Off track: delivery economy may be running out of road

As the on-demand delivery economy grows in cities all over South Africa, residents and shop owners complain of chaos, drivers face risks and companies scramble to manage the fallout

- By Kara le Roux

On any day in cities across the country, motorcycles idle outside malls and restaurants as the riders wait for the next delivery to ping on their phones. It's a scene that has become as familiar as Table Mountain in Cape Town or the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

What began with Checkers Sixty6o has evolved into a fully-fledged ecosystem of instant convenience as Mr D, Uber, Pick n Pay ASAP!, Woolies Dash and others race to deliver everything from milk to sushi. But for landlords, restaurant owners and the drivers themselves, the cost of this convenience is becoming harder to ignore.

From suburb to staging ground

Using Cape Town as an example, Daily Maverick found that frustration was boiling over in Claremont, a suburb in the southern parts of the city.

A landlord at Intaba, a residential complex near Cavendish Square shopping centre and popular restaurants and cafés, said the surrounding streets had turned into a motorbike holding zone.

The Claremont resident, who chose to remain anonymous, told Daily Maverick how he had seen drivers sleep on pavements, urinate in alleyways, park on red lines on dangerous corners and rev their motorbikes outside the apartment windows. He described the area as turning into a “slum”.

He claimed that his properties' values had plummeted and blamed delivery platforms like Mr D and Uber Eats for their poor driver oversight, saying he had found it difficult to reach staff higher up in the companies to complain.

In the city bowl, a Kloof Street restaurant owner, who also wanted to remain anonymous, shared similar concerns. Since 2017, he said, he had watched drivers cluster around the building, blocking entrances, urinating in the street and stealing products from his premises. He eventually banned them from entering his shop.