2007. SINZASA and Nottingham Avenue Baker, Christchurch NZ, 1997

On 25/03/1997, SA expats met at Roydvale Scout Hall and formed SINZASA, the South Island NZ Association of Southern Africans. Expats had met in immigrants' homes and had Xmas functions in parks. SINZASA's mission statement: "To bring together like-minded Southern Africans in order to become good immigrants contributing to NZ..." (SINZASA Constitution, 1997). A committee was elected, and functions were organized. Indaba journal was published, and some Indaba articles I submitted, critical of apartheid, were either censored or ignored by editors with Afrikaner surnames.

During early years, SINZASA had strong ZIMCARE contributors, when white and black Zimbabwians immigrated, before and after Mugabe's white farm confiscations. By 2006, there were about 600 expat families on the South Island, 45% of which were Afrikaners, some of whom liked 1950s Dutch immigrants and their Dutch Reformed kerk.

In 1990, Moore's defeated Labour government left Bolger's National government with a huge deficit. Bolger's National government continued reforms begun by Lange's labour government. From 1991, unions were weakened by the Employment Contracts Act, and working days lost due to industrial action were reduced. (Jim Bolger, Bolger, A View From The Top, Penguin, Auckland, Viking, 1998). National government overreacted to unions by perpetuating a structurally violent labour system in the nineties competing job seekers, beneficiaries and immigrants, like us, for low paid jobs.

Job application forms I posted from Nottingham Avenue were justified by employers for statistical purposes and for screening applicants with criminal convictions. Questions included: 1. Criminal convictions? 2. Disabilities affecting performance? It placed me at the bottom of job applicant piles. 3. Country of origin? This race question often listed Pacific Islands. The forms helped personnel clerks too lazy to read CVs, and discriminated against rehabilitated felons, the disabled and foreigners. For NZ priding itself on EEO and merit, the crime / disability / homeland form was strange.

NZ Immigration Service (NZIS) wanted healthy, wealthy, highly qualified professional immigrants. Employers wanted them also, but also wanted to pay them low wages. As NZ had degreed immigrants doing labouring jobs, if the National government wanted cheap -labour, then NZIS should've immigrated more than the 750 annual quota refugees, rather than giving residence to investor, business category immigrants, or paying immigrants, like us, who couldn't find jobs suitable for our sometimes superior overseas educations and work experiences. In later years, there'd be media reports of cheap -labour, foreign fruit-pickers working illegally in the Nelson - Marlborough district, and shonky labour contractors bleating how tough it was to find good pickers. There'd be a plethora of pickers if employers paid good wages.

In 1997, I worked at a cookie bakery which employed 50 contracted workers: Maori, Cambodians, Pacific Islanders, Chinese, Pakeha, me. Bakery staff were mainly hourly-paid immigrant workers, like me. Work began at 04:00 or 05:00, sometimes ending late at night, depending on production needs. Office staff were mainly aloof Pakeha and a token Cambodian office lady. Office workers' hours were shorter.

I signed a two week probationary contract to mop floors and wash hundreds of plastic butter-buckets, giant food-mixing implements, and big plastic tubs, sludgy with leftover ingredients. Workers wore blue overalls and white T shirts, which were laundered once a week. Workers had to wear white hairnets. White latex gloves were optional. Workers wore their own dirty work-boots or stinky trainers.

I worked at the cookie-bar cutter-machine in the most hazardous spot, between two series of high-speed circular-saws arranged at right angles. Flat slabs of baked material were pushed by a Tongan into the first blade-series, which cut slabs into long cookie-bars, which I pushed through the second blade series to Cambodians, who stacked the smaller cookie-bars on pallets. Cookie crumbs sprayed all over us.

Cookie-bars sometimes jammed the saws, under inadequate covers of the badly designed machine. If I'd stretched my fingers under the covers they would've been shredded. Goggles and earmuffs weren't supplied. Once, when I scraped sludge from a "protection cover," blades flung my metal scraper past the shocked Tongan. Cambodian Wang pressed the red emergency button saying, "Whatcha doin' eh Mak?"

"Blades nearly killed me." Wang found the shredded metal scraper far from the machine and metal splinters on the floor. My shoulder was wrenched. No one said anything about ACC, or seeing a Quack for a checkup.

After cutting, I cleaned the machine, then trolleyed drums of waste to a concrete-pad outside the in-goods warehouse.

