By Nco Dube | 27 October 2026

There is a particular cruelty in South Africa’s unemployment crisis. We tell people to look for work, acquire skills and pursue opportunities. We encourage them to be resourceful, persistent and determined. But we seldom ask what it costs somebody with no income to do any of these things. For a young person who has been unemployed for months, the price of a taxi ride to a job interview may be money they simply do not have. And even when they find it, there is no guarantee of a job at the end of the journey.

We speak endlessly about unemployment, usually in numbers so large that the human suffering disappears into the statistics. We debate economic growth, labour regulations, education and investment. All important subjects. Yet we rarely consider what it means to live in a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town while the opportunities that might change your life remain far beyond your immediate reach.

A recent Ipsos survey offers an uncomfortable glimpse into this reality. Fifteen per cent of South Africans aged 15 and older reported having missed work or education at some point because they could not afford transport. Among respondents from households with no income, that figure rose to 27%. The research covered 3,600 people across the country.

These self-reported experiences expose something we have largely neglected in our economic policy debates. Transport is not simply an expense incurred after somebody finds work. For many South Africans, it determines whether they can pursue work in the first place.

Poverty has become an obstacle to escaping poverty.

Apartheid’s geography still sends the bill

To understand how we arrived here, we must confront the geography of apartheid. Black South Africans were deliberately removed from centres of economic activity and confined to settlements from which reaching work required long and expensive journeys. The distance was not accidental. It was part of a system designed to control where people lived, worked and belonged.

More than three decades into democracy, much of that geography remains stubbornly intact. Millions still live far from employment centres, good schools and commercial opportunities. In some instances, government housing developments have reinforced the old patterns by placing poorer households on cheap land at the edges of our cities. Families receive homes but inherit long journeys to almost everything else.

We dismantled the laws that determined where people could live. We have been considerably less successful at dismantling the economic geography those laws created.

Consider somebody travelling from KwaMashu or Umlazi into Durban, or from Orange Farm to a workplace in Johannesburg. The journey is measured in more than kilometres. It is measured in taxi fares, hours taken from family life and mornings that begin long before sunrise. For many, it is a daily negotiation between earning a living and the cost of reaching the place where that living is earned.

Statistics South Africa’s 2020 National Household Travel Survey recorded average morning journeys of 63 minutes for workers using minibus taxis, 84 minutes for bus commuters and 107 minutes for train passengers. These figures illustrate the burden imposed by our settlement patterns. Many workers surrender several hours of every day simply travelling between home and work.

For somebody earning a modest wage, transport consumes money that could otherwise buy food or support a family. For someone unemployed, the first taxi fare must come from somewhere. It may require borrowing from a relative who is also struggling, sacrificing another household necessity or deciding that the opportunity is simply too expensive to pursue.

We have lived with this arrangement for so long that its injustice barely registers.

The cost of opportunity

Last week’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement offered some relief through temporary reductions in the fuel levy. From 4 November, the levy will fall by R1.50 per litre for petrol and R3 for diesel. Smaller reductions will follow in December. The intervention will cost the fiscus approximately R10 billion in revenue and is intended to ease pressure on households and businesses.

The relief is welcome. Fuel prices affect the cost of moving almost everything in our economy. But cheaper fuel does not automatically mean affordable transport, particularly for those who depend on taxis to get to work.

Taxi operators face vehicle repayments, maintenance costs, insurance and other expenses. Their fares do not necessarily fall whenever diesel becomes cheaper. More importantly, a temporary reduction in fuel costs does nothing to shorten the distance between a poor household and the nearest meaningful economic opportunity.

Our transport problem runs deeper than the price of petrol.

There is also a contradiction in how South Africa supports public transport. Minibus taxis carry most workers who rely on public transport, yet the industry’s operating arrangements differ considerably from those of subsidised bus and rail services. This raises questions about whether transport subsidies are reaching commuters in ways that provide the greatest benefit.

I am not suggesting that government should simply hand more money to taxi operators. The industry has serious problems of its own, including violence, safety concerns and disputes over routes. Any support must come with regulation, accountability and clear benefits for passengers. But neither can we continue designing transport policy around an ideal public system while overlooking the one millions of South Africans actually use.

The purpose of public transport policy should be to move people safely and affordably. The mode of transport is a means to that end.

The contradiction becomes even more striking when we consider employment initiatives. Government invests in training programmes, skills development and schemes intended to help young people enter the labour market. These interventions may improve somebody’s prospects, but what happens when the graduate cannot afford to travel to an interview? Or when a young apprentice must spend much of a modest allowance getting to the training centre?

We demand initiative from young people while sometimes making the exercise of that initiative prohibitively expensive.

A qualification may open a door. It does not pay the taxi fare required to reach it.

Bringing opportunity within reach

There is a reasonable case for targeted transport assistance to unemployed jobseekers and students, particularly where support can be linked to credible employment or training programmes. Properly designed, such interventions could remove an immediate barrier. But subsidies alone will not resolve a problem rooted in how our cities and economy are organised.

We need to bring people and opportunity closer together.

This requires a different approach to housing, transport and economic development. For too long, these have operated as separate government functions, each with its own budget and performance targets. A housing department celebrates the number of homes completed without adequately considering what residents will spend travelling to work. A municipality approves commercial developments without ensuring that surrounding communities can reach them affordably.

On paper, each institution may have delivered. In practice, the household is left carrying the cost of government’s disconnected decisions.

We should also abandon the assumption that every solution requires moving people closer to established city centres. Townships, secondary towns and rural communities need stronger local economies of their own. But those economies will not emerge simply because government declares another industrial park or special economic zone. Businesses need functioning infrastructure, reliable services, investment and a genuine commercial reason to operate there.

Reliable commuter rail could also make an enormous difference along established employment corridors. But restoring rail services is not enough if commuters cannot reach stations safely or connect affordably to their final destinations. The real test is the entire journey, from a person’s front door to the place where they work or study.

There is another inequality here that deserves attention. Professionals with stable incomes can often choose where to live, how to travel and whether to work remotely. Some can purchase vehicles or relocate closer to employment. The unemployed young person in a distant township enjoys none of these freedoms. Their choices are constrained before they have even entered the labour market.

The same burden follows students into classrooms and lecture halls. A learner who misses school because there is no money for transport is not merely inconvenienced. Their education is being compromised by poverty, and the effects may remain long after the missed lessons have been forgotten.

We should be deeply troubled by an economy that demands qualifications, experience and initiative while making access to the places where these are acquired so difficult for the poor.

Of course, affordable transport will not solve unemployment on its own. South Africa needs sustained economic growth, investment and far more productive jobs. But creating opportunities is only part of the task. People must also be able to reach them.

Our economic debate is consumed by the question of whether jobs exist. It is time we asked who can afford to go looking for them.

Somewhere this morning, a young South African is deciding whether to spend their last money on a taxi to an interview or keep it for another day’s necessities. They may have the qualifications, the determination and everything else we tell unemployed people they should possess.

What they do not have is the fare.

And in a country already burdened by extraordinary inequality, that should be an indictment of the economy we have built.