Safety Vests

ile de Grace, hauled out and being spray-cleaned

One of the blessings of our trip has been the chance to get to know people of other countries and cultures, something we looked forward to as we planned our trip.  Since we lived on our boat, and relied on local transportation, shopped for food, and generally interacted with people working in the local business infrastructure the locals we’ve spent time and interacted with on our trip have been the people that work in boat yards, the people that drive taxis, the people running small vegetable stalls, and the people using public transportation.  It has not been a “business trip,” so we never really spent time with business leaders, and it has not been a typical 1-2 week vacation, where we might have otherwise spent more time with hotel, restaurant, and tourist attraction staff.  For the most part, by circumstance and preference, we’ve found ourselves “blending in” to the local culture, the local businesses, and the local workforce.

In a country like South Africa, where we’ve lived for three months, these day-to-day interactions fill our storehouse of experience with extended exposure to the manner in which nearly all humankind is forced to live day-to-day on a subsistence diet, eking out the bare minimum income needed to survive, and yet, against all odds, manage to retain a sense of optimism about their future. 

Here are a few vignettes and reflections on this, using South Africa as the prism.  It is important to note that the economic circumstances and opportunities of most of the poorer South Africans are measurably better than many of the people we’ve met and spent time with in the French Polynesian islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Indonesia. That said, South Africa is a country of polarized economies:  most whites and a few blacks enjoy first-world income, wealth and amenities, while nearly everyone else struggles at the nexus of poverty, subsistence, and the absence of opportunity.

Parking guide at Table Mountain

The first time we parked a car in South Africa, we were taken under the wing of a guy wearing a safety vest, gesturing madly that you are to park here, or here, or no, over there.  We didn’t know what to make of this, so we parked where we were told, and promptly heard him ask us for 5 rand or 10 rand or 20 rand – “entirely up to you, my friend.”  Being reasonably astute in these matters, and frankly, having heard the many horror stories about crime in South Africa (more on this later), we paid up … and returned a few hours later to find the same gentleman there, ready to help us back out of the space and direct us out of the lot.  We asked the next local sailor: “What’s with the guys in the parking lots?”

It turns out that in a country of 25 percent unemployment – surely an understated rate in the urban areas, and much higher among young people –  jobs are virtually unobtainable. Thus, a business is born:  self-appointed parking monitors.  Except for parking in sketchy areas at night, parked cars in South Africa are as safe as anywhere in the world.  And I might add, I would hesitate parking my car in any sketchy area in any city in the world.  So these monitors are little more than a form of private welfare for private work – a little income re-distribution on a decentralized basis.  In a country where semi-skilled employed labor makes 100-200 rand a day – that’s about US$12-24 a day – helping 20-30 cars a day at 5 rand a car yields a respectable income.  I’ve come to be happy to give a 5 rand piece to these monitors, but I must admit it took some getting used to.  

In Cape Town proper, the arrangement has become more formalized, with the City hiring parking fee collectors for each side of each half-block of street.  You park your car, and someone wearing – yes – a safety vest comes walking over with a small handheld printer, and voila – you pay them 5 rand, and they give you a slip of paper.  No meters, no parking stations – just more jobs for the local government to take credit for.

On the highways, we notice men and women in – yes – safety vests standing on the shoulders underneath the overpasses, protected from the summer sun.  At first, I thought they were homeland security types – in case suspected terrorists came to photograph or bomb the highway bridge.  Alas – nothing nearly so paranoid.  These were road safety monitors – ready to phone in any breakdowns or accidents.  More jobs.

Jobs are a primary focus of many of the township programs – and seem universally centered on teaching people the arts of ceramics, wire figurine making, or, bizarrely, the construction of origami-like birds and other objects using recycled aluminum Coke and beer cans.  Apparently the tourists can’t get enough of these kinds of objets d’arte, because we see these training programs and local “entrepreneur” shops everywhere.  Jobs.