I began work at 05:00 each morning. My pay included two daily fifteen minute smokos, but not staggered lunch-hour breaks. I was paid time-and-a-half for my 23 hours overtime over my 40 hour week. My first week's pay was NZ$8/hour, grossing NZ$596, netting NZ$500 for 63 hours work, excluding lunch hours and commuting times to / from the bakery, which was 10 kays from Nottingham Avenue. It was the highest week's wage I'd get in my first 13 years' NZ residence. I explained to production manager Crumbles that I had OOS. Crumbles, scared I'd make an ACC claim, offered me storeman work at NZ$8.75/hour.

Income Support's Gosling wrote: "As you have worked more than 30 hours per week... you are considered to be in full-time work and as such no unemployment benefit is payable." (NZ Income Support letter July 1997). My cookie wage couldn't support my family, and I'd see scores of those dole form-letters over the years. Gosling's job was to get me off the dole. When I asked her if she had a quota of beneficiaries to get off the dole, she denied quotas. Our SA settling-in funds, subsidizing my wage, were diminishing. The 1991 Employment Contracts Act had much to answer for.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

2007. Post Apartheid George Goussard Dispatch and NZ Employment Contracts Act, 1997

< 1997. Esslemonts, Gillie & Gran Mackintosh, Port Hills, Christchurch.


February 1997. George Goussard's dispatch: "26 year old white man robbed of 4 hamburgers: stabbed to death by 3 black youths (2 arrested). Greek shop-owner shot dead in his Bloem shop. Cafe owner robbed in Brandfort (1 arrested). Old white woman stabbed to death in her Bloem home (1 arrested). Schoolboy stabbed by black classmates. (He's in hospital).

A year ago, matriculated applicants for Wits Technikon were tested: most had literacy / numeracy levels below standard 6. An oke phones a radio programme, saying he tried to report a crime, but cops were unwilling to investigate. He persisted, finding black cops were functionally illiterate, although they all had matric certificates: only 15% of cop intake can be white. Yet watch TV and see who's doing the most dangerous cop jobs?

A newspaper suggests the 'paying minority' considers organized resistance, like motorists removing their car number-plates, (carjackers use computer registration to trace wealthy victims), and paying taxes into trust funds, until government combats crime. Cops are ineffective. Judiciary grants bail for criminals to rob again. Bloated jails release thousands. If you commit a crime, going to jail even briefly is remote. SA is a violent criminals' paradise.

Government tries to contain costs. Some cop-shops don't have petrol, due to overspending - local government ditto. About 300 of 850 municipalities are technically bankrupt. Commerce is succeeding. The Rand fell about 30% during 1996. Lately, billions poured into SA, making the Rand stronger, pushing up market prices.

Whites are emigrating - skilled labour shortage worsens. Inflation increases when businesses increase wages to attract and keep skilled employees. Remember when cafes were owned by Greeks or Portuguese? Afrikaners now own cafes. Afrikaner small businesses proliferate. East London, King, PE are the fastest growing areas - megabucks made. Farmers move to Mozambique - 50 settled, 200 moving. Others move to the Congo. Anglo is massively moving into Africa. Executive Outcomes, SA mercenary organization, profits by propping up governments and removing others." (Jim Hooper, Blood Song, HarperCollins, London, 2003).

When I applied for Employment Service TOPS training Yam said, "You must be long-term unemployed before applying?"

When I became long-term unemployed, Workbridge chivvied: "If I do not hear from you within the next two weeks I will assume that you no longer require our services." Workbridge posted me referral letters, after I applied for upholstery, electronics and computer courses, but Workbridge failed to warn me that I'd be rejected by some course trainers, like Salvation Army, as I was overqualified. I chased geese: interviews; waiting lists; waste of my time and car resources. The electronics and computer schools I applied to both went bankrupt: overspent student-loan funding.

Although Workbridge was supposed to find work for disabled people, like me, for months Workbridge posted me letters, asking whether I'd found work. But Workbridge didn't find me work. (Workbridge letters August 1996 - March 1997).

Full waiting lists, or signed applications for courses, were dodges for trainers to forecast student numbers, then get state funding. Training unemployed people like me, or community training, was a way of extracting state funds. Taxpayer-funded training establishments parasitized youths, the unemployed like me, and the community. I wondered how many trained people got jobs, or were actually educated?

