Dhladhla’s passing at work: An ongoing toxic workplace regime

In my industrial sociology class with the late Prof Eddie Webster in the mid-1990s, I was introduced to how the South African apartheid workplace was racialised with the intention of creating profit for the white capitalist system. Webster amply writes about how this racialised workplace manifests in disciplinary control of workers.

In the work of Jacklyn Cock and later Malehoko Tshoaedi, we also see how this disciplinary control is also gendered, where black women suffer this toxicity in often hidden and intimate ways. Most recently, Sisa Ngabaza cautions about the call centre industry, where we see a growing feminisation of labour which “capitalises on women as a cheap, submissive workforce”.

Thus, what the violent death of Gcina Dhladhla, who passed away on duty at her Rosebank workplace recently, reveals is not new; it is a systemic issue woven into the fabric of South African institutions in ways we now erroneously accept as normative. As we normalise this systemic violence of our institutions, we define individuals who can’t survive them like Dhladhla and other unnamed ones, as fragile and not strong enough.

In the same breath we define those who survive them as successful. Survival comes at a cost to one’s humanity. Critical theory calls it endurance, a vulnerability that is not acknowledged.

A constant navigation of systemic conditions meant to cause death. How many young women have left the call centre factory on a stretcher, either having passed away or collapsed from exhaustion?

The systematic violence illustrated in the Dhladhla case is a violence that we see not only in erroneous workplace notions of what it means to be a good worker, but also in how the state puts pressure on an already drowning citizenry.

Most recently, there has been an emphasis on how the Maintenance Act makes provision for family members to support other family members. This advocacy for the support of family is emphasised in a context where those who work already support family in a context where the failures of the state force them to spend on private health, education and security.

This type of government, like the apartheid workplace regime, is not allowing its citizenry to make a living but a dying.

We see this violence in how success in the education sector is now framed in individualised ways. This framing leads to growing graduate unemployment, high burnout levels of lecturers and administrators and lack of care in how managers respond to those unable to survive overwork.

What does it mean to work and thrive for black women? Is this even possible for them/us? Growing use of AI in the call centre environment is deepening disciplinary controls and enhancing surveillance via call and keystroke monitoring.

This surveillance disciplines the worker and leads to psychological and physical strain. This constant surveillance makes it nearly impossible to resist using the tactics of the past, like “deliberately slowing down production”. Coupled with the growing prevalence of intimidation meant to discourage union membership, another important worker resistance tactic – shopfloor mobilisation – is weakened.

Even though other popular resistance methods are emerging, the passing of Dhladhla shows us that resistance cannot happen after the fact. What we need are systems that honour life, rest, healing and being human. No child should die because they need a job.

What the violent death of Dhladhla reveals is that the apartheid workplace regime is still very much alive and killing.

• Khunou is a Professor of Sociology and the executive director for Leadership and Transformation at Unisa.