The New York Times International - 27.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019 | 3

World

He had delivered his last food order for

the evening and was driving home from

Pinelands, a suburb in Cape Town, when

an oncoming car swung in front of him,

knocking him off his motorbike.

Friends and family arrived within 20

minutes, but the motorcyclist, Christian

Hakomeyimana, was already dead. A

20-year-old Rwandan migrant, he had

been a contractor for Mr. D Food, an on-

line food delivery service popular in

South Africa.

“That car hit him so hard,” said Xavier

Nshimiyamana, one of his closest

friends. The bike, he said, was smashed

to pieces — “completely beyond repair.”

Mr. Hakomeyimana’s death in the

July 5 crash was just one in a rising num-

ber of casualties among food delivery

workers in South Africa. The emergence

here of food delivery apps like Mr. D

Food and Uber Eats has drawn thou-

sands of motorbike riders — predomi-

nantly migrants — into poorly regulated

and highly precarious work.

Migrants around the world have long

signed up for dangerous jobs, but ex-

perts warn that the gig economy makes

it even harder for the authorities to mon-

itor working conditions and enforce la-

bor laws.

“Food delivery is an inherently dan-

gerous line of work in South Africa,” said

Mark Graham, a geography professor at

Oxford University who studies the gig

economy in developing nations. “Work-

ers put themselves at risk every time

they take on a job.”

According to the Motorcycle Safety

Institute, a local organization that col-

lects accident statistics, at least 70 deliv-

ery riders — most of them food couriers

— have died in South Africa over the

past year. Hundreds more have been in-

jured.

“As demand for food and small item

delivery increases, so does risk to the

rider,” said Hein Jonker, the institute’s

director.

“The figures,” he said, “are frighten-

ing.”

South Africa’s food couriers often

drive unsafe motorbikes with broken

lights, missing mirrors or parts held to-

gether with string and tape. Most lack

formal motorbike training and adequate

protective gear. Only a few have insur-

ance coverage or death benefits.

“Business owners have no responsi-

bility to contracted riders,” Mr. Jonker

said. “This is a serious matter of ex-

ploitation.”

Mr. D Food, which along with Uber

Eats controls nearly 90 percent of South

Africa’s booming food delivery market,

declined to answer questions. The com-

pany is owned by Naspers, a global me-

dia and technology giant, and recently

announced that its order revenues had

grown by 170 percent within a year.

A spokeswoman for Uber South Afri-

ca, Samantha Fuller, said in response to

questions from The New York Times

that her company would begin physi-

cally inspecting the bikes used by its

couriers. This was not done in the past,

she said.

Last year, Uber Eats introduced free

insurance coverage in South Africa, in-

cluding provision for emergency medi-

cal care and payouts for death and dis-

ability. But the payouts are capped at

about $13,000 — and riders qualify for

them only when they are on active trips,

not if they are returning from a delivery.

Mr. D Food does not offer its couriers

compensation for accidents.

Food delivery app workers in other

countries are also grappling with poor

labor protections. In France, food couri-

ers outsource work to undocumented

migrants, siphoning a portion of their

earnings. In Mexico, at least five Uber

Eats drivers have died on the job in traf-

fic accidents since November.

But in South Africa, the dangers of be-

ing a food courier are particularly acute.

The country is notorious for its high

rates of traffic mortality, with more than

twice as many fatalities per 100,000 peo-

ple in 2016 than in the United States, ac-

cording to the World Health Organiza-

tion.

Adding to the danger, many couriers

here use fraudulent licenses and fake

vehicle registration documents with im-

punity.

The Uber spokeswoman, Ms. Fuller,

said her company put couriers through

“a stringent onboarding process.” It re-

quires them to submit valid licenses, ve-

hicle registration documents and work

permits before they join the app, she

said.

But Ms. Fuller said it was the respon-

sibility of the transportation authorities

to detect fraudulent documents.

A spokeswoman for the Cape Town

traffic department, Maxine Bezuiden-

hout, said that her agency did routine

checks and that it suspended unroad-

worthy vehicles, including motorbikes,

from operating on public roads. Drivers

found with fake licenses and registra-

tion documents are charged with fraud,

she added.

But the industry, too, should help fix

the problem, Ms. Bezuidenhout said.

“One would hope that the companies

have a vested interest in the safety of

their drivers, but also the public at large,

and would therefore put checks and bal-

ances in place,” she said.

The driver accused of knocking Mr.

Hakomeyimana off his bike was ar-

rested and charged with culpable homi-

cide and drunken driving, said a police

spokesman, Andre Traut. The Motor-

cycle Safety Institute does not have data

on how other food courier deaths have

been handled by the police.