I picked apples for Scales Company at Mair, Wigram and Halswell Orchards. The Maori couple who "supervised" us were sometimes goofed on drugs. Within two years the orchards would be destroyed, as parent company Apple-Fields sold the orchards for building developments. Chow and I worked well together, as our picking pace was similar. Besides Pakeha and Maori pickers, there were Somali refugee pickers, and Zimbabwian and Asian student pickers like Chow. Pay was low. We didn't work on rainy days. After twelve years' unemployment / temp / student work, Chow finally got permanent work: cleaning Banks Peninsular public toilets.

Chow who had migrant family in Australia and USA said, "NZ is the most difficult of the three countries in which to find work. Immigrant English fluency is a problem with Kiwi employers. In America, English is not a problem for Chinese immigrants. We're employed if our English is understood." Chow left for Australia.

The Employment Contracts Act favoured employers, as contracts and minimum basic wages exploited hourly-paid workers. The Employment Service (ES) advertised work schemes and low-pay, like Task Force Green and Youth Rates. Private sector employers and ES collaborated, ensuring cheap-labour schemes were taxpayer funded, which resulted in a dearth of trained and experienced artisans.

My options were low-paid contract work; self employment, which let NZ off the wage hook; work in another country; dole. Clueless Yam didn't contact us about professional work. ES hid job paucity on computers and notice boards. Most ES advertised jobs were weeks old. Leah and I just couldn't find permanent professional work.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

2007. OSH and EEO, Family Visit and Fruit Picking, Christchurch NZ, 1996-1997

< 1996. Esslemonts & Mackintoshes, Dandelion Fountain, Christchurch City Hall on the Avon.


In December 1996, I queried National government Department of Labour, Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) about work for deaf people. A bureaucrat wrote: "The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 does not contain any list of jobs which people with a hearing disability, or any other disability, can or cannot apply for. It is up to the employer to assess the risk of employing someone with a hearing disability."


Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) were questionable, as legal health and safety requirements negated EEO. In February 1997, I queried the Education Review Office about EEO in NZ schools. A bureaucrat in the National Ministry of Education, National Operations section wrote: "There is no national policy imposed on schools. Legislation places clear responsibilities on individual employers (Boards of Trustees) to identify needs and develop objectives specific to their own school environment... EEO in NZ has always been associated with the merit principal, where the best person for the job is appointed based on objective assessment against specific criteria... Christchurch region has a history of oversupply and teaching positions in the area are difficult to secure. You may have more success in other parts of the country. A further option to consider is relief-teaching."

I doubted, "objective assessment." Ten years later I was told by a Workbridge bureaucrat, who helped disabled people find jobs, that employers liked employees with a, "good attitude."

A SA French teacher couldn't find French teaching work in Christchurch. She relocated to Auckland, returned to Christchurch, then taught English to foreigners.

< 1996. Gran Mackintosh & Esslemont Brothers, Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

Leah's mom and Gillie visited us, enjoying Christchurch, Lyttelton and Akaroa. At Birdling Flats, while Gillie searched for jade pebbles, I realized Leah and I'd dumped the conglomerate of our Azanian lives, and our sons would cut and polish our gems.

From Coopers Knobs we viewed Canterbury Plain and the Alps. Halswell Quarry top gave us more Alpine views. We enjoyed Hagley Park botanic gardens, and feeding ducks at Groynes. "NZ ducks," I said, "are better fed than Azanian street-kids. If I'm reincarnated, I'll become a NZ duck. Traffic stops for ducks..."

Gillie and I toured Kaiokura, Blenheim and Greymouth. Gillie liked walking across Buller River suspension bridge, but disliked sandfly stings...

< 1997. Gillie & Mark Esslemont, Lake Pukaki & Aoraki Mount Cook backdrop.


Gillie liked the salmon farm on the Tekapo-Pukaki canal, near Aoraki Mount Cook, and was impressed by lake depths, hundreds of metres, and huge rainbow and brown trout in Lake Wanaka... We explored Queenstown, Arrowtown and Lawrence - old gold mining areas... Near Mosgiel a speeding Christchurch Scenic tourist bus and later a speeding sheep-truck overtook us in heavy rain. Both drivers cut in too soon, nearly hitting us, had I not swerved twice off the road. "In my opinion," I spat, "Kiwi truckers are bad drivers. Tailgating truckers go faster than their speed limit. Rural roads are narrow and twisty. Road shoulders aren't wide enough, with ditches alongside. Rural roads aren't built for fast cars, or articulated log-trucks, stock-trucks, or articulated fuel -tankers and milk-tankers. All those white crosses on the roadside are for dead Kiwis."

