Mohloai Mpesi
IT is not yet 6am, but Palesa Selebalo is already up – packing lunch boxes, tying school shoes, getting her two children ready for the day ahead. By the time most of Maseru is stirring, the 36-year-old will have dropped them off and slid behind the wheel of her own taxi, ready for a full day’s work in an industry still overwhelmingly dominated by men.
It is a small routine, repeated every weekday. But behind it lies a decision that says a great deal about how Ms Selebalo sees herself, her marriage and her place in the world of work.
Lesotho’s unemployment rate has hovered above 16 percent in recent years, according to International Labour Organisation estimates, with women historically experiencing higher unemployment than men. It is against this backdrop that Ms Selebalo decided last September that she would rather drive her own 4+1 – the small taxi that ferries a maximum of four passengers per load around towns and villages – than sit at home while a hired driver made a living off her vehicle.
“The taxi was being driven by a man I had hired. I was not doing anything at that time, just sitting at home. The whole arrangement didn’t make sense to me – having someone drive my car and earn from it while I did nothing,” she told this reporter, aboard her taxi en route from Lepoqong Taxi Rank to Koalabata, on Friday evening.
“I decided to get a public service licence and started working. It was tricky at first, but things got better with time. As women, we tend to be shy about calling out of the window to invite passengers,” she said.
For Ms Selebalo, driving a taxi is a business like any other. What matters, she says, is not how one earns a living, but the willingness to get up each day and put food on the table.
“Money is money, whether you are a taxi driver or in any other job. It’s still money at the end of the day. It’s a business like any other business – some days there are no passengers and you don’t make much, but other days are good,” she said.
She had braced herself for a difficult reception working alongside men. Instead, she found the opposite.
“Working with men, I haven’t come across any real challenge – they are very supportive. We work together. Recently my car was overheating, and they noticed and quickly helped me fix it,” she said.
Ms Selebalo keeps no fixed starting time. Her workday only begins once the household chores and school run are done.
“I don’t have a specific time because, as a woman, I first have to make sure the house is clean and the chores are done before I go out to work. I have two children, and I prepare the youngest for school in the mornings – her lunch box and everything – before dropping them off. Then I start work,” she said. “The earliest I get going is around 6am. There are passengers in the mornings because people are heading to work, but during the day things are quiet – you can even park your car and rest, then start again in the afternoon when people knock off.”
“Meeting my husband halfway”
Ms Selebalo urged other women to venture into male-dominated industries, arguing that old attitudes towards work and marriage no longer hold up.
“These days we can no longer afford to be picky about the work we do. It is no longer time for women to sit at home waiting for their husband’s pay cheque at the end of the month. Life has changed. As a woman, I have to stand up and meet my husband halfway,” she said.
Her convictions on this point run deep – and she does not soften them.
“I don’t believe in sitting around doing nothing, putting on mascara and nails and spending the whole day waiting for my husband’s salary at month end,” she said. “I don’t want to ask my husband for money to buy make-up. I have better things to do with that money. I like doing things for myself. It’s a good feeling when a husband comes home and finds that his wife has already taken care of things he wasn’t expecting her to.”
She believes men, too, increasingly want partners who pull their weight financially.
“Men these days no longer want women who are liabilities, or so-called ‘slay queens’. They want women who use their minds and their hands to work and contribute to the family’s welfare – not a wife you simply support while she sits around or goes to the salon. Otherwise, you could work your whole life without ever building a house, because you’re spending everything financing a lifestyle for a wife who doesn’t work,” she said.
Not the only woman on the road
Ms Selebalo is not alone on the road, and she has been counting her company. “I’ve noticed women are gradually getting into the taxi business. I’ve counted six operating around the border gate and Ha Thetsane. Even before I started driving, there was a woman driving a Quantum to Quthing, and another driving a coaster full of schoolchildren.”
The business itself is not without its frustrations – chief among them, funding. “I enjoy business, though funding is sometimes a challenge. I have children and I pay their school fees. I built rental rooms (malaene), and I hold an education qualification, but it hasn’t been much help given the unemployment rate. So those qualifications sit at home, but that doesn’t stop me from working,” she said.
Built from a shack, brick by brick
It is a pattern of resourcefulness that stretches back well before she picked up a taxi licence. Ms Selebalo recalled how she and her husband built their home from nothing, starting with a single shack on an empty site.
“I was renting a room (malaene) and realised how much money I was paying a landlord. I told my husband we needed to buy a site and build a shack. We lived in that shack – I wouldn’t be the first person to have lived in one,” she said. “We bought the site and built the shack. When my husband arrived, he found me already living there with the building tools. We had one child at the time. We started moulding bricks ourselves and eventually built a proper house.
“If we hadn’t done that, we would probably still be renting today. You have to take risks to achieve things. I once lived in a shack without windows,” she said.
The M17 question
Ms Selebalo also weighed in on the ongoing debate around the last increase in local transport fares, from M13 to M17, saying the old fare had left drivers struggling to break even.
“The M13 fare wasn’t making any real difference. If I carried two passengers to Ha Foso, the fare I collected was worth a litre of fuel. It didn’t add up. Things improved a little once the fare went up to M17,” she said.
Still, she was quick to acknowledge the burden the higher fares place on passengers who are themselves struggling financially.
“That same M17 comes out of the pockets of people who don’t have much – civil servants who only got a two percent salary increment, factory workers who are still on short time after two weeks of work, vendors who say they went home without selling anything. M17 is almost M20, which means M40 a day just on transport,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Ms Selebalo says self-employment has given her something a formal job never could: control over her own time.
“When you own a business, you are your own manager. You work in your own time and set your own targets. When you work for someone else, your boss wants you clocking in strictly at 7am. When it’s your own business, you’re in a position to push yourself and reach the targets you set,” she said.