For young men like Mr. Hakomeyi-

mana, food delivery is an appealing

prospect in a country where they have

very limited access to the job market.

South Africa is inundated with requests

for asylum or refugee status, and the

wait for work permits can last years.

The pay may be low — couriers sel-

dom pocket more than $330 in a month

— but it is simple to sign up online for

work, even with forged documents, de-

livery workers say. More than a dozen

agreed to be interviewed, but declined

to use their names because they feared

their contracts would be revoked.

The only reason so many undocu-

mented migrants do this work is that it

can be done without papers, said one un-

documented Uber Eats courier from

Zambia. But that leaves them vulnera-

ble to exploitation by the delivery com-

panies, he said.

Mr. Hakomeyimana moved to Cape

Town in 2017, moving in with an older

brother named Pacifique. He began

working for Mr. D Food but quit because

the pay was too low, becoming a driver

with Uber instead, his brother said.

In South Africa, few Uber drivers can

afford their own vehicles, instead rent-

ing them from partners. In July, the car

Mr. Hakomeyimana was using was in-

volved in an accident, and while waiting

for it to be repaired, he returned to food

delivery.

“I can’t sit around — I need to earn

something,” his brother recalled him

saying.

Two days later, Mr. Hakomeyimana

was dead.

He was an experienced rider and

owned a bike in good condition, accord-

ing to his brother, who works as a me-

chanic. “But even for him, it wasn’t

safe,” he said.

At the house the brothers shared in

Athlone, a working-class neighborhood

near the city, friends and relatives gath-

ered to pray a few days after the acci-

dent. A framed portrait of Mr. Hakomey-

imana, fresh-faced and neatly dressed,

hung in the lounge.

Back in Rwanda he had been a truck

driver, hauling cargo across East Africa.

If he had died on the job, the company

would have been obliged to cover his fu-

neral and pay a lump sum, the mourners

said.

In South Africa, his family got noth-

ing.

“They just give you a job They don’t

look after you afterwards,” said Mr.

Nshimiyamana, the courier’s friend.

In the same week Mr. Hakomeyimana

died, a delivery bike caught fire in cen-

tral Cape Town. At least three more rid-

ers crashed within a two-mile radius.

Heavy winter rains made driving espe-

cially hazardous, but the orders contin-

ued pouring in.

Dangerous road gig

for desperate migrants

CAPE TOWN

BY KIMON DE GREEF

A Mr. D Food delivery driver in Cape Town. The emergence of food delivery apps has

drawn thousands of drivers — predominantly migrants — into poorly regulated work.

JOAO SILVA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

At least 70 delivery riders —

most of them food couriers —

have died in South Africa over

the past year.

Most summers, the founder of Commu-
nist China, Mao Zedong, made big and
fateful decisions at a funky stretch of
beach a few hundred miles east of the
nation’s sweltering capital. He swam in
weather fair or foul. He sat cross-legged
in the sand, dressed only in black trunks,
his portly belly exposed for all to see.
His successors have not been such
fearless swimmers, nor such show-offs.
But they still like to come each August
to Beidaihe, a mix of shabby coastal re-
sort and high-end villas behind tall
fences.
In keeping with the hierarchical char-
acter of Chinese socialism, the top offi-
cials never rub shoulders with the pub-
lic. Three distinct categories of visitors
exist side by side, separated by ear-
piece-wearing security forces — and
walls.
At the top of the tier are President Xi
Jinping and his colleagues, hidden in
compounds in a spot where the seawa-
ter is said to be cleaner than the muddy
colored ripples at the public beach.
In the next level come party cadres
who are assigned government villas,
sanitariums and fenced-off patches of
beach. They can be seen in the evening
strolling in small groups on the fir-lined
promenade along the shore in look-alike
short haircuts, and pressed pants.
On the lowest rung come members of
the public, who stay at inexpensive ho-
tels and guesthouses and during the
weekends have barely an inch to move
on the sand heaving with families.
When bodyguards and black limou-
sines are spotted, it means the leader-
ship has arrived in town, and this
month, there have been plenty of sight-
ings of both. At any moment, the main
street can be suddenly closed to traffic,
with uniformed police officers in white
gloves standing every few meters as
cars with darkened windows whiz by.
“The big guy and his wife have been
here for three days,” a veteran lifeguard,
Liu Wenshan, 65, confided this month,
referring to Mr. Xi.
Ankle-deep in water, he was relaying
information that was supposed to be top
secret; whether he really knew wasn’t
clear.
The reputed presence of Mr. Xi, who
soon may face some tough decisions on
the future of Hong Kong, was immateri-
al to the crowds, who would never catch
a glimpse of him anyway.
At the main beach, the crowd is not
quite the most fashionable set. Chinese
millennials spurn the place as fusty and
less than pristine. They prefer the Mal-
dives or Thailand.
“How can one put this with finesse?”
said Geremie Barmé, who writes about
Chinese culture and who often visited
Beidaihe in the post-Mao era. “The Chi-
nese Communists don’t really do ‘beach
culture.’ They model their habits on the
Soviet leaders, and the Black Sea re-
sorts and sanitariums of the Soviet hey-
day. The result is rather perfunctory,
dismal and, in particular, in the age of
post-poverty socialism, incredibly
kitschy.”
There’s something to what Mr. Barmé
says about the kitsch in Beidaihe. A
mélange of architecture — Tudor gables,

