Every Monday, employees of Delivery Ka Speed, a South African township-focused logistics company, slip a note into parcels that reads “New Week, We Try Again”. The business posts the same line on its social media. Founder Godiragetse Mogajane says the phrase, which they have used since the early days of delivering food on bicycles, “comes from an understanding that people are trying out there, especially in townships”.
Townships – residential areas established under apartheid for non-white South Africans – still bear the structural and economic scars of segregation. The 1950 Group Areas Act gave the state the authority to allocate land to specific racial groups. In practice, this meant forcibly relocating black residents to the outskirts of cities, into areas like Soweto (Johannesburg), Khayelitsha (Cape Town) and Umlazi (Durban). Under apartheid, townships suffered from chronic overcrowding and poor infrastructure.
While townships have seen notable improvements since the end of apartheid, from better housing to the emergence of modern shopping malls, they remain economically marginalised in many respects. Mogajane recognised this gap in services as a business opportunity. In 2021, he launched Delivery Ka Speed.
“A lot of people are trying to get their lives in a better state, but they’re not being recognised,” he notes. He sees this struggle everywhere – from parents fighting to keep food on the table, to students striving to pass exams – often without anyone acknowledging that they are doing their best.
“We truly believe that as a business, if we can come in and just give you that oomph on a Monday to say, ‘Hey, it’s a new week, regardless of what happened last week’ … Because if you stop trying, that’s when it ends.”
He is also seeking to internalise this in the company’s own operations. “Whatever happened with yesterday’s deliveries … it’s in the past. We now have an opportunity to try again and do better.”
This article is an adapted excerpt from our latest book How we made it in Africa II. To learn more about how Godiragetse Mogajane capitalised on an opportunity in South Africa’s townships, purchase the book from the official website or from Amazon.
