Some oke on LinkedIn posted a chart last week showing that South Africans wake up earlier than anyone else listed in 10 countries of the developed world.
He was “not surprised” because, apparently, of our “resilience” and go-getter attitude. Utter tosh.
[Image: https://www.facebook.com/seastats/posts/the-average-wake-up-time-in-the-10-countries-surveyed-is-709-am-the-earliest-ave/680649340973587/]
South Africans waking up very early has little, if anything, to do with rosy assumptions, and it’s easy to forget.
Too early
As a nation we wake up too early because of apartheid – and this reality will likely be with us for centuries.
Apartheid’s urban spatial separation of black residential areas was meant to keep these residents (“temporary sojourners”) far away enough to be out of sight and beyond the horizon, but “close” enough to work in “white” areas. There was a near total ban on business licences in townships.
So, South Africans had, and thus still have, to travel enormous distances from home to where work exists.
That remains the case in a real way, with South Africans having the longest global daily commute in 2026. You rise before dawn, walk to the station, catch the Metrorail to the city, then start on often multiple taxi trips to your place of work.
You similarly get back home late, with not nearly enough time to handle family, supper, chores or relaxation, before sleep.
Nothing to be chuffed about
That’s the truth for most urban South Africans. Its many, many social consequences are deleterious across the board. It’s nothing to be chuffed about.
Or, as dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson put it:
Wi want di shawtah workin day
Gi wi di shawtah workin week
Langah holiday
Wi need decent pay
More time fi leasha
More time fi pleasha
More time fi edificaeshun
More time fi reckreashun
More time fi contemplate
More time fi ruminate
More time
Wi need
More
Time
[Image: By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Khayelitsha Township … (Photo JC PLE), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128797653]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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