Hapsburg-style domes, a mini-Arc de

Triomphe — line the main streets, the

result of a makeover by town leaders

about a decade ago intended to appeal to

foreign visitors, mostly Russians.

Now the pastel paints on the buildings

are peeling. The main tenants are Pizza

Hut, McDonald’s and cavernous family-

style restaurants selling live fish

squirming in water tanks.

On the sand, the beach culture could

not be more different from, say, the

French Riviera, or Portofino in Italy, not

to mention Australia’s surfing beaches,

where the more sun blazing on your

skin, the better.

Here, the sun is the enemy. Body ar-

mor is requisite for many.

Perched on a steel-framed watch-

tower dug into the sand, a lifeguard

peered at the vacationers bobbing

around in the water, a walkie-talkie and

megaphone at hand.

She wore a mauve face mask that cov-

ered her from chin to hairline, ear to ear.

Her eyes hid behind reflective sun-

glasses. Her arms were swathed in elas-

ticized gloves from wrist to shoulder.

She resembled a bank robber out for a

day on the sand.

Why so much gear? “I don’t like to get

black,” she said.

In the West, it was noted, many wom-

en sunbathe so they look bronzed.

“We don’t like that,” she responded.

Having her feet and hands exposed to

the sun was bad enough, she said.

Brightly colored inflatable rubber

rings that rent for $5 a day serve as an

insurance against drowning.

Then there is the question of the water

quality in the Bohai Sea, a large basin

that swirls into Beidaihe.

“The water quality is bad,” said Prof.

Wang Yamin, of Shandong University

Marine College. Runoffs from chemical

fertilizer plants have spoiled the sea in

the last 30 or so years as China’s econ-

omy has grown, he said.

For those who came from the hinter-

land, though, the water seemed not so

terrible.

After a five-hour high-speed train

ride, Wang Hong, 40, arrived from

Shanxi in central China, inspired by nos-

talgic memories of a visit 20 years ago.

His son, Wang Rui, 4, had never seen

the ocean. Rui paddled in the shallows

and built sand castles. He meticulously

packed handfuls of sand into a blue plas-

tic bucket, tipping out the contents into

perfect shapes, smiling all the while.

While Mr. Wang’s memories are from

two decades ago, momentous events

from even further back in China’s post-

war history played out here at the

beach.

In the late 1950s at Beidaihe, Mao dic-

tated the plan for the Great Leap For-

ward that was meant to industrialize

China overnight but ruined the coun-

try’s economy and led to widespread

famine.

In 1971, Lin Biao, Mao’s top general,

fled from a house above the beach —

now surrounded by a high wall — and

boarded a plane at the local airport to

flee the country. Under circumstances

never fully resolved, the plane crashed

in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, killing

him and everyone onboard.

On the eve of his trip to the United

States in 2000, China’s then-leader,

Jiang Zemin, welcomed Mike Wallace,

the CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent, to

his compound at Beidaihe. Each dressed

in a suit and tie, they sparred about

American politics, spies and human

rights. It was a candid conversation, un-

likely to be repeated with any Western

journalist under the current leadership

— even at the beach.

A beachgoer at Beidaihe, China, was covered from head to toe. Unlike Western sunbathers who like to get bronzed, some people at Beidaihe prefer body armor.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GIULIA MARCHI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Seeking surf (but no sun)

CHINA DISPATCH

BEIDAIHE, CHINA

BY JANE PERLEZ

China’s top officials gather,

and the public has a place

at Mao’s favorite beach

Above, walking to the seaside at Beidaihe.

Left, crowds passing through metal detec-

tors to get to the public beach. Top Com-

munist Party officials met in compounds

that were walled off from the public, with

lower-level cadres in yet another area.

Amber Wang contributed research.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES