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8 - An Ordinary Crime: The Politics of Denial
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 68-72
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Summary
On 19 January 2015, a 14-year-old South African boy, Siphiwe Mahori, was shot and killed in Snake Park, Soweto. Versions of the incident vary. A crowd had gathered outside a Somali (or, as other reports allege, a Pakistani) spaza shop intending to either loot or rob the business. Feeling threatened, the shopkeeper shot into the crowd. His bullet struck the teenager in the neck and fatally injured him. It is not certain how the teenager came to be there. Accounts range from the youth being a robber, a looter or just an innocent passerby. The killing sparked fury. Over the next few days many shops were looted across Soweto. Seven people were killed, and more than 100 arrested.
The riots in Soweto had barely subsided when attacks broke out in KwaZulu-Natal in early April. Foreign shops were looted and torched, and over 1 000 people were displaced from neighbourhoods surrounding Durban and nearby towns. While condemning the violence, political leaders and state officials were quick to assert that xenophobia was not involved.
A few days after violence first broke out in Soweto, the province's Community Safety MEC Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane assured journalists that ‘The actions are pure criminality … For now we won't declare it xenophobic attacks.’ Provincial premier David Makhura similarly attributed the attacks on foreign shops to criminality rather than xenophobia: ‘What we saw in Soweto was not xenophobia, but criminal activity. And crime must be dealt with as crime because crime has no colour, class or gender.
Two years later, when confronted by a planned ‘March Against Immigrants’ in Pretoria held on 24 February 2017, the political refrain remained the same. The marchers’ pamphlet alleged that ‘Nigerians, Pakistanis, Zimbabweans, etc. bring nothing but destruction; hijack our buildings, sell drugs; inject young South African ladies with drugs and sell them as prostitutes.’
The then state president, Jacob Zuma, labelled the protests as ‘anti-crime’ not ‘anti-foreigner’ and doubted that the march against immigrants could be understood as xenophobic. Instead, he believed, South Africans were protesting because foreign nationals ‘open a lot of businesses. It becomes so obvious that the numbers are too big.
Contents
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp vii-viii
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List of Illustrations
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp ix-x
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Bibliography
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 215-226
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Preface
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp xi-xiv
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This book is the product of a significant number of fortunate coincidences. My first interest in the Somali community in South Africa arose in 2009, when I was carrying out my articles of clerkship at a law firm in Cape Town. One morning, while I was seated in my office cubicle, a senior colleague placed a copy of the Cape Times on my desk. In a rushed voice she instructed me to set aside my work, and rather spend my day helping her write a response to an article. I looked closer and read the article below the headline ‘Somalis Refuse to Sign “One-sided” Deal for Spaza Owners’. It was about an informal trade agreement governing Somali-run shops in Gugulethu township. My colleague was alarmed at the anti-competitive nature of the agreement's terms, and the failure of the Competition Commission to take any action over the arrangement. I took up her request and worked on an opinion piece analysing the agreement from a legal perspective, which was published in the Cape Times that month. However, the matter continued to linger in my mind, as I struggled to understand why authorities had responded that way.
The following year I by chance came across an advertisement for a research position at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand to study crime affecting foreign shopkeepers in the Western Cape and their ability to access formal and informal justice mechanisms. I applied and was selected for the project. The data I collected during the course of the project informed my PhD dissertation and, later, this book.
My fortune in the field of migration studies continued. In September 2010 I met Mohamed Aden Osman (known more commonly by the name ‘Xadiis’) of the Somali Association of South Africa. He accompanied me to interviews, acted as an interpreter where needed, and alerted me to news, meetings and other key events involving the Somali community. Over the years he shared many of his life experiences with me, some of which are featured in the book.
These events – completely unplanned – led me to specialise in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship in South Africa, a topic that has preoccupied me ever since.
The ACMS study entailed conducting 194 qualitative interviews between September 2010 and August 2013, with findings published in three separate reports.
