Empowerment for creating economic alternatives

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Self-Employed Women's Union, South Africa

Introduction

SEWU is an independent trade union established in 1993 to represent the interests of self-employed and survivalist women engaged in the informal sector of the South African economy. SEWU is not affiliated to Cosatu because its members are women from different political parties. It was established by Pat Horn who was a trade unionist. She realised that the government, municipality and public did not recognise this sector. Consequently, people within this sector were harassed by municipality authorities and most of their goods were being confiscated. Their voices were not being heard and they had no bargain power. They were not treated with dignity and respect. Pat Horn visited SEWA in India and after her visit she established SEWU, helped by volunteers from the formal sector. A steering committee was formed. In June 1994 SEWU was launched with 45 members. The steering committee disbanded and hand over to SEWU committee, Pat was employed as secretary/organizer/coordinator.

SEWU's main aim is to empower self-employed women to organise themselves and demand recognition and support for the work they do. Members are assisted to develop skills in leadership, negotiation, and lobbying so that they can directly address relevant institutions and persons with their concerns. SEWU also provides direct advice and assistance with problems such as lack of childcare, health issues, and social security. In addition, SEWU facilitates members' access to a wide range of other organisations that provide social, legal, financial business, counselling services, and skills training.

SEWU is also actively involved in writing submissions or grant proposals to government institutions and international bodies in order to improve the situation of women working in the informal sector. This role is supplemented by SEWU's growing involvement with research into street vendors, home-based workers and the South African informal sector in general.

Economic difficulties

It is very difficult to organise this sector and there are disadvantages but we overcome most of them. For survivalist street traders, time away from their sites, during trading hours, means money lost. This is one of the basic barriers to setting up and maintaining any trader's organisation. Going to meetings, or even taking time off to talk to an organiser in the streets, is problematic.

Street traders generate other informal employment. These are some common examples.

• Barrow boys transport goods belonging to street traders, in wheelbarrows and supermarket trolleys, between the trading site and the place where the goods are stored overnight. They are paid R3.00 per barrow load.
• They hire taxis to transport them to and their goods to and from the identified pension payout points.
• General assistants assist owners of trading sites by, for example, minding the stall when they are away. In return for this, they are allowed to share the site of the street trader and to sell their own goods on the site.

SEWU organises women in different categories as follows:

• street vendors
• home-based workers
• subsistence farmers
• cardboard collectors

Its members are both in rural and urban areas.

The key issue of SEWU is to negotiate with Municipal Authorities in urban areas for better facilities to street vendors.

• toilets and clean tap water
• shelters
• storage
• affordable overnight accommodation
• safety
• child play centre

In most areas we have achieved success and in other areas we are still negotiating. Employed staff are doing these negotiations with members from the affected areas.

Education and skills

At SEWU 12% of members had no formal schooling at all. A further 34% obtained a level of education lower than Std 4, 48% obtained a level of education between Std 4 and Std 6 and 7% obtained matric. SEWU subsidies its members in different skills. We encourage members to shift from traditional female skills to take on skills like carpentry, block making, bricklaying, electricity, plumbing etc. We also recommend literacy skills to our members.

Women who underwent brick making, bricklaying, electricity and upholstery, are making their business viable. There are problems of funding amongst other members as it is difficult to obtain loans from the banks. Presently members get soft loans from the Land Bank. SEWU's function it to help its members until their businesses are sustainable and develop other groups.

SEWU has achieved some of its goals but there is still a lot to be done. The informal sector is growing day by day.

Workshops are conducted where members are taught the country's Constitution, their rights and the promotion of HIV/AIDS campaign.

During transitional period many people were affected by violence. Some lost their close relatives, breadwinners and their homes were demolished/burnt. Most of our members live with that trauma and the government couldn't reach other areas and help them in counselling.

We have a counselling project within SEWU where members are involved in memory cloth project (for more information visit http://iafrica.com/b/bg/bgouws http://www.voices.org.za).

SEWU's plans are to cover all nine South African regions by 2004. Presently we have offices in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Western Cape and Eastern Cape. Two provinces Orange Free State and Mpumalanga will be launched this year.