Big trouble for couriers and delivery drivers in South Africa

The Department of Home Affairs says that the noose is tightening for illegal immigrants working as Uber drivers or delivery drivers in the e-commerce space, promising more inspections and raids on companies that employ them.

Responding to a recent written parliamentary Q&A, Home Affairs minister Leon Schreiber said that the department could not divulge too many details about its plans to clamp down on illegal workers in this space, but that intelligence was being gathered.

While the department has already conducted specific operations in the restaurant industry, sectors like the e-hailing industry (Uber, Bolt etc) follow different guidelines.

For e-hailing drivers, inspections are often done during roadblocks, and stop and search operations. The SAPS has already expressed its intention to ramp up roadblocks in the country.

“The nature of e-hailing is always in motion, hence e-hailing drivers are targeted during stop and search,” Schreiber said.

For delivery drivers and the e-commerce sector at large, the department said the industry will be included in more conventional business inspections within the department’s Operation Siyasebenta, the Labour Department’s Blitz Operations and the South African Police Service’s Operation Shanela.

Operation Siyasebenta (“we are working”) and Operation Shanela (“sweep”) were launched in 2022 and 2023, respectively, specifically looking for workers who were employed illegally, without the correct visas.

Meanwhile, blitz inspections by the Labour Department check for compliance with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), Occupational Health and Safety, Unemployment Insurance Act (UIA), Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA), Employment Services Act (ESA) and the National Minimum Wage (NMW) Act.

The increased focus on the e-hailing and e-commerce delivery sector comes as various industry concerns have been raised that the industry mostly employs foreigners.

Speaking at Shoprite’s most recent Annual General Meeting, the group’s chairperson, Wendy Lucas-Bull, admitted that foreigners make up the bulk of the country’s drivers, noting that only 23% of the delivery workforce are South African.

On top of the potential for illegal workers to feed into the industry, there are also other concerns about the employment conditions of the drivers who operate as “independent contractors” rather than as employees.

This classification means they lack formal employment benefits like health insurance, paid leave, and job security.

As with other operations, companies and employees in the targeted sectors will not know when the inspections and raids are coming – only that they are on the list.

“Joint operations or inspections are executed after intelligence has been gathered on modus operandi of a sector. As such, members that execute are not informed when intelligence is being gathered,” Schreiber said.

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