its citizens, now people openly blame foreigners for crime and taking away their jobs. Some accuse foreigners of taking South African women. I remember in the 2017 Xenophobic attacks, people marched from townships to Sunnyside were many foreigners stay, people were querying why foreigners stayed in the flats. Police had to intervene before violence broke out between foreigners and citizens.
Former Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba would periodically accuse African migrants for various crimes and he has a huge following from black South Africans who ordinarily wouldn’t vote DA. I expect that Mashaba’s political movement will be anti African immigrants and he will be continuing his rhetoric against Africans immigrants . As the ANC government fight to win back Gauteng Metros things are beginning to change. Many Zimbabweans who were employed as teachers by the government has had their contracts terminated.
There is talk of putting quotas on the number of foreigners who can be employed by trucking companies, restaurants, Spar Shops, commercial farms. There is push to have Spaza shops owned by citizens. There was talk of amending Refugees laws to take away the right to work from asylum seekers. The outlook for African immigrants is very bleak until the South African economy starts to grow again. I hope the South African government can still renew the 200 000 Zimbabwean special dispensation permits that are expiring next year. The current economic situation cannot afford to absorb such a large number back into the system.
No doubt Zimbabwean migrants are watching all this with a lot of uneasiness. Some will hope for the best, however hope is not a strategy. People need to plan. For a long time Zimbabweans in South Africa seemed to think the situation in Zimbabwe doesn’t affect them and have not been going home to vote, that must change.http://kanyokad.blogspot.com/2019/08/as-zimbabweans-do-we-deserve-our.html
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