Talk:Piz Fora

Nature of Work in South Africa

INTRODUCTION South Africans face a great deal of unemployment this is mainly because as stated by Edwards (2001) the 28.63 % decline in mining and quarrying employment as well the 2.6 % fall in manufacturing employment. South Africa has implemented policies that seek to alleviate the problem of unemployment namely the GEAR project (Growth employment and redistribution) which the benefits were not significant hence there is no tangible growth within employment itself. According to Amos (2009) black people were denied job learning opportunities in the apartheid regime and as a result this has contributed to skills shortage, which this means that black people occupy positions that have low income or they are unemployed. South Africa is largely dependent on labour since the economy of the country relies on mining, fishery and farming. Even though rights protecting employees have billed in the constitution people are still exploited and an example proving this is the 2012 incidence were 35 workers in Marikana were killed for marching. It is important to understand the status quo when evaluating the changes that have taken place. This essay will talk discuss how the nature of work has evolved from the apartheid era until this point, it will further carefully examine empirical evidence in relation to what is currently happening and comparative analysis will be used to distinguish the nature, role of power and the impact that the state has on employment looking at the Apartheid Regime and current liberal democracy. 2. LITERATURE 2.1. Causes of the formation of informal sectors Farooq (1992) States are in many developing countries, urbanisation plays a very big role in the increasing of the informal sector, what is important about what Farooq says is that a lot of people want to be part of a civilisation that occurs in the urbanised places in which they end up working jobs that are underpaying and being exploited, this exploitation is not only detrimental to the economy of the country but it is equally harmful to those who are workers. Farooq’s work is important in such sense that it allows one to understand how urbanisation is a contributing factor in the nature of work that individuals end up doing. 2.1. Human Exploitation in the work place Control and Exploitation are used to grow companies and gain profit, this done at the expense of other people. Machava and Polzer (2006:166-179) state that continued availability of a vulnerable labour force has meant that some labour markets, such as commercial agriculture, domestic work and to some extent, mining, are able to continue circumventing and ignoring rights-based labour practices. This has consequences for South African employment and the wider legitimacy of economic transformation. The South African level of exploitation then becomes high considering the illiteracy rate and the capitalist mentality that these owners of the companies have. In many instances evidence shows how South Africa is becoming polarised with exploitation and employees do not respect the employees and this has led to Marikana, This relationship was marked by a failure to listen to and respect the humanity of workers, according to Alexander et al. (2013). 3. FINDINGS 3.1 Nature of Work During the apartheid era people were forced to take certain jobs that were specified to them by the government mainly teaching and nursing, jobs like office work were not allowed because they were perceived as jobs that can equip black people with the potential of overthrowing the government. In the townships the type of that people did was not as hard as for those who were employed in the Bantu region like Bophuthatswa, Trankskie and other regions of South Africa, Blacks were considered as tools for hard labour in essence farming, mining, factory workers and a few civil jobs as explained in the previous sentence, my interviewee explained that she had to work for 8 hours a day which is standard even now, but this does not mean that everyone in apartheid era was working for these hours but in actual sense people who were teachers were considered to be privileged, working years were exhausting for people because they were either forced to stay in that job because there were no alternative or they took early retirement which was not logical because they were going to remain unemployed and starve.

3.2 Role of power relations At schools the principals were given ultimate power by the government over teachers this meant that the teachers did not really have a say, comparing it to white schools were there was integration and understanding between the teachers and the students, my interviewee was a teacher during the time the student uprising which meant that the teachers were just in the middle of the equation because they did not really possess some form of power to the students, this means that the teachers were subject to three groups, the students, headmasters and lastly the state which will be further discussed in the next point. When people do not have power in their employment they tend to be exploited by those who have the power and this is detrimental to efficiency of the work undertaken by the employee. People could not complete the tasks that were given by the employees then they were viewed to be incompetent. They principle was given powers to fire the people at any time if they do not live according to the criteria and if they do something wrong, there was no legitimate procedure to fire people. 3.3 Role of the state The state played a very big role in the employment and given the context of my interviewee as a person who was employed by the state directly, the state was responsible for annual checking so that they keep the employees in check and make sure that no deviation from the law happened, the state had to make sure that apartheid was institutionalised and any government department was working effectively to propagate the interests of the whites which was systematic exclusion of the people of colour. State officials were responsible in setting the curriculum that was taught meaning that the teachers had no autonomy in the work place and they could not express themselves in their jobs if they did they would be charged with treason and be prosecuted as non-law abiding citizens. The state basically controlled everything that was happening daily at every institution. 3.4 Type of work and benefits There are several benefits that people received from the apartheid government and their employees however a lot of liberties were denied by the government, they had received benefits like their children being allowed to do extra-curricular activities and being treated less harshly by the police if you are a teacher but these were overshadowed by the benefits that they did not receive like a trust fund and the option to be legally represented provided that you are exploited by the employees, there was no health benefits like receiving a medical aid and if you get hurt at work, it is not the responsibility of the employee to pay for you. The mode of transport that was used by most township people was a train and usually trains would be packed and stuffy, trains were dangerous as a lot of people were mugged in the place, this was emotional torture as train delays would occur and it was easy for the authorities would just issue letters of resignation to the teachers and the working hours were so long that people would not even get time to bond with their families and this affected them emotionally but more over there was physical effects such as fatigue and exhaustion. 3.5 Minimum wage When minimum wage is raised According to Isaacs (2016) the result would be a rise in household income, particularly for low-wage workers, with the household-income growth rate potentially doubling, thus spurring greater consumer spending and hence increased output and raised levels of growth, together with rising productivity. This agrees with the minimum wage because the very idea of minimum wage is to curb proliferation and economic subordination of people, thus every employed person can be able to be able to afford basic necessities and be able to sustain and maintain themselves.

4. ANALYSIS OF THE FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION 4.1. Analysis 4.1.1. Citizenship Citizenship plays a very major role in citizens being employed in a country that’s the reason why a there is existence of xenophobia and hatred because citizens feel threatened by non-citizen workers 4.1.2. Alienation This is individuals feeling dissatisfied and being unfulfilled by the work that they do they only do it for monetary benefit which is what was happening when our grandmothers and grandfathers were still employed. 4.1.2. Bureaucracy The usage of the state to monitor what is going on in private companies by means of procedure this was the case in pre-democratic south Africa when the government used these processes to keep and maintain apartheid. 4.2. Conclusion This essay has addressed how the nature has significantly changed from pre-democratic South Africa to the status core concepts that have huge affected South Africa until this point have been properly examined, in this essay the impact of apartheid to the citizens has been evaluated, the minimum wage and the state of employment was discussed.