In 1992, NZ cops and traffic cops had merged, resulting in neglected traffic policing. Motorists sped along roads during early years of our residence. Only in 2001 were traffic cops reintroduced, resulting in better traffic policing. Only in 2007 were cops on motorbikes introduced to Christchurch.

In 2008, NZ Labour government repurchased NZ Rail, after it had been sold and pointlessly privatized by a previous NZ government. The idea of repurchasing rundown rolling stock and railways was to revamp rolling stock and railways to unclog constipated NZ roads, all paid for again by NZ taxpayers.

We looked at soggy Dunedin and the nearby albatross colony. At Moeraki beach boulders, Gillie enjoyed seeing Hectors dolphins surfing and said, "I like NZ: no snakes, no monkeys, no kaffirs."

"Voertsek!" I said. Old folk like Gillie followed their migrant offspring. In NZ, if half or more than half the offspring of a family had trekked to NZ, or other countries, then parents of immigrants were eligible for automatic residence. Leah's family was scattered about SA, USA, Canada, UK and NZ.

A former Selborne College colleague had married a Kiwi. He lived and worked in Christchurch and raised Kiwi kids. A Kiwi nuptial was the easiest road to residence. When friends and family visited immigrants, they stimulated tourism and the economy. What grandparents wouldn't spoil grandchildren, not having seen them for years? Some grandparents immigrated successfully. Some arrived, opened and closed businesses, and grew old. Some lost loved ones in NZ, or their homeland. Some couldn't afford to backspoor to their homeland. Some stayed in their homeland, like Leah's folks. Paradoxically, with poor exchange-rates, they'd lose too much.

Leah regularly phoned her SA family. Thankfully, phone calls were cheap. I regularly wrote to Fraser and his SA curator. Old friends, who were poor correspondents or poor emailers, dwindled. We had to make new friends and "family" in NZ. Happily, my SA mother-in-law was an excellent correspondent, never forgetting birthdays and anniversaries in her extended family. Our boys lost out growing up with their SA "brat pack" cousins.

Early in 1997, on my arse an' knees, I picked raspberries and strawberries at a Prebbleton berry farm. Pay was low, according to number of filled buckets. Expediently, bucket size was big, relative to fruit size.

Near Prebbleton, arse an' knees reprised, I picked beans with Samoans for a SA immigrant, who paid crap. He exported to Japan, and Japs wanted small, straight, fresh beans, picked according to size, straightness, ripeness - not curved, wide beans.

By encouraging professional paying immigrants, like us, NZ National government ensured cheap, intelligent labour, later subsidized by the dole. If immigrants remained professionally unemployed, like us, but determined to stay in NZ, like us, then during their residence, before dole eligibility, NZ had captive, cheap-labour.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

See Aoraki Mount Cook, Mackenzie District.

2007. Christchurch NZ Junk Jobs and Post Apartheid, George Goussard Dispatch, 1996

< 1996 Oaklands, Christchurch. Esslemont Brothers hanging around with Kiwi mates.


NZ employers paid the state ACC (Accident Rehabilitation & Compensation Corporation) premiums, then the state paid for "no blame" work injuries. Although all my jobs had some degree of hazard and unsafe work practices, employees couldn't sue employers for workplace accidents. The National government's Accident Insurance Act 1998 made changes to Accident Insurance from 01/07/1999, ensuring employers own insurance paid for workplace injuries. It also saved employers money on ACC premiums. Nine months later, the new Labour government reversed the National government's decision. Businesses again had to pay ACC for employees.

Yam sent me to Pioneer stadium, where labourers erected marquees for a homes exhibition. A retired Kiwi soldier, who'd been in Bosnia, climbed and crawled along aluminium-girders without a safety rope. Workers hoisted themselves upwards on forklift prongs. Casual workers' safety was ignored by the Maori boss. There were multitudes where we came from. As Yam had sent too many labourers to Pioneer Stadium, I was sacked after two days.

I realized Employment Service, Income Support and Workbridge were sheltered employments for bureaucrats like Yam and Gosling, who were indifferent, or preachy, patronising and dogmatic towards unemployed professionals, more qualified and work experienced than them. If bureaucrats found permanent work for the multitudes, bureaucrats would become unemployed, so bureaucrats just chivvied with phone calls and letters.

