Nearly 100 young job seekers from Alexandra marched through Sandton this week in a renewed door-to-door campaign targeting businesses around Melrose Arch on July 28.

They spotlighted a frustration that has become increasingly difficult for corporate South Africa to ignore, a generation of unemployed youth living within sight of the country’s wealthiest business district.

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The march, organised by Alexandra’s SA Job Seekers movement, is not the group’s first foray into Sandton. Previous engagements with several companies had, according to the movement’s spokesperson Mthokozisi Khambule, produced promises of further dialogue, commitments he said were subsequently abandoned.

“In our last engagements, we said we are looking for opportunities and nothing else,” Khambule said.

“But we ended up engaging with their lawyers, and he told us we should not come. But we are here.”

Khambule said the movement’s aim was not confrontation but the restoration of a working relationship with businesses in the area, particularly those behind Sandton’s ongoing construction boom.

Given the scale of development in the precinct, he argued, it is untenable for residents of neighbouring Alexandra to remain locked out of the resulting job opportunities.

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He also raised concerns that some companies operating on construction sites in the area are allegedly employing undocumented foreign nationals in place of local workers, an allegation, he said, informed by information passed on by members of the community working on those sites as SMMEs.

Khambule was firm that such claims would continue to be raised regardless of legal pushback from some companies.

The campaign yielded at least one tangible commitment. Following talks with one construction firm in the area, movement leaders said the company confirmed it was actively recruiting construction workers and had agreed to visit the group’s offices on July 31 to hand in CVs.

Khambule encouraged those who had joined the march, many of whom had not come specifically in search of construction roles, to also submit CVs on behalf of family members, in an effort to widen the pool of beneficiaries beyond those present on the day.

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The march drew visible attention from office workers and passers-by around Melrose Arch, and this was precisely the kind of visibility organisers say they were after.

The demonstration was not without friction. Organisers faced resistance from some companies and extended engagement with police officers.

Movement leader Mush Raletjena used those interactions to clarify the group’s intent, stressing that the campaign was about employment access, not disruption.

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Raletjena added that, alongside their work search, members were also documenting details of companies they believe are contravening South African labour and immigration law by employing undocumented workers.

Norman Phalatse, one of the marchers, said the turnout itself was the message.

He said the scale of participation was evidence that unemployment among young people remains an unresolved and worsening crisis, one that business leaders in Sandton can no longer treat as someone else’s problem.

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