Car guards form an integral part of South Africa’s urban landscape. The phenomenon has its
roots in the dual realities of unemployment and crime in the country, in particular vehiclerelated
offences. Car guarding commenced in Durban in the early 1990s when unemployed
persons started looking after the vehicles of drivers in exchange for a donation, and the practice
soon burgeoned across the country. Drivers are, however, not obliged to pay car guards for
the services they provide since the practice of tipping often depends on internalised attitudes
towards tipping and to reward good quality service. A distinction is made between formal and
informal car guards, where the latter provide car guard services on public streets, mostly in
inner city areas, and the former offer their services at the parking areas of shopping centres
outside the central business district. Car guards are required to have undergone the necessary
training and registration with the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority of South
Africa and some local authorities have introduced bylaws to regulate the car guarding industry.
Furthermore, media reports suggest that formal car guards have to pay a daily fee to the
managers/owners of shopping centres simply to offer their services to drivers. These matters
prompted research into the car guard phenomenon in Pretoria and an article was published about the implications of the survey for private security policy and practice. The current
contribution entails a closer analysis of the data with the aim of differentiating the experiences
of immigrants from those of South Africans who work as car guards in the capital city. In the
absence of a sampling framework, 144 car guards were interviewed using purposive and
snowball sampling techniques. Ninety were immigrants and 54 were local citizens. Owing to
the sampling strategy used, and because the data did not show a normal distribution, significant
differences between the two groups were identified by means of the Mann-Whitney U test for
which effect sizes were calculated. Immigrants who worked as car guards were significantly
younger, had higher levels of education, were more likely to be the breadwinners of their
families and they had fewer children compared to their South African counterparts. They were
also more likely to have been unemployed in the past and they were less likely to blame the
political environment for their situation. They received compensation for their services less
frequently and were significantly more often subjected to verbal abuse by clients. Interestingly,
immigrants who work as car guards were less likely to consider their work as important in
preventing crime and they presented significantly lower levels of knowledge of labour laws
and municipal bylaws regarding the car guard industry. Despite these significant differences,
immigrants who work as car guards were equally subjected to financial exploitation by having
to pay a daily fee for the parking areas where they worked. The exploitation even extended to some car guards having to pay for the identifying clothing they wore every day. Roughly a
third of the car guards’ monthly income was paid to the owners or managers of shopping
centres, and sometimes car guards could not secure sufficient funds to pay for the daily fee to
“rent” parking bays. Most of the car guards reported that they were merely surviving from
day to day, and the industry was providing extremely limited prospects of promotion. In fact,
many car guards did not have a written contract securing their employment, thus exacerbating
their vulnerability and potential for exploitation in the informal economy. In addition, the
undocumented status of immigrants who worked as car guards made it difficult for them to
complete the necessary training and to register officially with the regulatory authority. While
having left their countries of origin owing to political and economic turmoil, illegal immigrants
who end up working as car guards might well unknowingly be fleeing to exploitation in South
Africa.
’n Groot getal immigrante steek jaarliks Suid-Afrika se grense oor, hetsy wettig of onwettig,
op soek na werksgeleenthede. Sonder die nodige dokumentasie word talle immigrante
genoodsaak om hulle tot die informele ekonomie te wend waar arbeid nie na behore gereguleer
word nie en werkers uitgebuit kan word. Die praktyk waar mense teen ’n fooitjie na voertuie
op winkelsentrums se parkeerterreine omsien, is kenmerkend van Suid-Afrika se stedelike
landskap. Motoroppas spruit uit die land se hoë misdaadvlakke en die vrees vir viktimisering.
Behoeftige en gemarginaliseerde mense, met inbegrip van onwettige immigrante, werk as
motorwagte en dit bied ’n tydelike uitkoms vir die groot getal werkloses in Suid-Afrika. Hierdie
artikel doen verslag oor die ervarings van 90 immigrante teenoor 54 Suid-Afrikaanse burgers
wat as motorwagte in Pretoria werk. Alhoewel die bevindinge statisties beduidende verskille
uitwys tussen immigrante en plaaslike motorwagte ten opsigte van hul opvoeding, huishoudelike
dinamika, verhoudings met klante en kennis van arbeidswette, is immigrantmotorwagte
aan dieselfde finansiële uitbuiting onderworpe as wat motorwagte in die algemeen ervaar.
Immigrante wat die ekonomiese en politieke onrus in hul eie lande probeer ontvlug en as
motorwagte in Suid-Afrika werk, vlug moontlik net na verdere uitbuiting.
