Hundreds of South Africans came to work at country clubs. Finally, they’re heading home.
A South African Airways plane, recognizable by the colorful flag on its tail, arrived at Miami International Airport on Easter Sunday and was scheduled to fly back to Cape Town on Tuesday night. It was the first time in 20 years that airline had service in or out of Miami, and there is a $960,000 coronavirus story behind the flight.
South African Airways sent the Airbus A350-900 plane to repatriate 310 stranded South African workers on a privately-funded charter flight in partnership with Workaway International, a Palm Beach Gardens-based company that recruits young foreigners to work six-month shifts at Florida country clubs.
Another charter will come back in about a week to pick up 310 more South African workers from the group.
Total cost for the two flights: $960,000.
The charter was arranged by Workaway International after many conversations with the South African embassy in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. and South African governments. The cost of the plane tickets was covered by the country clubs where the workers had been employed.
Lesego Mokoena, a 29-year-old assistant restaurant manager from Johannesburg, was one of the passengers on Tuesday’s flight. He arrived in South Florida in October 2019 and had been working at the Boca West Country Club in Boca Raton. He majored in hospitality management in college and spent the past five winters working at Florida country clubs through Workaway.
He is one of 900 South Africans recruited this winter to work at country clubs all over Palm Beach County, in Naples, Sarasota, Vero Beach, Stuart and Jupiter.
In all, more than 1,500 workers from South Africa, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Romania were employed as cooks, servers, bartenders, housekeepers, restaurant managers and recreation staff. They earned anywhere from $10.50 an hour for a dishwasher to $19 an hour for a server captain.
“Things were running smoothly, business was good, we didn’t predict this ending at all,” Mokoena said before boarding the flight. “I was scheduled to fly back on Emirates Airlines two weeks ago, but the flight was canceled, so I had no way home.
“I have been feeling very anxious about the virus and getting home. It’s scary to be in the No. One country in terms of total coronavirus cases. I feel very relieved and at ease to be on this flight. This whole ordeal has made me miss home so much.”
Bill Mayville, president of Workaway, is a Coral Gables native who served in the U.S. Army and earned an MBA from Florida International University. He has been working tirelessly for the past few weeks to get the charter flights arranged.
“The challenge we had is that South Africa normally allows charters to arrive in only one city, but I have people from Capetown, Durban and Johannesburg,” Mayville said. “So, I needed the plane to unload passengers in all three cities. They finally agreed to do that. There are a lot of anxious parents and grandparents waiting for these young people to get home, so we wanted to make sure we did all we could to get them there.”
South Africa is under a strict lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, so once the passengers disembark from the plane, they go through a screening by the Department of Health. From there, they go back to the tarmac, get their luggage, and board a government bus. It takes them to a government-selected hotel, where they are required to quarantine for 14 days before they can go to their homes.
“There is a lot of complexity to this case. It’s not just a normal charter we do for an organization,” said Fort Lauderdale-based Todd Neuman, South African Airways vice president of North America. “Given the circumstances of the COVID-19 virus and the lockdown in South Africa, the various travel bans that have been implemented around the world, it’s really made it very confusing and unsettling for a lot of travelers trying to get back home.”
South African Airways had already flown a number of repatriation charters during the crisis. Most were sponsored by the South African government or with another country’s government. The airline has flown several charters to and from Europe, and last week one from Brazil. Tuesday’s charter from Miami was the first from the United States.
Workaway and the airline have worked together for 20 years, transporting young workers back and forth between the United States and South Africa so they can get experience in the hospitality industry in Florida. South African Airways suspended U.S. commercial flights in late March when South Africa imposed a ban on anyone traveling from high-risk countries.
A few hundred of the Workaway workers were able to get home on commercial flights before the travel ban, but more than 600 were left stranded.
“Unfortunately, this group had to get home because the places they were working – mainly golf resorts and country clubs – were shut down because of the virus, so it left them unemployed with no way to fly home,” Neuman said. “Logistically for the airline it’s a little challenging. We have crews who have volunteered to operated these repatriation flights, but they, too, have to go into quarantine when they go home.”
Mokoena said the return to his native country is not as he envisioned it would be, but he is more than willing to spend two weeks in quarantine.
“It’s necessary, and even thought we’ll be isolated, I don’t mind because it’s for the greater good,” Mokoena said. “We never really appreciate home when things are going good, but when our backs are against the wall, that’s when you really, really appreciate home. But my plan is to come back to America, for sure.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 7:14 PM.