I signed on at more job agencies. One agent wanted me to sell Amway products. I declined, as she used my private information for her own self-interest. I removed furniture for removalists - back-breaking work. At the Airport, Chow and I cleaned Hercules aircraft at the USA's Deep-Freeze Antarctic air base. We stood on aluminium wheeled-platforms, while scrubbing wings, using liquid-soap to remove engine-exhaust carbon. Later, soap-burnt skin peeled off my arms and face.

We laboured in Meadow Fresh warehouses, unloading and palletising sacks of milk-powder from containers. We checked milk-powder sacks for mouse-holes. We found mouse-shit amongst sacks, and stomped on mouse-nests and mice. We placed torn sacks in new sacks and re-palletised. We swept up pink-powder mouse-poison, then Rentokil workers laid sticky mouse-traps and new poison. Gasmasks weren't supplied.

We unloaded containers and palletised juice bottles at a Ferry Road warehouse. Chow then dobbed me into our job agency, as I didn't palletise boxes his slow way. Although a Canterbury University student, Chow couldn't adapt to my faster stacking pattern. Thereafter on-call warehouse work stopped. Waiting for phone calls for low-paid jobs was demoralizing. Leah took my calls, as I couldn't use the phone anymore.

None of my jobs earned sufficient wages to support my family. The more jobs I did the more National government Income Support adjusted my dole payments. Leah phoned in my meagre wages each week, and Gosling never said, "These are yourwa entitlements? These are the benefits you should apply forwa?..." Employers knew if I was sacked I'd go on the dole, so there was no motivation for employers to pay decent wages.

Leah began work as an Oaklands School teacher-aide. Our combined dole and job incomes were insufficient to support our family. Our reduced SA funds still subsidized our NZ residence.

Houses were built too close together, but builders sometimes demolished old houses and built three wooden-frame houses on old quarter-acre properties. Privacy sucked, as Kiwi neighbours watched us. Cops placed dobbing-in requests in the media: "Police would like to hear from..." One neighbour dobbed-me-in for wrongly parking my car outside my home. TV programme, Neighbours at War showed interfering neighbours, their dobbing-in mentality, and feckless council workers.

Over the years we had two dodgy neighbours: One sold cigarettes illegally to teenagers, and was regularly spoken to by cops. Another was a known jailbird, recidivist burglar, less regularly spoken to by cops. Leah and I regularly yelled, "Oi! Clear off!" when Leah heard nocturnal tappings near our home. He sported a ponytail and pitbull terrier to intimidate neighbours. More cop cars pulled up near our Christchurch homes than we'd ever experienced in police-state SA.

Junk-mail and spam jabbered. Telemarketers and door-knockers irked. A local Esslemont crank solicited genealogy info from me, then another local Esslemont phone-stalked us, until I told them to stop.

< 1996. Esslemonts at Christchurch Cathedral Square.

I wrote to Koffiefontein friend George Goussard, asking him about SA.

October 1996. George Goussard's dispatch: "SA's doom and gloom. Municipalities almost bankrupt. Money's vanishing into black holes. A black Broederbond, black elite, ensures only chosen appointees (probably family connections) will be appointed to director and government positions. History's repeated. So much for merit, Rainbow Nation, 'no discrimination on race' New SA: more racist and exclusive than apartheid SA. Paradox: Private sector booms."

George's dispatches revealed the price of freedom in post-colonial African regimes, like Zimbabwe, April 2000: Twenty years after a liberation war, thousands of "freedom-fighters" squatted on white-owned commercial farms, demanding white farmers gave their Mugabe regime bought land to natives. Although Zimbabwe was supposed to be independent, president Mugabe said white farmers must claim compensation from former colonizer Britain. There was enough state land to give to blacks without stealing it from white farmers. White farmers emigrated, some to NZ, and life became worse for locals under Mugabe. In 2005, Mugabe's minions demolished squatter-housing, causing about 700 000 blacks to become jobless and homeless. (Christine Lamb, House of Stone, HarperCollins, London, 2006).

The 1971-1972 Rhodesia I'd seen was wasted.

Another friend, soon to emigrate to NZ, wrote from East London: "Nissan will retrench 520 employees - more taxpayers join the unemployed. Projected emigrant statistics don't give anyone confidence in SA. Anarchy threatens, unless more people start paying taxes, stop robbing, murdering, striking African style, but no one responds..."