17 - Legal Imaginaries: Trading without a Licence
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 138-146
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Do you feel as though the police make things worse rather than better?’ a police sector manager asks me. I am accompanying him while he is patrolling the streets of Philippi East. I awkwardly laugh off his question to deflect having to answer. We continue driving for a short distance, and I mull over what he’d said.
‘Why did you ask me that?’ I finally ask, curious to hear the answer.
‘Oh, I was thinking about the fining that you were asking about,’ he says. ‘I don't think it's helping the situation.’
Later, when he drops me off at Philippi East police station, I ask him whether he knows who ordered the fining operation.
‘The orders came from above,’ he replies vaguely. I decide not to press the issue any further, and thank him for his time.
A couple of weeks earlier, in November 2011, I had met Omar, a Somali community activist, to find out more about mobilisations against Somali spaza shops in Philippi earlier that year. We had arranged to meet at Nando's in Tyger Valley, the fast-food restaurant being more anonymous than Little Mogadishu in Bellville. Conveniently, too, it serves halal food. It is not that Omar wishes to meet with me discreetly; this was my suggestion. I sometimes find the stark visibility of being a white female researcher in Bellville something of a weight. Sometimes I prefer to meet in the more diverse and familiar interior of the popular South African chicken takeout franchise. We find a table and I switch on my voice recorder. The restaurant is busy and so, unfortunately, loud chatter reverberates over the bad saxophone music coming out of the restaurant's speakers; together they almost drown our voices.
Omar speaks animatedly about recent meetings with South African retailers in Philippi. But then the conversation takes a surprising twist. ‘Yesterday's meeting,’ he says, ‘in the beginning it was okay, but then it seems like the government departments are involved. They have been using some of the Metro Police friends.’ The Metro Police serve the City of Cape Town's law enforcement department. They are responsible for enforcing the city's by-laws and traffic regulations. ‘Some of the Metro Police officers went to Somali shops in Gugulethu and Nyanga, where they issued fines against Somalis of R1 000 or R1 500.’
5 - A Window on Statistics Opens Up
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 48-51
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How does one ascertain crime rates affecting foreign shopkeepers when victims have fled and official public records on crime affecting them do not exist? I had more or less resigned myself to having to rely on foreign traders’ repeated accounts of relentless violence to highlight their susceptibility to crime when unexpectedly a window of opportunity opened, yielding a significant new and interesting insight.
In October 2011, the SAPS Western Cape office emailed me with the good news that an application I had submitted to interview police officers in Cape Town had been approved. I had almost given up on receiving an outcome, having sent the application eight months prior, and receiving little feedback from my several follow-up enquiries. I contacted the office in reply, which then set to work immediately. It put me in touch with relevant station commanders who promptly met with me and introduced me to police officials who could help. Police sector managers happily included me on patrols and put me in touch with community leaders they knew. SAPS’ initial evasiveness was now inverted, and the organisation opened its doors to me in welcome. This was a far more effective strategy than the initial response I’d been met with. It made it more difficult for me to paint the police with a broad brush, and allowed for a more varied and complex picture of their roles and predicaments to emerge.
On the morning of 25 October 2011, the station commander of Khayelitsha police station guided me eagerly through the face-brick station building and led me to a small bright office. A police officer peered up at me from behind a bulky desktop computer. A large clear window opened up on the room. A backdrop of Table Mountain and the dilapidated homes and green spring shrubbery of the Cape Flats shone through it. I sat down and introduced myself in a friendly but neutral manner, trying not to seem nonchalant on the one hand or overeager on the other. I was afraid that if I spoke in the wrong tone or pitch, this would somehow raise suspicion and possibly dash an opportunity to obtain crucial data.
But my concerns were unwarranted. ‘Yes, we have records of crime affecting foreign shopkeepers in Khayelitsha,’ the officer advised enthusiastically. ‘You will get a heart attack if you see the numbers.’
