Phakiso Letsara (25)

Photo: Nkateko Mabasa

At 4am every day, Phakiso Letsara wakes up at his home in Sebokeng in the Vaal and goes to the Johannesburg CBD for his daily work of collecting cans and bottles to sell at a recycling yard.

He has been “hustling” for almost two years now, earning between R50 and R100 a day when he delivers his goods at Polly Street, between downtown Joburg and Marshalltown.

In the morning he takes the Metrorail train to the city and says he sometimes pays R11 if the security guard sees him walking in. His work is gruelling – he has to walk all around Joburg, looking for cans and bottles, and is often chased by people when he attempts to search through their garbage bins.

At home, Letsara lives with his grandmother and his two younger sisters. His older sister died in 2018 after falling ill. Both of his parents have died – his father was stabbed in 1993 after an altercation with one of his grandmother’s customers back when she used to sell beer at their house. His mother died from Aids-related illness in 2008.

When his mother died, Letsara dropped out of school in order to work and support his sisters. He first went to sell gold rings and chains, then Tupperware and cosmetics, going from house to house, but business was not doing well.

Now, the household survives on what he earns and his grandmother’s social grant.

And although he left school in Grade 11, Letsara believes things will pick up in the future and he will eventually get formal employment. He would like to do welding or be a boilermaker.

Come the 8 May election, Letsara is planning to vote for the Economic Freedom Fighters. He used to be a supporter of the ANC but has come to realise that it was only because it was the party his parents supported as it gave them “freedom and RDPs”.

“ANC helped our parents and we followed our parents,” said Letsara.

For him, the “EFF promises a lot of things” and “makes the youth active”. In his neighbourhood he has seen some of his friends – who used to be EFF volunteers – who walked around doing door-to-door campaigning and who are now driving their own cars.

Furthermore, Letsara says when his sister died in 2018, an EFF member in his community helped him and his family with money to hire a tent, tables and chairs. He supports the party because it “encourages youth to go to school, to work and get off the streets”.

Joyce Thobela (42)

Photo: Nkateko Mabasa

For Joyce Thobela, the decision about who to vote for is not easy. Over the years she has voted for the ANC but does not know who will gain her mark this time around.

As an informal trader, Thobela sell sweets on Commissioner Street and if she is lucky she makes R8 a day. She has been “self-employed” for the past 10 years now and often takes “piece jobs” as a packer at shopping stores, as a cleaner and also counts stock at a Checkers supermarket.

Just like Letsara, she uses the Metrorail train to the city, commuting from Germiston where she rents a shack for R200. She also has to put away R142 for the train for the whole month. When she came to Johannesburg in 2004 from Jane Furse in Limpopo, she was hoping to get a job so that she could continue her N6 in Marketing Management which she had dropped out of because she could not afford her fees.

Early on after she left college she used to sell Tupperware and cosmetics, then later became a cleaner. But even those jobs were short-lived. Currently, she arrives in Johannesburg CBD around 8am and waits at her spot until 5pm, hoping people will buy her sweets.

She says she voted for the ruling party in the 2014 national and 2016 local government elections. But after years of disappointment and her situation remaining unchanged, she does not know who to vote for. She says she does not understand the Democratic Alliance and she is not convinced by the Economic Freedom Fighters as an alternative.

Smangi Molefe (26)

Photo: Nkateko Mabasa

Smangi Molefe is also from Sebokeng but has been living on the streets of Braamfontein for three years now. He works as a car guard at the corner of Biccard and De Korte streets where he earns about a R100 a day, sometimes more if the drivers are generous.

He supplements his income by cleaning and packing bottles at Chronic Night Club on his street where he guards cars. As a drug user, he says he hopes he will be able to go to vote on the day, but he is not certain if he will.

He says he spends most of his money on nyaope (R20) and rocks (R40), which he has been smoking for five years. He started using the drugs at school when he was doing his N3 in Civil Engineering at Rostec College in Vereeniging. He soon dropped out and ended up on the streets.

According to Molefe, his father does not want to see him at home after he stole things from the house to sell for drugs and after arguing with his stepmother. He says university students living in Braamfontein, especially from EFF Student command, help him and his friends to survive as they give them food when they come out of stores.

“They support us, and help us remember that we too are human,” said Molefe.

In 2015, Molefe was arrested for possession of a firearm and armed robbery. This was after he found a gun his father had left in the bathroom, he says. He took it to his friends and they robbed a store owned by a Pakistani national. He spent a year and a half in Leeuhof Correctional Centre for the crime.

“It is not nice to be locked up, that is why I don’t steal any more,” said Molefe.

He likes the messages from the EFF as “they speak about changes” and there is load shedding which is causing people’s businesses to fall apart. For Molefe the ANC only “eat money”. If they win elections, he expects the EFF to build more rehab centres as he and his friends don’t like the services offered at Hillbrow Clinic.

Nokwanda Dlamini (34)

Photo: Nkateko Mabasa

Nokwanda Dlamini works as a sex worker in downtown Johannesburg. She says she would have liked to vote for the EFF but because of the remarks that party leader Julius Malema made about removing sex workers from the street, she will stick with the ANC.

Nokwanda, who has voted ANC since she started voting, likes the message the EFF has and how the youth are involved but as the only breadwinner in her household and with two teenage daughters to feed, she would not vote for someone who wants to remove her only means of survival.

“If he wins, he will remove us off the street,” said Dlamini.

Every month Dlamini sends money home to her family in KwaZulu-Natal. She says if she does not send money every month, her children will not have food. She has been in Johannesburg for nine years and had worked odd jobs as a cleaner in a mall until she was laid off. She has been a sex worker for three years.

“Everything falls on my feet,” said Dlamini.

Dlamini says she will stick with the “trusted” ANC which has not removed her and other sex workers from working in the streets. When asked about the Democratic Alliance, Dlamini says they have made things worse in downtown Joburg, as she feels the new party has neglected the inner city and the streets are dirtier than before. DM