SA unemployment crisis: Some walk 15km in search for daily piece jobs

Early every morning, more than 30 unemployed men from Mamelodi walk more than 15km to the open park in Meyerspark in Pretoria East, where they sit on the wooden fences and wait to get a job for the day.

Yesterday morning, a group of about 11 men spoke to The Citizen about the struggles of unemployment after Stats SA released the results of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the second quarter of the year.

Because the men felt ashamed being unemployed, they agreed to speak anonymously.

“We are here because we are looking for a job,” one said.

He has been struggling for three years to find a permanent job and has resorted to coming to the park in the hope of making money for the day.

Some of the men arrive at the park as early as 6am to ensure they get selected by random bakkies that stop daily to pick up labourers.

“If we don’t get the job, we go back home,” another man added. Because many walked from Mamelodi, they sleep under the trees during the day while waiting to make a buck.

However, because the park has no toilet facilities, water, or shelter from the sun, most men were hungry, thirsty and broke.

“It happens that we don’t make money and have to go without food,” one said.

The men said they were paid anything from R120 to R200 a day for from hard labour, to gardening, painting, or tiling.

“Sometimes we fight over the bakkies that come here, it depends,” one admitted.

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If they were given their dream jobs they would love to be qualified carpenters, electricians, and welders, the group, aged between 28 and 47, agreed.

They said despite having CVs, they were still struggling to secure permanent employment.

Lovemore Munyanyiri, a 36-year-old Zimbabwean father of three residing in Mamelodi, has been working as a daily wager since 2016.

Every day, Munyanyiri who paints and does waterproofing, parks his car with his handwritten signs and paintbrushes displayed on the roof of the car on a street corner in the Meyerpark where he patiently waits for his next job.

“The jobs are like the weather, sometimes there are no jobs, it’s like winter season, then jobs are less and down.”

“But now the jobs are starting to pick up again until December,” Munyanyiri said.

The day wages were also Munyanyiri’s only income to support his family.