Part I - Arrival and Reception
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 1-2
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15 - Regulating Trade: Informality and Segregation by Agreement
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 118-129
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The shop is painted glowing red, making it hard not to notice. Large white curved letters spelling Coca-Cola stretch across its walls, accompanied by giant silhouettes of the soft-drink company's iconic glass bottle. The message ‘All pre-paid airtime’ is written next to one of the Coca-Cola signs in a similar font. ‘That's one of their shops,’ a Kraaifontein police officer points out to me. He slows down his patrol car next to the shop and I take a quick photograph with my camera.
A police sector manager in Philippi East is also eager to point out businesses owned by local ‘big bosses’ in the area. One is a liquor store containing an ATM with large shiny billboards outside advertising Castle Lager, Windhoek Draught and Hunters. He then drives me past a butchery and a neatly painted spaza shop around the corner. These are the businesses belonging to local ringleaders, he informs me.
A few days earlier, while seated in his dimly lit small office at Philippi East police station, he had given me the rundown on crime affecting foreign traders in the area. The informal and densely populated settlements of Pola Park and Never Never had never experienced attacks. ‘They do not have any foreign shops,’ he said. He described the Philippi neighbourhood of Marcus Garvey, originally established as a Rastafarian commune, as ‘mixed race’ with ‘coloureds, blacks, whites and Rastas’, which made the area ‘more accepting’. But in Lower Crossroads crime was ‘worse because there are big bosses’. He went on to explain: ‘There are big shops in Lower Crossroads. Some people own one, two or five shops, such as bottle stores and taverns.’ When conflicts arose ‘they organise the little shops’. This took me by surprise. I had until then assumed that the instigators were small and rudimentary business owners buckling under the competition new foreign entrants posed.
Demands for the removal of foreign-owned spaza shops in Philippi East were primarily being voiced by larger businesses, a police detective told me. ‘The bigger spazas are the ones most angry because it's easier for them to determine if they are losing customers.’ Smaller shopkeepers in the area had for the most part rented out their premises to foreigners because ‘if you rent out you get more’. A Kraaifontein police investigator's narrative was the same.
16 - When Agreements Fall Apart
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 130-137
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‘That time when Zanokhanyo stopped the things … was when one boy in Town Two stood there and say he's going to kill someone if they do not stop.’
Khayelitsha resident, interview, 2015Masiphumelele is located off a quiet scenic road that meanders down to the small seaside suburb of Kommetjie. It is framed by the picturesque mountains of the coastal peninsula. Large swaying eucalyptus trees greet you at the township's entrance, their leaves rustling in the gentle breeze. The area feels markedly different from the expansive parched townships of Cape Town's Cape Flats. It comes across more like a rural town than a mass urban satellite.
Mohamed and I walk into a spaza shop in one of the township's busy thoroughfares. Maryam is expecting us and greets us warmly from behind her shop counter. Her daughter Zamzam is sitting on a stool in the corner of the shop, her face bright and alert. While Mohamed and I speak with Maryam, Zamzam works behind the counter, accepting faded notes from customers and returning coins for change. As with many interviews, this one begins with logistical deliberations. Maryam would prefer to be interviewed at her home across the road, but her husband is away collecting stock and cannot watch the shop. Zamzam chips in animatedly, saying her father will probably be away for a while because he's in Bellville and reminding her mother that they will need to fetch her brother and cousins from crèche.
Maryam eventually agrees for the interview to go ahead in her shop, but it quickly descends into an awkward experience. She is noticeably upset about life in Masiphumelele. ‘I was stabbed two months ago,’ she says, flustered, showing me a dark scar on her wrist. But before she can carry on, a customer waiting to be served in front of us comes within earshot and we quickly stop talking. Maryam fidgets and looks around while I check my phone for messages. ‘My uncle has a phone like that,’ Zamzam remarks. She speaks with a ‘Model C’ accent typical of Cape Town's more affluent public schools. When we are able to talk comfortably again, I ask Maryam about rules governing the spaza market. In December 2011, she says, the ‘chief’ informed Somalis that they could not open new shops or purchase houses.
Frontmatter
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Book:
- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp i-iv
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21 - Pariah Justice
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 179-194
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The room is quiet and dimly lit. I take a sip of warm bottled water and stare at the PowerPoint presentation in front of me. It is 2018, and I am attending a university workshop in Cape Town on the informal food sector. The presenter, a tall tense-looking man with fine light-brown hair, is discussing informal enterprises in Philippi East. The projector makes a quiet humming sound which makes me drowsy.
