Cape Town - For five years, Bongiwe Mqhakayi has sold The Big Issue from the corner of Buitengracht and Somerset roads. While she spends most of her day in traffic, she’s never been behind the wheel before. But come next week, her life will change. She’s going to become a forklift driver.
Mqhakayi beat 300 other Big Issue colleagues in Cape Town to take the Vendor of the Year title. The prize is a food hamper, a forklift driving course, and a job at Fair Cape Dairies as a forklift driver. The competition took place at the end of May.
The 40-year-old vendor starts her training on Monday. “I am scared, but I will try,” says Mqhakayi.
“The other day I saw a lady driving a car and I thought to myself that one day I want to drive a car. Now instead I’m going to drive a forklift, something I never ever thought I would do,” she says.
Surprised but very happy at having won the competition, she says: “Jesus must have helped me.”
Since August, 2009 Mqhakayi has been leaving home at 6am every day to make it to the city by rush hour.
“I do not employ any special selling techniques. I smile and say: ‘Hello ma’am, how are you today? I’m selling The Big Issue, it’s only R20.’ If they say that they don’t have money I say: ‘Okay’, and continue to smile and be friendly,” says Mqhakayi. By 6.30pm or sometimes 7pm, she calls it a night and heads back to her Philippi home.
She sells between 15 and 20 copies a day when the new edition comes out, and makes R10 from each copy sold. But after a week, she averages about four copies daily. The magazine has a 21-day cycle.
Before she became a Big Issue vendor, Mqhakayi had been struggling to make ends meet. She would work as a domestic twice a week, and pick grapes during harvesting season.
It was her friend Mavis Mangqasana – also a vendor – who encouraged Mqhakayi to join The Big Issue. It was to be her first job as a salesperson.
Now she earns enough to pay for transport, to buy mielie meal for her family and some electricity for the house, which is very small, says Mqhakayi.
“The Big Issue has been good for me, but I am glad for this new opportunity… When I get my new job I am going to buy a house for my kids, so that they have a place of their own and I am going to extend my mom’s house so that she can be comfortable,” she says.
If all goes well during her training, Mqhakayi will receive a monthly salary with benefits for the first time in her life.
Trudy Vlok, The Big Issue managing director, says the competition was tough.
“Bongiwe is quiet, but she is a woman of steel. Her positive attitude made her a winner.
“She is a very dedicated person, selling the magazine every day, even if it meant enduring pouring rain, howling wind or blistering sun,” says Vlok.
She says Fair Cape’s idea to run the competition for the vendors was in line with The Big Issue’s vision of giving the homeless, unemployed and socially excluded the opportunity to earn a living, learn a new skill, and the hope of finding a permanent job.
The Big Issue has four depots – Woodstock, Wynberg, Bellville and Somerset West – and a mobile distribution van, from which vendors buy the magazines for half of the cover price.
Their ethos has always been about giving vendors a “hand up” and since inception, has provided employment with combined earnings of over R15 million.
The vendor competition formed part of Fair Cape Dairies’s social responsibility programme.
“The slogan ‘Do the Right Thing’ is at the core of the work we do,” says Louis Loubser, marketing director for Fair Cape Dairies.
“We believe in making a real and meaningful difference to people’s lives.”
Cape Argus