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

2007. Christchurch NZ, Lincoln University & Oaklands Labourer, 1996

1996. Esslemonts at Lake Tekapo.


Despite my Phonaks, I could hardly hear Lincoln lecturers who took us students on field-trips to see compost heaps, organically-grown vegetables, Sanitarium flower garden, Deans Bush and grape vines. I thought local champagne was crap, until I found Cellier Le Brun at Marlborough. There were no tutorials. Needed library books were scarce. Stand-over male students once bumped my seat in the library, and frightened an Asian girl who left. A male fiddled with my beanie. I shut them up, and reported them to the proctor, a former bank robber.

After writing essays about grass-grub sex life, soil structure, grape brix (sugar content), pressed leaves and other scientisms, I withdrew after the first semester. I reckoned a postgrad diploma wouldn't, "Giz a job?" My state student-allowance paid some expenses, but I took eight years to repay my student-loan, with interest. A year after our arrival, we still subsidized our residence with our reduced SA funds. In 2002, Lincoln merged horticultural courses with degree courses, as student numbers were dropping.

During weekends, I'd picked Royal Gala apples with Chow a Taiwanese workmate at Apple-Fields Mair Orchard near Prebbleton. Our Pakeha boss controlled tractors, hydro-ladders, spraying machines, trailers, pruning equipment. Once, I fell off my ladder when my wet boot slipped off a wet rung. No broken bones. Sometimes, casual workers fell off ladders and left for good. While picking, we selected apples according to colour percentage and size, and were paid according to the number of bins we filled daily. Depending on the size of picked apples, filling three bins daily with Chow was satisfactory. Four or more bins meant we were running up and down ladders.

June 1996: In SA, RDP (Reconstruction & Development Programme) gave way to GEAR (Growth, Employment & Redistribution). RDP & GEAR would prove to be illusions for SA's poor.

July 1996: I queried NZ Immigration Service about work opportunities in NZ and Australia. A bureaucrat wrote: "We have at the moment no facilities nor resources to be able to assist in job placement, or assisting with settling-in after arrival. The NZ Employment Service may be of help regarding future employment... You are free to explore opportunities in Australia and return to NZ anytime, provided you hold a Returning Resident Visa."

Previous NZ governments had assisted tens of thousands of Pom immigrants. Pacific Islanders were also assisted. Paying immigrants, like us, weren't. Annual quota refugees were screened and assisted in Auckland. The National government expected immigrants, like us, to pay for our Residence Visas and travel and relocation costs.

Aged 45, I signed on for the dole for the first time in my life. Sydenham Income Support's Gosling rolled her eyes when I said I was deaf. As there was no connection between state Income Support and state Employment Service, Gosling soon disabused me of my desire for ES to match my professional expertise with well paid work: "Yourwa labourer wage will be topped-up by the dole?" she said.

Topped-up by the dole, for a month I packed apples at Hornby Apple and Pear Marketing Board's cool-store, which was warmer than wintry winds outside.

A year after our arrival in NZ, I'd fallen from being a successful teacher to losing most of our wealth, and being rubbished by bureaucrats. Our living conditions and finances would stagnate over the next decade.

We liked Jake's teacher at Oaklands School. After kindergarten, when Luke turned five he joined Oaklands School's new-entry class. NZ kids began primary school the month they turned five. New-entry classes therefore had immature / school-ready / non school-ready kids. NZ kindergartens didn't have school-readiness programmes. In SA, Leah was trained and experienced in teaching school-readiness programmes to 5-6 year olds in pre-primary schools, before kids went to primary schools. NZ kindergartens were play / socializing schools, expecting teachers to change crappy-nappies. Kiwi-kids jumped from play-socializing kindergartens to desk-bound primary school new-entry classes, without transition from play to formal lessons.

Leah attended job interviews, but didn't want to teach in kindergartens.

NZ state teachers were unionized and fragmented. Kindy teachers had no pay parity with the primary teachers' union, nor Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA), a registered union. In SA, Leah had had pay parity. PPTA wage negotiations with NZ government were confrontational, reminding me of NUM / mine-management collective-bargaining in SA. Over the years, PPTA threatening strikes, going on strikes, wasting our boys' school times with PPTA meetings, strikes and threatened strikes, would teach our boys about union resistance, rather than professional cooperation and integrity.

I also found Christchurch employer / employee relations confrontational. Sometimes I was asked to join a labour union. I always declined. Unions just wanted my union dues, for their weak representation.

For a month, I pruned apple trees at Apple-Fields Wigram Orchard. Pruning needed strong wrists, using pruning-saw, secateurs, loppers for seven hours a day. Every morning pruners sat on an applecart, which was hauled by a tractor to trees.

