Commuter-worker and the continuation of labour stay-aways in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

A large body of academic literature germane to service delivery protests has documented area-specific cases of protests and their targets. In the main, the focus of these studies has been the failures of the ruling African National Congress as elected leaders divert public funds aimed at improving the lives of townships and informal settlement dwellers. The emerging overall picture points to failure at the political level to deliver on key promises, urgent among these being the issue of high levels of unemployment. This has seen a marked increase in violent service delivery protests that at times morphed into xenophobic attacks and destruction of public property. Missing from the analysis however, is the impacts of service delivery protests on the South African commuter-worker. The article contends that by bringing the commuter-worker to the centre of analysis, we should be able to better appreciate the devastation of the service delivery protests beyond its locus of execution. The commuter-worker is a product of apartheid travel geography and at times a key participant in community mass demonstrations. Drawing on the notion of precarious society, I will show how service delivery protests and failure to deliver services produces precarity in other spheres of the commuter-worker’s life.