On 10 October 2013, in the quaint holiday town of White River in Mpumalanga, Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Elizabeth Thabethe did not mince her words. ‘The scourge of South Africans in townships selling and renting their businesses to foreigners unfortunately does not assist us as government in our efforts to support and grow these informal businesses,’ she informed an audience at a national small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) summit.1 She continued: ‘You still find many spaza shops with African names, but when you go in to buy you find your Mohammeds and most of them are not even registered.’ But all was not lost, she assured them. ‘To step in, the DTI has proposed the development of the informal business strategy which is envisaged to go a long way in advancing possible intervention programmes to assist these businesses.’

The DTI presented its informal business strategy to cabinet early the following year. The document politely and cautiously entered the muddied waters of legislated exclusion. ‘International experience,’ it emphasised in a tone of scholarly neutrality, ‘has shown that countries like Ghana have experienced similar challenges, particularly in dealing with foreign businesses.’As a result, the document goes on to state, Ghana passed the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act of 2013, which reserves wholly owned enterprises for Ghanaians only, and restricts petty trading and hawking to citizens only.

The DTI had been thrown a life vest. By identifying restrictions in Ghana, its proposals to legislate against foreign businesses in South Africa could be presented to the public as ‘pro-African’ rather than anti-African. In showing deference to the continent, their policy could be presented in a different light, one that did not reveal traces of xenophobia. As the current minister of small business development Khumbudzo Ntshavheni highlighted, ‘Countries within the continent are regulating this way.