My Pakeha boss ignored Occupational Safety and Health, and only cared about forcing pruning above quota for each pruner. I was paid a daily basic wage for a quota of 100 pruned trees, and a bonus for trees pruned above quota. Pruning apple trees wouldn't enrich me, even with bonuses. I left Wigram, and lay awake at night with Occupational Overuse Syndrome - numb fingers, tingling in my middle, ring and pinkie fingers of both hands. My swollen carpel -tunnel tendons put pressure on my wrist nerves, and it was weeks before my wrists healed. At Halswell New World supermarket, when I encountered my Wigram ex boss again, he avoided eye contact.









1996. Esslemonts at Punakaiki.







Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

2007. Christchurch NZ, Nursery Work and Retraining, 1995

< 1995. Esslemonts at Lyttelton viewing a copy of Captain Cook's Endeavour.


I found a three month nursery job in the Port Hills, working a 40 hour contracted week, paid NZ$7.8/hour. I worked during weekends, but wasn't paid time-and -a-half for weekend work. It was impossible to support my family on $246.52 gross per week, as I paid $180/week rent. My SA funds subsidized our NZ residence. I'd been employed to cover my boss Horty's Xmas holiday.

During the spring rush, I watered, bagged and shifted trees. I drove a badly repaired tractor (a bent six-inch nail secured a front-end-load bucket), and front-end-loaded tons of potting-mix into a hopper. Beside a noisy compressor, without earmuffs, I daily bagged scores of tree seedlings into black, plastic bags, then trolleyed them to the sales area. I worked with four unfriendly potting-shed blokes who shovelled potting-mix into black, plastic punnets, then pushed punnets along metal rollers to grubby ladies who pricked out thousands of flower seedlings - boring, mindless, dehumanizing work. On rainy days, vehicles churned mud outside the shed.

One bloke washed reusable Lannen black, plastic containers in a formalin tub. Protective gloves were available, but he rarely used them as they were holed. Sometimes he wore a gasmask. I wondered when he'd get cancer, as formalin imbibed through skin. Ignorant, temp labourers were disposable.

Horty, wearing a gasmask, sprayed pesticides in plastic greenhouses. Gasmasks were unavailable for the rest of us. When I sensed gas, I left the shed and worked outside.

At a Commonwealth Head of Governments meeting in Auckland, Nigerian Ken Wiwa pleaded with Commonwealth leaders Bolger, Mandela, Major and others, to save his father from hanging by Abacha, Nigerian dictator. Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged. (Ken Wiwa, In the Shadow of a Saint, Black Swan, London, 2001).

By December, dry nor'westers had browned Port Hills, and I watered potted trees for hours. One sweltering afternoon, Horty grabbed a half-filled paper-pot from me saying, "Fuckin' useless! Pu' more soi' in po's!"

"You can't take heat. I haven't come to NZ to be abused." I left.

Months later the nursery went bankrupt.

I flew to Auckland for a Jewish school interview. The Jewish principal said, "You present well..." but didn't offer a teaching job. A Manurewa principal offered a temp teaching job without interviewing me. I declined, as Manurewa was a low decile southern suburb.

At a Christchurch College of Education teachers' retraining course, I read new curriculum documents. A lecturer touted the whole-word reading approach, and mocked phonics, as phonics was eradicated from NZ schools 25 years before. Leah's eclectic training in infant reading had emphasized phonics, enabling Leah to use several reading approaches. Leah believed whole-word and phonics complemented each other. She felt neither approach should be used exclusively. Because children had different learning styles and different needs, the whole-word approach was inadequate for some kids. Teaching kids phonics skills enabled them to overcome reading problems. In 2001, the NZ Labour government reported that phonics was needed after 30 years' disfavour, as many Kiwi kids couldn't read properly.

A PT teacher coached us in her gym. While I drum-majored with a stave, a lady teacher said, "Go home! You should rebuild SA!..." She should've recommended Australia. Her attack was unprovoked.

"What do you think Maori traditional challenges are?" I asked. "Why do you imply that Africans are incapable of sorting themselves out?" Silence. I told her why I'd left SA, and quoted KwaZulu-Natal killing statistics, and mentioned my brother's "accident," and described murders of people I'd known, and emphasized murders of citizens and farmers, and the distant drumming of violent crime. The teacher excused herself and went to the toilet.

