Project TERRA
SweepSouth and the Architecture of Fiscal Invisibility
How a domestic cleaning platform's algorithmic design renders its mostly Black women workforce invisible, all at once, to the South African Revenue Service, the Unemployment Insurance Fund, the South African Social Security Agency and the national workplace injury compensation scheme.
Supported by
Founded
2014, Cape Town, South Africa
Model
On-demand domestic cleaning through an algorithmic platform
Workers
'Sweepers', classified as independent contractors
Workforce
Predominantly Black women, many from informal economy backgrounds carrying unpaid care responsibilities
The worker's journey · tap a phase
Where it leads
Fiscal invisibility
No fiscal citizenship. No accumulated entitlements. No standing in the fiscal bargain that funds the state.
What the platform does
What it does to the worker's standing with the state
The structural reading
Fiscal losses accrued by this phase
0 of 13
By the final phase every form of fiscal recognition has been stripped away. The platform has generated revenue; the worker has generated nothing the fiscal state can see.
Each phase of the worker's journey runs on one underlying mechanism of exclusion. The five below name how the system shuts the worker out, in plain language and in pictures.