A cleaning crew in Langa township

We also notice that the country is remarkably litter-free, including roads and highways that as often as not border the townships, with their tin roofed shacks, and the even-poorer “temporary settlements” – unsanctioned squatters’ camps.  During the day we see the reason:  groups of 20-30 people wearing – yes – safety vests and carrying bags, patrolling the shoulders and grassy strips of the highways around Cape Town. 

Like everywhere else we’ve visited, the local workers in South Africa take their jobs very seriously – parking monitors, road safety monitors, gas station attendants, toll collectors, trash sweepers.  Like everywhere and everyone else we’ve seen and met on this trip, people want to work, to provide for the families, and build a better future.  In townships especially, independent businesses are everywhere – a barbershop housed in a former shipping container; a fruit and vegetable stall aside a roughly-tended patch of poor soil; a car washing service using buckets of water drawn from a local well.  Township residents – especially those with steady incomes – make a point of patronizing these businesses; it’s understood that patronizing local businesses benefits everyone.

Kimberly diamond mine, entirely
 hand dug -- millions of tons

One of the dominant job sectors in South Africa is the mining industry – diamonds, platinum, gold, coal, etc., which collectively contribute about 15 percent to the GDP – making South Africa as dependent on its resources as Australia and Canada.  In conditions that are no doubt improved from the slave-like apartheid era, tens of thousands of miners work the rock, as industry takes advantage of extremely low wage rates and abundant natural resources.  We visited South Africa’s original diamond mine in Kimberly, where the DeBeers company offered a surprisingly candid perspective on its shameful history of mining practices; we did not visit a working mine.  In fact, in Botswana and Namibia, we know that once you drive a car into a diamond mine, it can never leave.  

The DeBeers Company and other mining operations, as well as other labor-intensive industries, have always relied heavily on native African “black” men and the Malay and Indian “colored” men for labor, and thus the creation of townships – to house the men-only communities.  Pass laws restricted movement of black and colored South Africans, assuring continuous and reliable supplies of labor.  Women and children were forced by the white regime to remain in their so-called “Homelands.” After the end of apartheid, families were re-united, and most chose to join their breadwinning husbands and fathers in the townships, so that now these huge and densely populated townships are home to the families and extended families of these original workers, nearly all of whom struggle to put food on the table.

People here want jobs – but Jennifer and I have noticed, as we walk through the craft shops and bazaars that the South African capitalist zeal pales in comparison to what we experienced in Vietnam and Thailand – what we now see as ground zero in the entrepreneurial movement.  In Cape Town, shop owners and craft producers take a relaxed attitude to would-be purchasers – we are free to wander and browse and look with nary a glance or word of encouragement to buy.  In Ho Chi Minh City, we were almost assaulted as we entered a store, and soon grew wary of even glancing sideways as we walked down a street.  On the other hand, compared to the laidback “just enough” lifestyles of most of the South Pacific islanders, like those in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, South Africans are workaholics.

Walking to school

I should also note that South Africa and the people we’ve talked to are maniacal about education.  Mornings, the rural roads and highways are filled with students in uniforms walking – often for kilometers – to school.  Recently, there were near-riots at a university as parents clamored to get their kids admitted and enrolled.  Obviously, the long-term solution to South Africa’s economic challenges is education – and then retaining the newly-educated in-country, rather than losing these leaders of the future to other countries – like the US – with higher wage scales and income potential.  This is a huge challenge.

So with all that as background, imagine my disbelief when I walked up to a pizza shop in Simon’s Town on a Saturday night, and ordered a pizza – only to be told by the counter person that the cook didn’t want to cook a pizza since it was too much work.  Wow.  I left without ordering a simpler meal, but spent the balance of the night reflecting on what South Africa – and yes, the United States – struggles with:  providing enough jobs for a nation eager to work.  Here, with skyrocketing unemployment rates, the challenges can seem insurmountable, but the country seems to be grinding its way forward, relying on harvesting its natural resources, international investment, government jobs, local entrepreneurship, and yes, a steady supply of safety vests.