Content warning: This story contains references to suicide.

Shoprite Holdings, the largest supermarket retail chain in Africa, is under fire from workers organizing against grueling work conditions. The current surge in organizing follows the suicide of Shoprite worker Fabiola Zondjembo, a Walvis Bay woman who ended her life by drowning after enduring constant abuse at her job. For workers and organizers confronting brutal conditions at the retail giant, the current struggle is also part of Namibia’s long history of colonialism and neocolonialism. Shoprite, a South African multinational, has more than 3,000 stores across the African continent. Originally founded during Apartheid, its founder, billionaire Christoffel Wiese, is now one of the world’s richest men. The Real News reports from Walvis Bay and Windhoek, Namibia.

This story, with the support of theBertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’sWorkers of the Worldseries, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.

Transcript

Inna Hengari, Namibian Member of Parliament, Popular Democratic Movement (speaking before crowd): Forward to the young people of Namibia, forward!

(With crowd response): Amandla, ngawethu!

Hildegard Titus (narrator): It is not easy to secure a job in Namibia where the youth unemployment rate is at almost 50%.

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In 2022 Namibia’s government paper New Era reported that the demographic most affected by unemployment is young Black women.

In January, Walvis Bay resident, Fabiola Zondjembo ended her life by drowning. Just a few hours earlier, she had gotten fired from her job as a cashier.

Her local community in Walvis Bay, including her family and former colleagues, demand justice for Fabiola. They claim abuse and mistreatment at Shoprite — Africa’s largest retail chain —as a culprit in Fabiola’s death.

The majority of Shoprite workers are employed as casual workers, who the company refers to as PPPs — permanent part-timers. Most of them are women. 

1st Anonymous worker: Us workers go to work, but we work with fear because you know that any simple mistake can land you behind office doors. When you come out of that office, its like you are confused and then you go to the till. We want to work smoothly, and smile with customers while we are assisting them at the till, but now I won’t be able to smile with the customer anymore because I was made upset in the office. “Smile with the customer!” How can I smile with the customer if I am angry, while it’s not fair?

And you will be counting huge sums of money, more than you have ever seen in your life, but out of that money the cashier will only get weekly N$400 (U$D 27) or N$500 (U$D 35). It’s not easy. A cashier might not afford to eat that day while counting huge sums of money.

Hildegard Titus (narrator): Shoprite Holding is a multinational conglomerate made up of over 3000 stores in Africa. The Group’s history of worker exploitation, is just as extensive, as its spread across the continent.

Fabiola worked at a Shoprite supermarket for two years. Outside work, she often spent time with her sister Isabella, who remembers her by her traditional name Unomasa, meaning “God is powerful”.

Isabella Zondjembo, Fabiola Zondjembo’s sister: In 2018, my mom passed away. Unomasa (Fabiola) was studying nursing at the time. That year she was the best learner in her class and school and was supposed to travel abroad for further studies (in 2020). But then Corona started and she got a job at Shoprite instead.

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