Thandeka Nomvele is a research assistant at the University of Johannesburg’s Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.
The outbreak of Covid-19 has affected the socioeconomic environment negatively both globally and nationally. On 11 March 2020, Covid-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). The South African government imposed a national lockdown to halt the spread of the pandemic later that month, permitting only essential services.
On 2 June 2021, global Covid-19 infections stood at a staggering 171 million confirmed cases with a death toll of 3,57 million. On the same day, SA reported 3,614 new cases, taking the total cases to 1.67 million and the death toll to 56,501. As with all pandemics, Covid-19 has had a strongly gendered impact across many sectors of life. Although more men have died from the pandemic globally, women have drawn the short straw when one assesses the impact of the virus on the labour market – and SA ha
The impact of Covid-19 has not only exacerbated the inequalities between men and women, it has also widened the income gap between women in lower-income jobs, such as domestic workers, and those who occupy high-paying positions in public office.
Freshly picked tea leaves are packaged into crates and then taken for quality control before being transported to the factory. (Photo: Lucas Ledwaba/Mukurukuru Media)
In the mid-morning sunshine they are hard at work harvesting tea leaves to be processed at the nearby Mukumbani Tea Factory below the picturesque plantation. This is the home of Midi Tea, grown in the lush valleys of Venda in Limpopo.
The production machinery has to be kept spotlessly clean to ensure high safety and health standards as a workers here hoses down one of the processing machinery. (Photo: Lucas Ledwaba/Mukurukuru Media)
In another time the plantation, which was established under the Venda Development Corporation, employed as many as 2,000 workers. But changing business and political dynamics have seen the workforce reduced to 231, only 80 of whom are farmworkers. Then, the workforce covered an area of 1,057 hectares. It has been reduced to 70 hectares.
A report by the city has revealed that the number of unemployed people had increased by 73 000 from 986 000 to 1.059 million between the second and third quarter of 2020