All of it, is my guess. In cities where Uber was regulated, it lost to the already existing taxi system.
I actually favour use of the locally developed Mr D app as opposed to UberEats so as to keep profits from leaving the country. I don't know what cut UberEats takes from each transaction, but if it's anything like regular Uber, which based on my discussions with Uber drivers (when I'm a rider) is something well above 20% which I felt was shockingly high.
In regards to the drivers, crime and dangerous road conditions are probably the most concerning elements for them and is largely due to a combination of apathy, incompetence and corruption within the police (an all too common problem with our government run organisations).
Every year I see an increase in the amount of lawlessness by other drivers on the roads. This is because traffic police (at least in Johannesburg) seem to only care about reaching job mandated quotas (for things like fines issued, which are rarely collected) and soliciting bribes. It's worse though, their typical strategy to achieve these is to set up road blocks, which not only have no meaningful impact on improving road safety, but they also result in wasting the time of many motorists. A trip which should have taken 10 minutes lands up getting delayed by 15 making you late for where you were going.
Talking about lawlessness, it's worth mentioning that I have somewhat often seen these courier drivers themselves be lawless by doing things jumping traffic lights.
SAPS (South African Police Service, the "general" police) don't deal with traffic, but are the ones meant to follow up on general crime such as thefts. They're also somewhat apathetic, but I have heard many times that when it comes to crimes reported by African immigrants they'll almost always do nothing, xenophobia is a real problem here.
I have a couple of interesting stories from Uber drivers, most of which were from neighbouring African countries.
The one driver had a South African neighbour which he saw would just sit around all day doing mostly nothing, so he told the neighbour how he managed to became an Uber driver and convinced the neighbour to do the same. After about a week, he noticed the neighbour sitting around all day again and when he asked the story, the neighbour said he found it to be "too much work".
So when it comes to low-skilled jobs, in my experience immigrants are less likely to be apathetic towards their work. This results in the indigenous people feeling that foreigners are stealing their jobs, when the truth is that they're losing their jobs to people who actually make a proper effort. This occasionally leads to xenophobic driven violence.
The other story from an Uber driver has a fun ending. He was explaining that he occasionally will do non0Uber work for cash, while this results in him netting all the money, it also comes with a risk of non-payment. So when a rider asked him if he would be willing to do a non-Uber lift on the weekend, the driver checked on his WhatsApp group if other drivers knew the rider. A few of them had the same story of that rider skipping paying them. So the driver arranged with the rider to do the off-app trip, but just told the other drivers where the pick-up location was.
The driver was later messaged by the rider saying something like "I had no idea you guys talked amongst yourselves, I had to pay a lot of money this morning!".
Another perspective is that the jobs are not good, or don’t pay enough. If the indigenous people are not doing them you can think of it like a decentralized strike, and immigrants are the scabs. If not for the immigrants doing the work the conditions or payment for that work might improve.
This doesn’t justify violence but I don’t think it would be wrong to be upset about the situation.
Annoying to share the road with them esp @ night when I nearly took out one in my SUV because he jumped a red robot coming from a store - no reflective vest and only a dinky headlight.
Some of the bigger retail outfits do provide life insurance cover.
Is there no limit to how low SV bros will sink?
Joburg, especially the inner city, is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Couriers are at risk? We all are. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a story of being held up at gunpoint somewhere around joburg, even the wealthy northern suburbs. Happened to me 4 times, twice in one week. Try convincing an armed mugger some other tit stole your phone already. Fun times.
I also suspect the author is kicking themselves over the timing of the release of this article.
> Lockdown has just been eased as Covid infection rates have plateaued
At the time of publication, our rates are very nearly the highest they've ever been.
Not one mention of the disgusting xenophobia demonstrated by the majority of city residents. Not. One.
I don't order from uber eats because, well they're cunts. Mr D is a locally registered business and is required to follow our very strict labour laws, so I happily order from them (although their app is not doing well lately).
What bugs me the most though is that Uber Eats is somehow exempt from our labour laws. Not providing medical cover to employees who've sustained injury on site can land you in jail.
I personally believe we (Africa) should evict these blood suckers. The western world has stolen enough wealth from us. Voetsek now. We have good alternatives (IDK about bolt, but Mr Delivery is a local partner that adheres to the laws)
That is entirely predictable internet dynamics, which is why the site guidelines explicitly ask everyone to avoid it here. Please don't do it again.
That's a feeble victim mentality that you should consider re-evaluating. Not uncommon on the African continent and elsewhere (blaming colonialism etc), but it's obviously not as simple as that, and you know it.
The site guidelines explicitly ask you to avoid responding to flamebait with worse.
> ...
