The body of an unidentified man lies, unclaimed, at the Roodepoort mortuary.
He was a delivery bike driver from Malawi. He died on Monday night in a road accident caused by a large pothole on Blandford Road in Northriding, northern Johannesburg.
The tragedy has encapsulated two issues of concern for many South Africans: the burgeoning network of potholes on streets and the poor regulation of the growing industry of delivery bikes on urban roads.
“It has cost a life to get this pothole repaired. People are dying. The cost is too high,” said Moshen Naicker, chair of the Northriding Residents Association.
“We feel unheard. We report the potholes, we follow-up and nothing happens. The day before the crash I said to JRA (Johannesburg Roads Agency): ‘Guys, please fix this. Someone’s going to die’. And my words came true. Someone died, and then a few hours later the pothole was fixed. It’s like trading a life to get a basic job done,” said Naicker.
The JRA had deployed a pothole team to the area last week, but they had not reached the large one in Blandford Road, where the accident occurred at about 6.15pm on Monday.
Metro police said a car had slowed down because of the pothole, causing the delivery driver behind to clip it and veer into oncoming traffic, where he was hit by another car.
Metro police spokesperson Xolani Fihla said a case of culpable homicide would be opened with Douglasdale police.
“I had to lock the bike because people started arriving fast and were trying to steal stuff off the bike,” Naicker said. The bike was fitted with a storage box branded Zulzi — an on-demand delivery service operating in the area from 6am to 11pm, delivering groceries, medication and alcohol “in minutes”.
The company did not respond to a request for information and comment.
Naicker said he had reported the pothole at the beginning of March and had followed up on March 14.
On Tuesday morning, just hours after the crash, metro officials were on site filling the pothole. It was fixed by noon.
Nickey Janse van Rensburg, deputy chair of the Douglasdale sector 1 community police forum, was quickly on the scene of the accident and described how other delivery bikers arrived to protect the dead man from opportunistic thieves until the authorities could take control.
Janse van Rensburg said Northriding was experiencing serious infrastructure and service delivery failure, including regular power outages, illegal dumping, sewerage issues and potholes. While speaking to the Sunday Times he received a call telling him that a cable thief had just been electrocuted while trying to loot the local substation.
MP and labour lawyer Michael Bagraim is a member of the employment and labour portfolio committee. He believes Monday's crash laid bare shortcomings in South Africa’s labour practices relating to delivery bike drivers.
“I’ve been researching this for three years and it’s an issue I am passionate about,” he said, describing delivery bike drivers as “independent contractors carefully divorced” from labour laws.
“It’s a complicated web of distraction, and at least 95% of the drivers I’ve engaged with fit into that web. They get no compensation from UIF and they are not covered by labour law, the Labour Relations Act or the basic conditions of employment,” he said.
He said most drivers were foreigners engaged by a third party, hiring their bikes from a fourth party. They were not registered as workers and were paid very low rates per delivery — sometimes penalised if they failed to complete their jobs within a deadline.
He said the big brands offering deliveries did not employ drivers and outsourced that service.
Checkers Sixty60 deliveries are outsourced to on-demand delivery company Pingo, owned by Shoprite. Pingo says all its drivers are required to have valid documents, a mobile device, a vehicle, matric and be able to communicate in English.
All their drivers — more than 4,000 — are provided with a box for their bikes, a branded uniform and they are insured by Pingo. They are paid per delivery on a weekly basis, with extra payment for additional drive-outs, extended distances and tips.
Bagraim said a few weeks ago he witnessed a biker being knocked over.
“I stopped to help because the car [that hit him] had driven off. He looked like he had a broken arm, so after he locked up his bike I took him to hospital. But they were reluctant to help him because he was a foreigner.”
Checkers and the big guys are not interested in changing things, because it would be too expensive — so we have thousands of guys out there and they’re essentially nobody.
— Michael Bagraim, MP and labour lawyer
He said that two years ago he attempted to help delivery drivers gain legal recognition and standing.
“I told them I’m a labour lawyer, I will do the case pro bono and take it to the labour court or to the CCMA. I told them that in terms of law, if you have worked for a business for longer than three months, and you have been earning below the monthly threshold of R22, 000, then you can fairly argue that you must be appointed as a permanent employee. It’s a simple appointment, easy to win,” Bagraim said.
This led to his discovery of a lacuna in the law. He reduced his request for 10 bikers to come forward to just one, only to find that all of those he engaged with were foreigners without work permits. Opening a legal case would lead to their possible arrest and deportation.
“I couldn’t find one person willing to fight after I informed them of the consequences they would face. The unions don’t want to take these guys on because they are foreigners, and their minimal earnings would lower their bargaining power. Checkers and the big guys are not interested in changing things, because it would be too expensive — so we have thousands of guys out there and they’re essentially nobody.”
The Sunday Times visited the Roodepoort mortuary this week and found that the man had not been formally identified and nobody had come forward to claim the body. A cellphone number provided to JMPD as belonging to the man’s brother did not work.
Meanwhile, Heartlines, a 20-year-old social change organisation, will next month be piloting Fixlocal, an apolitical project designed to enable South Africans to fix their local challenges by working with the authorities, holding them to account or by fixing the problem themselves.
The web-based app, set to be rolled out through 18 metropolitan areas in mid-May, will provide step-by-step guides, useful links, tools and templates on how to report a problem (such as leaking sewage, potholes, broken street lights). It will also link the problem to the relevant municipal contact through geolocation; explain how to escalate the matter; the process to follow if it’s not resolved; how to peacefully put pressure on authorities or whistle blow safely and then — as a last resort — best practice guidelines on how to fix the problem yourself.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.