When I sat at the back of a classroom observing a teacher, I couldn't hear him, despite my Phonaks, as class background-buzz obscured hearing-aid reception. I noticed kids sucking their thumbs. I wondered why teachers and parents allowed thumb-sucking. I could no longer teach, but over the next two years I applied for teaching jobs. Having been involved in teaching for 22 years, falling from my peak was painful.

We moved to a three-bedroom house at 40 Nottingham Avenue, Oaklands, within walking distance of amenities, and enrolled Jake at Oaklands School near home. We settled at Oaklands in Halswell for eight years, as the $200/week rent didn't increase, and built-in -cupboard-space was adequate. Most pondoks we'd viewed had little built-in-cupboard-space.

My third degree, UNISA BSc, remained incomplete, as I was reading scholarly stuff I'd absorbed years before. My reading was wider than degree subjects.

I registered for a postgraduate horticultural diploma at Lincoln University. A Pom said, "Call me professor! The muck-'n-magic organic farming course you applied for is unavailable."

See Lincoln University.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

2007. Christchurch NZ, Labourer Jobs, 1995

Before leaving SA, I'd applied for teaching, conservation and drama related jobs throughout NZ. Regret letters I'd received advised it was better to be in NZ when applying for jobs, which entailed expense for the interviewee. Principals suggested relief-teaching. Regret letters were mostly form-letters. Some were inaccurate. Some misspelt my name, and some didn't mention my name. Some employers didn't bother to reply.

In 1985, Lange's Labour government had introduced capitalist reforms. Kiwis with welfare-state hangovers still reeled after our arrival. State businesses had been privatized. Hospital waiting lists increased. State Community Services cards assisted poor citizens' medical costs. State dole and Family Assistance benefits, for unemployed or low income families, inadequately supported families, as house rentals or mortgages were not fully covered by the dole.

City charities had longer food-queues, with food-gift requests from the destitute and homeless, while business management golden -handshakes increased. Results of free-market reforms, which we saw in NZ, was a low class of thousands of unemployed and under -employed citizens, including professional immigrants, which NZ never had before, and which welfare bureaucrats chivvied with form-letters, phone-calls and compulsory meetings.

Christchurch employees had a brief use-by date. Teenagers were employed as cheap-labour on Youth Rates. Adults, if lucky to get work, became redundant in their 40s, after signing work contracts under the aegis of the 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA). Many jobs were temp jobs, which benefitted employers but not employees. I would find that Christchurch employers presented all my ECA temp -work contracts as non-negotiable documents.

At a deafness checkup my Quack said, "You're younger than fifty, so you're still in the work-force!" He didn't mention the fate of over-50-year-olds. Quacks made money from unemployed patients paying reduced fees using their Community Services cards, then Quacks applied for state subsidised funding for those same patients who'd use the cards. I found Quacks wanted me to unnecessarily visit them more than I was used to in SA, so they could claim more from the state. Example: Diagnosis of a burn on my leg needed two Quack consultations: 1st consultation - a "check for fungus swab" had to be sent away for lab assessment; 2nd consultation - Quack had to tell me the lab results. After the 1st consultation, I treated the burn with aloe vera and left that Quack.

As my Starkey hearing-aids were useless I posted them back to East London, and demanded a refund from my Worm City audiologist.

A Bealey Avenue audiologist said, "You're over 70% deaf - profoundly deaf." I trial-wore behind-the-ear hearing-aids. As digital hearing-aids were being developed, the audiologist gave me old stock Phonaks, which were painful with increased volumes.

Kelly Services sent me to a Brougham Street printer, a one month scratch-card sorting job. After two days, fifty temp labourers and I were sacked, as the printer had messed up scratch-card printing. Kelly Services didn't find me another job.

At Riccarton Employment Service, I obtained a list of job agencies from Yam, Chinese case-manager, then I registered with job agencies. Interviewers gave me forms to fill in. I never heard from them again. I made an appointment to see the Mature Employment Services lady manager. I arrived. She didn't.

Yam sent me to state funded Workbridge. Although I was a professional scribe with professional work experience, Workbridge insisted I rewrite my CV. A lady interviewed me, like I was cerebral -palsied. Her male boss sent me back to Yam, after weeks of my to-ing and fro-ing. Yam made me complete a form, then waved me to a pc to look for a job on the job list. Yam wasn't doing her job. She asked me to explain to a black man how to use the pc. Weeks later, Yam, asked me to complete the same form. When I complained, Yam keyed my details into her pc.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.