Nikiwe Nongcula | Tina van der Merwe
SOUTH African Breweries (SAB) has been accused of destroying the business prospects of two previously disadvantaged black truck operators who had a contract to deliver the company’s beverages across the Western Cape.
Nomalizo Gobingca and Siyabulela Dukumbana, both based in the province, are aggrieved that they are now left with no hope of continuing owning their own truck businesses.
Gobingca and Dukumba were part of the SAB’s nationwide programme to develop and upskill entrepreneurs by contracting people to operate independently through leased or their own trucks to distribute its products from the company’s depots to retail outlets.
Their attempt to take legal action against SAB failed as they were advised by their own lawyers that SAB was within its rights to terminate the contracts.
Gobingca, 42, said the SAB used the Covid-19 pandemic in justifying the termination of her contract, which she operated under her Gobingca Logistics company.
She claimed that she was the victim of favouritism and racial discrimination, which favoured coloured contractors..
SAB spokesperson Kanyisa Ndyondya confirmed the termination of the two contracts “based on contractual reasons”. She did not answer all the questions posed to the company regarding the cases of Gobingca and Dukumbana, which include claims of unfair treatment and racial discrimination.
Instead, she revealed that Dukumbana had threatened an SAB female official and her family after being informed about the termination of the contract.
“Unfortunately, the individual persisted which led to his arrest by the SAPS, later released on bail, and is set to appear in court again. Given that this matter is still subject to legal and criminal proceedings, SAB is unable to provide any further comment and trusts the legal process to take its due and just course,” said Ndyondya.
Gobingcwa said she was the only African woman of only three Africans among 18 people who were contracted. The termination of the contract has since collapsed her business.
In an email seen by Independent Media, the SAB had told Gobingca that her contract was terminated as part of re-organising its operations, which had resulted in winding down its Independent Contractor Cartage Phase 1 Scheme.
When her contract was terminated, the truck that she rented from the SAB was also taken away. Her dream of owning her own trucks started in 2013 when she was employed by a company contracted by the SAB to deliver beverages across the Western Cape from SAB’s Bellville depot.
She was among few women in the country who sat behind the steering wheel of the huge horse and trailer. She would spend more than five hours every day negotiating narrow and dangerous roads from the early hours of the morning to reach bottle stores in rural towns and villages of the province.
Then, in 2017 she celebrated as she saw the light at the end of the tunnel when SAB gave her a phase one contract to form her own company and deliver the beverages. Phase one meant that she would lease a truck or trucks from the SAB and employ her own staff.
She had been promised that after 18 months, she would be elevated to phase two, which meant that she could now be assisted to purchase her own truck to continue delivering beer to SAB’s clients. She said on two occasions, two people contracted by the SAB before her were promoted from level one to level two while she was overlooked.
Her hopes were dashed after being summoned to the office of one of the managers in charge of the delivery contracts only to be told that she was among four people whose contracts had been terminated due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which impacted the alcohol business.
However, on conducting her own investigation, Dukumbana said she was dismayed to establish that in fact, she was the only one whose contract had been terminated. “What made matters worse was the fact that a new person was brought in to take over my truck while I and my eight employees were left jobless,” said Gobingca.
She claimed that most independent truck operators at the SAB were coloured, and only three, including herself, were Africans. “When I was summoned to the office of the manager, I had hoped for good news, but only to be told that my contract had been terminated.
“As an African woman entering the trucking industry they could have spared my business, but now I have lost everything,” she said.
Dukumbana who suffered the same fate as Gobingca in 2019 did not take the matter lying down although his effort to save his business did not bear fruit.
In desperation, he even wrote emails requesting the intervention of influential senior government leaders, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, but he did not get help.
Although Ramaphosa ’s offices did at least acknowledge receiving Dukumbana’s email and even promised that “the matter will receive the required attention and a response will be communicated soonest”, nothing came from those promises.
He also laid a complaint with the legal department of the SAB’s AB-InBev, but again nothing came out of that complaint.
Dukumbana, from Stellenbosch, was contracted with SAB at phase-two level, but his contract started to crumble after he was injured on duty within SAB’s premises. He was crushed by a 50 litre aluminium draught beer container, which fell on him while it was being lifted by a forklift driven by an SAB employee.
He claimed that the relationship worsened when he requested to be compensated for the injury. He believed that the company should compensate him because he was injured at work within SAB’s premises.
In a video, which Independent Media has seen, Dukumbana is seen aligning containers, which the forklift was about to lift up on to the truck. As the machine operator was about to lift the fork, Dukumbana climbed the fork and when it was going up, he lost balance and fell down along with two containers and one of them hitting him.
In an email, Dukumbana told Ramaphosa that while he was recuperating at home after being discharged from hospital, SAB informed him that it had discovered faults in his truck although this had nothing to do with the accident. He said they then terminated his contract without giving him a chance to fix the faults in his truck, which was an unusual action.
He said throughout the years he worked with SAB, the company would help contractors to repair faults in their trucks, but after being injured, the company threw him out of business. “Now Mr President I’m left hopeless with no source of income and resources to go up against a big company like SAB. As a citizen who was contributing to the economy of the country combating unemployment can (the) government intervene?” pleaded Dukumbana.
Ramaphosa’s Tyrone Seale did not respond to questions sent to him. | Additional reporting by Bongani Hans – investigations@inl.co.za