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Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

th3iedkid 5y ago
Why are all pictures in greyscale?
- me_me_me 5y ago
  They are ghosts, ghosts can be only capture on black and white film, duh..
- hownottowrite 5y ago
  Big component of James Oatway’s style https://james-oatway.medium.com/ https://james-oatway.medium.com/
mekkkkkk 5y ago
Interesting! I find the whole gig space fascinating. I wonder how much of it relies on exploitation of regulatory latency. My guess is that these actors has such momentum and platform advantage that even if all talked-about regulation were to pass, it would still remain popular despite price surges.
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  >I wonder how much of it relies on exploitation of regulatory latency All of it, is my guess. In cities where Uber was regulated, it lost to the already existing taxi system.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
"Demand has increased so we're cutting your pay" Is there no limit to how low SV bros will sink?
- waihtis 5y ago
  Uber is hardly a "tech bro" company at this point
smokey_circles 5y ago
I've lived in Joburg all my life. 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)
- zohch 5y ago
  > The western world has stolen enough wealth from us. 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.
  - Synaesthesia 5y ago
    A lot of our mineral wealth does still go overseas, because they are foreign owned corporations. Or the rich owners leave with the money. If all our industry was owned locally it would be a huge boon IMO
jonathanlydall 5y ago
Johannesburg resident here, who coincidentally just finished a meal delivered through "Mr D" (re-branded sometime back from "Mr Delivery"). 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!".
tibbydudeza 5y ago
When Covid lockdown started last year in May 2020 these folks popped up like crazy usually unlicensed, crappy bike handling skills (lane hogging) on these crappy slow poke two stroke Chinese made bikes. 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.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Robot = traffic light in South African
naomeux 5y ago
I have seen a lot of food couriers in my travels and as our economy suffers from lockdown and pandemic, there's a lot of people being laid off and resulted into being a food courier, the competition grow fierce as there's a lot of food couriers working.

Why are all pictures in greyscale?

me_me_me 5y ago
They are ghosts, ghosts can be only capture on black and white film, duh..
hownottowrite 5y ago
Big component of James Oatway’s style https://james-oatway.medium.com/ https://james-oatway.medium.com/

Interesting! I find the whole gig space fascinating. I wonder how much of it relies on exploitation of regulatory latency. My guess is that these actors has such momentum and platform advantage that even if all talked-about regulation were to pass, it would still remain popular despite price surges.

TremendousJudge 5y ago
>I wonder how much of it relies on exploitation of regulatory latency All of it, is my guess. In cities where Uber was regulated, it lost to the already existing taxi system.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

"Demand has increased so we're cutting your pay" Is there no limit to how low SV bros will sink?

waihtis 5y ago
Uber is hardly a "tech bro" company at this point

smokey_circles 5y ago

I've lived in Joburg all my life. 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)

zohch 5y ago
> The western world has stolen enough wealth from us. 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.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  A lot of our mineral wealth does still go overseas, because they are foreign owned corporations. Or the rich owners leave with the money. If all our industry was owned locally it would be a huge boon IMO

jonathanlydall 5y ago

Johannesburg resident here, who coincidentally just finished a meal delivered through "Mr D" (re-branded sometime back from "Mr Delivery"). 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!".

tibbydudeza 5y ago

When Covid lockdown started last year in May 2020 these folks popped up like crazy usually unlicensed, crappy bike handling skills (lane hogging) on these crappy slow poke two stroke Chinese made bikes. 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.

FredPret 5y ago
Robot = traffic light in South African

naomeux 5y ago

I have seen a lot of food couriers in my travels and as our economy suffers from lockdown and pandemic, there's a lot of people being laid off and resulted into being a food courier, the competition grow fierce as there's a lot of food couriers working.