> The western world has stolen enough wealth from us.
Hilarious :-)
Jirre.
South Africa has taken all the rope it had and hung itself with it. Sure the west stole enough from South Africa, but South Africans stole more from other South Africans than the west ever stole from South Africa, and they continue to steal from other South Africans, and will continue doing so. South Africa's biggest roadblock to prosperity is not the west, it is South Africans, and especially those South Africans who whip up political fervor and xenophobia by pointing to the other (e.g. the west) while robbing the rubes blind.
I think you can choose to not support a company that isn't playing by South African labour rules and rather support a local alternative even if the government is corrupt. And that doing a little bit is better than doing nothing, even if it's not a complete fix.
Apologies if I misunderstood, though - I do agree with you that there are bigger issues at play too in the country. But I do think it doesn't mean we shouldn't also fix the smaller issues if they are in reach. Low-hanging fruit and all that.
If all our industry was owned locally it would be a huge boon IMO
Most here live a very simple life in rural africa and would probably be content to do so if it wasn’t for taxation and labour demand.
Sure we have our issues. Billions of rands poor out of this country, extracted by modern multinational neo-imperialists. If we blink the wrong way, the spectre of “loss of foreign investment” is always held above us. If we blink the other way, the rand is punished and ratings agencies come knocking.
I love my country and it’s people. I think we have enough to feed and house everyone. It often feels like other people are pulling the strings.
I don’t think you can downplay the role of foreign capital and multi-nationals In South Africa’s economic problems for the past two decades - for example the role that The Guptas, McKinsey and KPMG all played in looting the state.
Firstly, I am referring to the whole continent. The west didn't just destroy one nation, they took us all out (except Botswana, and hey wouldn't you know it: They're mostly fine. Strange that, must be a fluke). It's ridiculous to think we would have self-corrected after the colonials left, especially in a few decades.
The west created power vacuums, committed coups to remove leaders who didn't want to hand over land and money (and instead wanted to invest it into our own future) and pulled us into wars we had nothing to do with, just to further their own commercial interests. It's not just mineral wealth that was taken from us. They also divided the land they didn't have any right to amongst themselves. Some good arguments about how responsible the west is for the middle east's current crisis. I also feel like this argument ignores a lot of the CIA's activities over the past 5 decades...
America's wealth was greatly enhanced by the railways built by the slaves they stole. How much of that came back to Africa? Oh yeah, none of it. That counts as wealth theft, but I'm happy to agree that this starts to get messy quickly and isn't very productive.
I have to laugh at the 'The west stole enough' line. They nearly stole everything, and it continues to this day. The gold, the fucking Cullinan Diamond, the minerals used to create phones. They all come from labor in Africa, and very little of the generated wealth comes back. That seem balanced or appropriate to you, or does it seem there's a power gradient? We all know about the supply chain issues at companies like Apple, I'm not sure how you can argue that the damage isn't still ongoing.
> South Africa's biggest roadblock to prosperity is not the west
The west excludes us from global economic activity all the goddamned time. In extreme cases that includes assassinating leaders who want to punt them out of Africa. And hey, look at that, Shell is busy sonar blasting our coastline for fucking oil. Great. You think we're gonna see any of that money? Not a chance. Nevermind the destruction they're causing, at least the westerners can drive their cars around. But hey, we should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, right?
Here's a nice example: Take omicron. The west banned travel from here because we reported it first. This is pretty simple to work out: We are world leaders in infectious disease management, due to the amount of infectious diseases we have to manage. Experts in the field have been explaining this to (apparently) deaf audiences for a while now. It's not great to have so much experience in identifying and managing infectious diseases, but we do. The west could (and should) learn something from us. I learned the other day that _nothing_ has killed more Americans in the same timeline as COVID has, not even the civil war. Admittedly I doubt that civil war claim and I suspect we just don't know how many people died as a result of the war. Still, COVID is up there.
A lot of the west seems to think Africa is just fundamentally flawed. We're not, it's just hard to act independently or in our own interests under the capitalist boot.
To be fair, it's not just the West. China is busy creating the next silk road through crafty debt tactics. Once again: Something the West could do to help us, but won't. Which is going to cost you a great deal more in the long run (we're used to poverty, I don't see modern America handling it well).
----- EDIT
Removed a lot of "you's" because I am not actually upset with anyone in particular. But the west has 0 understanding of what they did here, they elected to whitewash history instead. Plenty of scars to disprove the narratives.
It's also worth noting I'm a white south africa. I know a great deal about this whitewashed history because most older white south africans spout it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Happy to continue this debate, I really don't mean it to be aggressive (but I love this country and I will passionately defend the defensible parts of it)
