A national minimum wage would be more meaningful in a big economy like South Africa’s, experts say, because the formal work force is much larger, around 80 percent of all workers. Millions of people would be eligible.

Still, South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa’s most advanced economy, is enduring the same forces as the rest of the continent. It is not growing fast enough to absorb its rapidly growing population, which is leaving rural areas to look for work in places like Khayelitsha, one of the country’s biggest townships with about 400,000 people.

There is added urgency for the government to act: The African National Congress, which helped liberate black South Africans from white-minority rule and has governed the country since 1994, is still stinging from losing most of the nation’s biggest cities in elections last July.

The party could once bank on loyal support from the nation’s black majority. But corruption and economic stagnation for millions of people have steadily eroded that support over the years, resulting in the party’s worst showing in elections since the end of apartheid in 1994.

The frustrations are evident in Khayelitsha. It is roughly situated between two of South Africa’s richest areas: the city of Cape Town and the famed wine country of Stellenbosch. Established in 1983 by the apartheid government, Khayelitsha, which means new home in Xhosa, still provides many of the workers for both communities.

On weekday mornings, soon after daybreak, the men and women of Khayelitsha leave their neighborhoods and walk to the nearest train or bus station. For many, the commute — a legacy of apartheid-era urban planning to separate white and black areas — takes up to a couple of hours each way.