I am shaken out of my peaceful state by the presenter announcing with a sense of certainty and authority: ‘Many of the spaza shops we looked at are essentially agents of wholesalers …’ I force myself to pay attention. ‘They are not autonomous entities,’ he goes on. ‘They are simply providing an outlet for the very same products that are being sold in supermarkets.’ I sit up in my seat, now fully awake and attentive, expecting further elaboration, but the presenter has moved on. That informal sector businesses stock similar food items to those sold at supermarkets, he says, shows that the two sectors are ‘very closely linked’. Both formal and informal sectors operate ‘within a corporate controlled food system, with the vast majority of profits going to corporate entities’. None of these remarks sheds any light on his conclusion that spaza shops are acting as agents of larger enterprises.
Several minutes later the presentation comes to an end and neon lights are switched on. The workshop facilitator, with hair tied up in wispy bun and a more relaxed and mellow air about him, introduces two respondents to provide comments. The first, a South African woman who works with informal workers, begins by thanking the presenter but does not go on to address the presentation itself or the points it made. Instead, she proudly highlights the work of her organisation and laments the general plight of South African informal workers in the country. ‘We want a hand up and not a hand out,’ she declares, before ending her contribution with a call for closer relationships between informal and formal sectors, and the government.
The second respondent, a Somali community leader with a serious demeanour, is next.
10 - In the Shadow of Masiphumelele
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 81-85
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By 2007 the anguish that had erupted in Masiphumelele the previous year had subsided. The township's conflict intervention process came to a close on Human Rights Day with a programme of festivities and dancing at a nearby school. Foreign retailer representatives had agreed that their countrymen would not open any new shops in the township and South African traders accepted their promise in exchange for peace. No further uprisings were reported in the city or province that year, making 2007 seem relatively free of social conflict and anti-foreigner violence.
But the events of 2006 were not so easily overcome for those who had been adversely affected. After escaping the angry crowds in the seaside township, Mohamed took up employment at a small Somali wholesaler in Bellstar Junction, located next to the Bellville train station platform. When not spending his time politely negotiating sales of bread and bags of peanuts with customers hurrying on and off trains, he became increasingly engaged in community activism. He found a cramped three-bedroomed apartment to rent, which he shared with eight other tenants. Life felt safer, but his ambition of operating his own business to support his intended further education had been stalled. His pursuit of movement, change and advancement had become suspended.
Despite the absence of tumultuous riots in 2007, the year was far from a period of calm. Reported business robbery rates in the Western Cape Province leapt several-fold, from 197 robberies between April 2006 and March 2007 to 635 robberies between April 2007 and March 2008. Nationally, reported business robberies increased by 47.4 per cent. Violence against foreign retailers reached new levels, but the public's awareness of this increase did not. Nor, for that matter, did SAPS’. SAPS had yet to link these surges in robberies to the spaza market, let alone foreign-owned shops. Its annual crime report for that year notes a dramatic increase in business robberies. It describes these robberies as occurring usually in central business districts such as Johannesburg Central, Durban Central and Pinetown. The report cautioned that increases in aggravated robbery were particularly troublesome, as they engendered negative perceptions of security in the country. It called for tough action on the culprits: ‘Seen in this light, the criminals committing these crimes deserve the harshest possible punishment. They play an active part in sabotaging the development prospects of South Africa.’
Part II - Regulation and Containment
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 73-74
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Notes
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 01 March 2022, pp 195-214
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20 - Pariahdom and Bare Life
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 169-178
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It was all predictable, I think to myself as I read up on Irwin Rinder's concept of the ‘status gap’ one evening. A status gap exists in societies when a significant social and economic chasm exists between a society's ruling elite and its masses. Such gaps were common in feudal Europe and colonial states. In societies where large status gaps exist, the ruling elite are reluctant to deal directly with the lower classes in business dealings, viewing such engagements as below their social status and dignity. The status gap therefore often impedes the flow and distribution of goods between the ruling classes and the rest of society. This in turn produces, in Rinder's words, ‘an economic gap which persists until filled by a third party’.
