The Amazwi Villager

Written By Bongekile Mhlanga

The Dumbwaiter Restaurant is situated at the Wildlife Estate in Hoedspruit. It caters mostly to the white community that is found in town, and in the surrounding farms. The staff, dedicated to pleasing their clients, work at both the restaurant (downstairs) and the bar (downstairs).

But all was not as cool as it seemed, the management and staff were at loggerheads over staff accommodation. The employees said that their bosses promised them accommodation in their first contract. “But now they are evicting us,” said one of the workers. They claim they were not given enough time to look for alternative accommodation. The black staff also said that their white counterparts have nice apartments, while they have to squeeze into one room. Sometimes one room is shared by three adults where there is no privacy. “We are not being treated fairly,” concluded the employee.

The staff even tried to get the courts to stop management from evicting them. But management had a different story. Allen Hoffman, the manager of the whole Pick ’n Pay complex, said, “The contract said that accommodation would be allocated per shift. For those whose hours go on until midnight, they would get overnight accommodation, but people slowly, gradually turned this place into a permanent residential area.” He added that they are evicting the employees for their own safety. The place they are staying in right now is a storeroom. The rooms are too small to be shared by three adults. And according to Hoffman, the workers are lying when they said they were not given enough time to find alternative accommodation. In fact, they were given 21 days to search for another place to stay.

The workers have stayed on the restaurant’s premises since early 2007. According to Hoffman, they allowed the workers to live there before, but the new Occupational Health and Safety Act, effective in 2007, forbids it. Allen’s management team had plans to build a staff village at the neighboring residential wildlife estate, but the estate is now under different management, and they are unable to fulfill the previous manager’s accommodation plans.