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During my long term stay in South Africa, I have been intrigued by something to whom I never thought to: people under the equator prefer to emigrate to the south of the globe. In my caucasian European way of seeing, I used to see people from Africa and other developed countries try to do everything in their power to have a better life reaching Europe. Living in Johannesburg changed my perception and the many people met during my wanderings through the townships, tell me a different story.
I framed common workers, all of them unique but with similarity: they moved from their native country to South Africa in search of a better future for themselves and their families. In most cases, they left their family behind, running this risk alone; others decided to move the whole family and rely on God’s hand. Some of this people have proper documents and the possibility to apply for a regular employ. Someone, hoping not to be caught, use a retouched document of a relative and someone else have no documents, which makes life even tougher. This is why some workers get me the possibility to follow them since home and someone else not. According to Statistics South Africa’s 2011 census, foreigners in South Africa are around 2,2 million. In 2015 the esteem placed the uncertain number of undocumented migrants between 500.000 and 1 million, quite impossible to verify it because of the illegality of the issue.
Among these immigrants, there are specialised workers, highly educated people but also people in need escaped from economic crisis or dictatorships. To find a job or a way to survive many of them will spend the whole day sitting at the traffic light or in front of a warehouse, showing a hand made sign showcasing their skills, sometimes real and sometimes invented. For this kind of workers there is no Saturdays or Sundays, you will find them in the same spot every day, until they have been hired for the daily job or hopefully for longer. At sunset, they will return to the nearest township by foot, where they often share a little shack with no tap water and electric supply, built with waste materials collected around the city.
This colony of little ants are the real engine of Johannesburg, thousand of little hard workers that will do almost everything for survive and to create a better future for their family. Years of sacrifices done with the dream to save as much money as possible and go back to their country to spend the rest of their life in a better condition.