To say that a status gap existed during apartheid South Africa is an understatement. Prior to democratic rule, the country's economy was mostly in white South African hands, and populations lived in divided and racially homogenous neighbourhoods. The same patterns of racialised inequality and geographical settlement still persist today. These conditions impacted on the way that economic markets operated and developed, the grocery sector being no exception. South African supermarket chains neglected township markets for decades. For white South Africans who owned and managed multibillion rand conglomerates, townships were alien and distant social and economic satellites. They were looked down upon as poor, turbulent and unfamiliar spaces to be avoided.
Status gaps usually do not serve economies and citizens very well. In South Africa millions of black township residents across the country were to a large extent cut off from formalised large-scale grocery distribution chains, reliant on mostly rudimentary spaza shops for many of their household items. While these shops were a source of employment for some residents, they often did not adequately meet broad customer needs. Residents that I spoke to in 2010 and 2011 complained that spaza shops that were South African owned were generally expensive and poorly managed. They had small product ranges, were often out of stock, had shorter operating hours, and frequently did not possess the right quantities of change. At the dawn of democracy it could be safe to say that a status gap opened up a corresponding gap for foreign retailers in South Africa's grocery market.
18 - Turning to Formality, 2012
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 147-152
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In 1998, when South Africa's refugee framework was in its infancy, asylum seeker applications in the country were a barely noticeable phenomenon. Department of Home Affairs records show that in total 11 135 applications were made across the country that year – a matter of little significance in a country with a population of tens of millions. By 2009, the picture was very different. Applications had grown to an alarming 223 324 and overwhelmed the country's refugee reception offices. But, as with most phenomena related to migration, the crisis was not permanent. Over the following years the number of applicants dropped steadily, never to reverse. By 2018, South Africa, a country with a population of almost 60 million people, received only 18 354 asylum applications, hardly a deluge of catastrophic proportion.
Trends in Somali migration have been slightly different. Somali asylum applications to South Africa peaked in 2011. According to UNHCR data, 9 986 Somali nationals applied for asylum in the country that year. Their arrival alarmed political leaders. This was the year that Helen Zille, in her capacity as premier of the Western Cape, reportedly bemoaned the high numbers of Somalis arriving in the city every week. She warned that foreign retailers threatened local business interests. These new arrivals, she declared, opened spaza shops that drove South Africans out of business. Furthermore, foreign retailers were economic migrants competing over scarce resources; they were not genuine refugees. This claim did not correspond with UNHCR records. Somalis – who made up the large majority of foreign township traders in the city – had an 84.47 per cent refugee recognition rate in the country that year. Zille pressed on, complaining that foreign-run businesses paid negligible amounts of tax and did not use banks. Laws governing migration, she argued, needed to change.
The following month, October, national police commissioner Bheki Cele demonstrated more or less the same alarm at a breakfast meeting of police officers in Khayelitsha: ‘Our people have been economically displaced,’ a media article quotes him as saying. ‘All these spaza shops are not run by locals.’ While he was speaking, an audience member shouted: ‘They’re not banking!’ To which Cele replied, ‘One has to ask, what happens to the money?’ The situation, in his view, was untenable and needed addressing. ‘One day, our people will revolt,’ he said, ‘and we’ve appealed to DTI [Department of Trade and Industry] to do something about it.’
13 - When Reasoning Rings Hollow
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 99-105
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Over time, the perceived foreign shop problem, which began as a series of sporadic and localised headaches, escalated into a national political dilemma. Senior state officials and politicians viewed foreign-owned township grocery stores as economically threatening, a danger to public health, and as contributing to growing crime and illegality. But these concerns, despite being earnestly and repeatedly articulated by those in power, did not seem genuinely held by those who espoused them, even though the desired solution – curtailing shops – certainly was.
