The column scheduled for this week would have given a breakdown of the actual financial loss to the poorest of the poor despite more widespread and increased government grants and other assistance. It was also to have given details of the possible effects of a R73 million contract awarded to a British think-tank to "provide technical assistance for restructuring public services in South Africa". But that can wait. The macro view has given way to the micro. Only because I quite literally bumped into Thembinkosi earlier this week. Over two days, we established a rapport. His story comes from the increasingly crowded margins of the labour movement; from the ranks of the non-unionised and often frightened workers who live a hand-to-mouth existence, selling their skills and all too frequently their lives in a viciously competitive and grossly exploitative market. It summed up the effects of a brutally competitive market and mass unemployment at a human level.