Fifth Avenue, Alexandra, is abuzz late on Thursday morning. A group of young people congregate on the side of the road with two boxes of wine. There is nothing else to do. Across the street, a vendor prepares a fire to braai chicken feet.
Alexandra has, according to the Gauteng City-Region Observatory, a research partnership with universities and the Gauteng provincial government, among the highest unemployment rates in the province, home to between 4,979 and 8,758 jobless people per square kilometre.
About 300m from the vendor's fire sit women and small children. Among them is Nokuphila Mbakahloko, 37, who has joined the ranks of SA's fastest-growing job creator, the informal sector, which added 219,000 jobs in the past year.
After battling to find a job for more than two years without success, she now leaves the one-room backyard shack she shares with her partner at 4am every day to sell amagwinya (vetkoek) in Rosebank. For this, she earns R200 a week.
If I don't do this, who will just give me food for doing nothing?" she asks.
"I don't want to end up doing extreme things like having to sell my body so I can have food."
About 200m away from Mbakahloko lives Vuyiseka Ntabula, 30, who shares her one-room shack with her children, aged five and two. She is washing dishes with a tiny amount of detergent; there is no foam in the water. In her shack is a single bed and a table that serves as a grocery store, a red cloth neatly placed over the few items.
The longest she's worked was for a year in 2016 and since then she's survived on temporary jobs at local supermarkets. She uses her children's child grants to pay for a crèche where she leaves them while she hunts for work.
"I drop my CVs every week and don't receive responses," she says.
Across the street lives Kgomotso Lebese, 41, who was retrenched from her job as a packer at a DVD factory four years ago. She pays R300 rent for a one-room flat she shares with her partner, a spray-painter at a panel beater, and two children aged 18 and five. She used to support 11 relatives at home in Wolmaransstad, North West, with her R6,000 salary. She's been hunting for work ever since.
"I'm always sending out my CV. When I hear that a certain place is looking for people I always go there," she says.
Lebese has also found a role in the informal sector, selling curtains, blankets and clothes. But her business was dealt a blow this week with police raids in Johannesburg's inner city, and she was unable to buy stock because the stores were closed.
One block away lives Nthabiseng Boitse, 24, who has also been looking for a job since January. Boitse worked as a call-centre agent until her contract ended in December last year. She spends hours every day on her phone, applying for jobs.
"I've joined so many job-posting groups on Facebook. I thought with job experience it would be easy to find another job, but it's been hard," she says.
In the house on the corner lives Malesela Ramala, 54, who opened a shebeen in his home after he was retrenched from his security guard job in 1998.
Wardrobes separate the one-room house he shares with his wife and three children into a bedroom, and the lounge and kitchen where he serves his customers.
"I struggled to find a job and saw it best to be my own employer," he says.
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