One of the earliest, and most common, allegations against foreign-owned spaza shops was that their activities were economically harmful. State officials and members of civil society as early as 2006 in Masiphumelele were of the belief that foreign-owned spaza shops posed a threat to the economic survival of surrounding communities. More recently, the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration asserted that the proliferation of foreign traders negatively impacted on unemployed and low-skilled South Africans. But these claims were not convincing. And they disproportionately took into account the interests of competing South African retailers, to the exclusion of all other parties and economic stakeholders. For instance, the views of shop suppliers, deliverers, wholesalers, producers, manufacturers, consumers, landlords and shop employees were not sought or considered by the Inter- Ministerial Committee on Migration. The sole fixation of such claims was pinned on one stakeholder: the South African shopkeeper. Findings of economic harm were thus made in the absence of any real appraisals of local economies, indicating that allegations were weighted by other concerns and considerations.
When it came to claims of fostering rampant crime and illegality, political leaders depicted the role of foreign traders in two ways. Firstly, they portrayed foreigners as undermining laws through their own deviant and unlawful business practices. In September 2019 President Cyril Ramaphosa put it clearly: ‘We want foreign nationals here to obey the laws of South Africa. They must obey the laws. They must live in accordance with our protocols, laws and regulations.’1 Secondly, political leaders branded foreigners as weakening legality through their very existence. By opening shops in townships, foreigners encouraged local youth to rob and murder; they provoked residents to loot and destroy their shops.
But, as with allegations of economic harm, grievances about the illegality and crime were vague and contradictory.
19 - Formalising Exclusion as the African Way
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Citizen and Pariah
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 153-166
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‘… that thought that someone may be excluded becomes mediated into our lives. The thought that somebody can be stigmatised, that someone may be alienated. And that's how it is done, step by step, slowly, people begin to see that this is something normal.’
Marian Turski – former prisoner of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, speech at 75th anniversary of the camp's liberationOn 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.
4 - Crime and the Fluid Migrant
- Vanya Gastrow
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- Book:
- Citizen and Pariah
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- Wits University Press
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- 13 May 2022
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- 01 March 2022, pp 40-47
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Mohamed and I turn right into a quiet open-air parking lot in Mitchell's Plain town centre. ‘It's not safe here,’ he remarks as I park beneath a twisted wind-swept eucalyptus tree. As we climb out, I suddenly feel exposed – though I’m not sure to whom or what. We walk briskly across the parking lot into a busy business complex. Once inside I breathe a sigh of relief. Along the narrow, pedestrianised streets of the town centre are the familiar ramshackle Somali shops and businesses that I recognise from Bellville. Trickles of grey water, accompanied by the sharp odour of raw sewage, leak across the street. Faint wafts of incense and disinfectant mask it, but not entirely. Mohamed and I climb a dark stairway, which leads us up to an apartment located along a dimly lit corridor. ‘The person I want you to speak to knows a lot about Khayelitsha,’ he has told me.
Hassan opens the door. He's thick-boned with dark glowing skin and twinkling eyes. He enthusiastically welcomes us into his sparsely furnished one-bedroomed apartment, chatting constantly, bursting with thoughts and opinions. In the process I forget to take my shoes off, as is customary in Somali homes, and follow Hassan straight into his bedroom, which he shares with two housemates. I guiltily think of the sewage-laced street outdoors as I seat myself awkwardly on one of three single beds in the room, trying to ensure that my shoes barely touch the ground. My host is too polite to ask me to remove them, and I am too embarrassed by this time to offer. I hope that by ignoring my lapse, it will be less noticeable.
After settling down and introducing ourselves, Hassan opens up about his experiences of life in Khayelitsha. ‘I can give you everything from A to Z,’ he says, and proceeds to fire off words in rapid succession. In many respects Hassan has fond recollections of life in the township. ‘Khayelitsha is the only area where at least we have a friendship with the black people. At least it's somewhere I can go any time.’ However, unlike Mohamed's depiction of Khayelitsha, the peacefulness that Hassan describes has less to do with the absence of violent crime, and more with his relationship with local residents.