In recent years the “4 day week” has been all the rage with claims that employers see no loss in productivity despite a day less worked per week. Here I explain why this “western concept” will not work in a poor African country, despite parts of South Africa masquerading as a western country.
What is a 4-day week
A 4 day week is when companies let their employees work for four days a week instead of the customary five. So instead of Monday to Friday it will be Monday to Thursday, it can technically be any four days in a seven-day cycle but we know how South Africans love their long weekends so we can safely assume the standard will be Monday to Thursday if adopted.
Why a 4 day week won’t work in SA
TL;DR: South Africa has the opposite macro environment to countries where the 4-day week has succeeded, and while a very small part of SA mimics parts of the world where it has succeeded, the vast majority does not. The 4 day week is a “western concept” akin to the Finnish school system that will not work in a poor African country such as South Africa as it does not have the accompanying ecosystem or structure to support it.
South Africa: a crash course
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. The latest Knight Frank numbers are that there are only 31,852 high-net-worth individuals, people with a net worth of at least $1m (USD), this means that we do not have a “one percent” but rather a 0.05%. When it comes to employed people the latest Bureau of Market Research numbers shows that 75% of the adult population in the country earns below R5800 per month, while only 3.8% of the adult population earns more than R48 000 per month. R5800 a month is not even enough to afford a fish-tank apartment in Cape Town’s northern suburbs which is the cheapest of the suburbs in CT to live in (note: South African definition of township vs suburb). In fact to be able to live in a R5800 apartment your salary has to be at least R17400. When it comes to unemployment the “expanded” or like I say “correct” numbers are 45.5%. There are twice as many welfare beneficiaries than what there are taxpayers. GDP per capita – “taking the a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period by countries and dividing it by the country’s population” is a useless metric in SA, with most of the wealth is so few hands it does not mean anything and certainly not a yardstick that the country’s “success” can be measured by.
South Africa is what economists would call “Belindia” (a portmanteau of Belgium and India) “a country in which a small minority of the population lived like well-to-do people would in advanced modern economies (Belgium), while the vast majority lived like low-income people in India”. We can argue that South Africa is “Enghana” as well “the extremely high taxation level of England, but those government revenues were used to deliver social services that were at par with the standards in Ghana”, but that is another story for another day. The point I’m making is that a country must act the way the majority is and not the minority. The problem is that South Africa operates like it is a majority wealthy country when it is the opposite. Yesterday’s rate hike which mimics the US Fed is one to rein in a wealthy country not a poor country desperate for growth. It is thus under the illusion that it is a eagle when it fact it is a bushbird. Nothing wrong with being a bushbird, it’s OK to be a bushbird but don’t try to be an eagle. Every government agency, every big business operates under this “Belgium” illusion that they are dealing with well-to-do people in an advanced modern economy which is why people cannot cope with the rising cost of living in SA.
Why 4 day workweek will fail
I argue for a 4 day work week to succeed there has to be already an environment in place that supports the studies. Mentally people need to understand the value of an honest days work. The economy structure, regulatory environment and productivity already has to be there. It has shown to work in places where people assume good faith, where people can leave bags unattended, where they can borrow tool-kits and power tools from their local library, where they can go to bed at night without locking their doors. It is not proven in a place where people need electric fence, burglar bars, armed response, barbed wire and safety gates in residential neighbourhoods. I would say you need to be happy, have a positive outlook in general. Working one day less is not going to make a bitter worker twiddling their thumbs any less that what they did than if they worked five days. Why would they do that? Because they are grateful that their employer are giving them four days off per month? That is not going to happen. But most importantly of all South Africans does not have the mindset and mentality. Many people are under the incorrect assumption the reason that people prefer to hire foreigners such as Zimbabweans is the red tape with regards to hiring locals and thus prefer to do things “under the table”. In some cases sure, but I have found the majority of locals to be entitled and ungrateful while others are even bitter and resentful at their bosses that the negotiated settlement didn’t float all boats.
I have spoken about the ideological barriers (poverty mindset, spirit of entitlement, dependency syndrome, morals & ethics) as well as the “quick buck mentality” so prevalent in South Africans but I don’t always mean that in a negative way. I know it often comes from a place of desperation. The vast majority of South Africans are sick and tired of being sick and tired. A 4 day week does not solve anything. It might give some more time to wallow in their misery.
Yes we will see pockets of the 4-day week in the enclaves such as Cape Town that think they are Belgium, Discovery will probably try it in their vaccine-only cocoons but it will not go mainstream with the “South African mentality”. It will achieve the opposite.
Productivity will go down, instead of workers skedaddling as soon as possible on a Friday they will now do so on a Thursday as they prepare for the long weekend only to walk in late and hungover on a Monday. I’m generalising but I don’t think it will result in the mental shift that the studies mention.
This is because the majority poor, the 75% earning R5800 and below will still be going home to their rusty shacks, cockroach-infested council tenements (I’m referring to the insect), sleep on bedbug-infested beds, and live in gang-infested areas. You will notice that I have not spoken about the need to destroy. During apartheid, it become ANC policy to protest and destroy infrastructure to make the country ungovernable as part of their resistance struggle. This has been carried over in mindset over 28 years into the new dispensation. But why would you want to make the country ungovernable for the very people you voted for? The majority are the ruling class, they have voted the ANC into power in the last 6 democratic elections. Why would they destroy their own infrastructure that is already being built at inflated tenderpreneur prices? Why? Because they don’t care, they have nothing to lose, working a day less won’t change that.
Nowhere with this mindset will a 4 day week succeed. It will simply be seen as a public holiday and things will carry on as normal, nothing will change it won’t “bend people’s brains” to a new normal like studies are claiming, leaving the burden of the extra day on the employer and with the economy paying the ultimate price.
