The death dash

When it comes to fatalities in the mining industry, attitudes have shifted dramatically in the past few decades. Are we seeing a similar shift around food delivery drivers?
3 mins read

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when shareholders and consumers didn’t care a jot about fatalities in the mining sector. Today an accident, particularly one involving a fatality, can grind mining operations to a halt for an uncomfortably long, profit-squeezing period.

It wasn’t so much that powerful shareholders or the buyers of gold started to become a little more compassionate; it was the communities, the activists, the trade unions and finally governments that decided miners couldn’t be treated as a dispensable input in the drive for profits. And so, over the past few decades, attitudes have shifted dramatically. Mining company executives know that they overlook this shift at their peril.

So, here’s the thing, might we now be witnessing the beginnings of the same shift in the attitude to food delivery drivers? A shift that will be boosted not just by concerns for the delivery drivers but for all road-users.

Judging by questions raised at two recent AGMs – Naspers in August and Shoprite on Monday – it seems so. Both companies are at the forefront of a consumer trend that was propelled into the stratosphere during Covid: delivering food and groceries to consumers.

Naspers’s wholly owned iFood claims that about 2-million people are working in the ecosystem created by the company. Naspers CEO Fabricio Bloisi, who had previously been head of the Brazil-based food delivery platform, told shareholders at the AGM he would like to see iFood and Brazil lead in the creation of more and better jobs in this sector “without killing the opportunities that technological advances create”. 

Shareholder activists attending the meeting did not share Bloisi’s upbeat perspective. They referred to precarious working conditions, characterised by long hours, inadequate wages, and poor health and safety conditions which have deteriorated under Bloisi’s watch. Far from being assured of improvement, they feared that, as CEO of Naspers, Bloisi would extend iFood’s controversial labour practices across the Naspers group.

During the meeting group chair Koos Bekker invited the activists to oversee how the global ecommerce group behaves towards its delivery workers and report back to the board at next year’s AGM. Let’s see how that goes.

On the road

At Shoprite’s AGM, chair Wendy Lucas-Bull told shareholder activist Just Share that the group is doing a “significant amount” to improve the working conditions of the 6,000-plus drivers behind the massively successful Sixty60 home delivery service.  

The service was launched in 2019 and is the top grocery app in the country. And though it sells itself as a “quick home delivery option”, Lucas-Bull assured shareholders that Sixty60 drivers are not incentivised to deliver orders quickly nor are they penalised for late deliveries.

“The delivery radius around each store is designed to reduce drive distances and to ensure that drivers can comfortably achieve the required delivery time,” a Shoprite spokesperson told Currency after the meeting.

As for remuneration, Lucas-Bull said the drivers are “well remunerated” and earn significantly more than the minimum wage. “The remuneration figures quoted in the press are orders of magnitude wrong,” said Lucas-Bull without providing details. Media reports vary between R3,000 and R7,000 a month.

The spokesperson would not reveal any remuneration figures, claiming respect for the drivers’ privacy, but did say the group “offers best-in-class industry rates and with Checkers Sixty60 leading in online food delivery in South Africa, it is a highly desirable client for drivers”.

The drivers are all independent owner-operators and are contracted to Shoprite to render a delivery service. They can use their own motorbikes or enter into a lease-to-own agreement, which includes a vehicle maintenance allowance as well as insurance. Shoprite also offers comprehensive cover which includes “death and disability cover, hospitalisation, unlimited ER services and support, casualty benefit, funeral cover and third-party liability protection”.

The focus on death, disability and hospitalisation is grimly appropriate given the state of South Africa’s roads and the fact that, despite all sorts of awareness programmes, 17 Sixty60 drivers died in accidents during 2024. Imagine what that fatality rate would do to a mining company. But, as Just Share’s Kwanele Ngogela points out, unlike miners, the Sixty60 drivers are independent contractors, so Shoprite is able to dodge that bullet, for now.

Lucas-Bull reckons the high-risk element of the job explains why only 23% of the drivers are South African. “In the first 10 weeks of training 80% of South Africans drop out and by the end of the training only 8% of the South Africans are left,” she told shareholders. She says the group is doing a lot to attract more South African drivers but, according to exit interviews, “South Africans don’t view the job as one they want to do; it is well paying but high risk”.

Ngogela isn’t persuaded. He told Currency after the meeting that without details about wages it is difficult to explain the low South African numbers. “How true can that be, given our high unemployment?”

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Ann Crotty

Winner of just about every financial journalism prize going, Ann has kept the business sector on its toes for years. Uncompromisingly independent, if there’s a shady executive pay plan out there or shenanigans a company is trying to keep hidden, Ann will find it.

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