It’s Not the Foreigner, it’s Government.

Earlier this month residents of Naledi, Soweto resolved to shutting down – and eventually looting – some foreign-owned spaza shops in the area. This follows the deaths of six children who died from consuming snacks allegedly bought at these spazas. In Bronkhorstspruit a further 25 pupils were reportedly given medical treatment ‘after allegedly eating snacks bought from a street vendor near their school’ reported Timeslive. In Hammanskraal another 47 children were treated for food poisoning and 74 others on the West Rand, bringing the issue of foreign-owned spazas back on the national dialogue.

Rekindling his #Abahambe pre-election rallying cry, now sports arts and culture minister Gayton Mckenzie came out guns blazing. ‘We need to close all these shops. We can’t be debating this matter. The shops should be closed and owners arrested to be deported. What more do we want to see, more children dying?…What do we owe the illegal foreigners?’ asked Mckenzie, ‘Let them go.’

Gauteng finance MEC Lebogang Maile was more measured. ‘This matter is complicated,’ he said. ‘The other day we walked into a foreign-owned shop, but the Bangladesh national had South African citizenship. When you say, ”close all the foreign-owned shops”, how do we refer to those people who have citizenship? This issue has become more complex and that’s why we must allow national government to lead us.’

Of all the subsequent brouhaha, Maile came closest to the heart of the matter, which is, more than anything else, that the underlying issues are deeply entrenched in the DNA of the spaza industry. So much so that they are so seemingly normalised as to be a rule of thumb than an abberation. Moreover, government is clearly falling short in as far as regulating the sector goes. In Soweto, Daily Maverick reported, there was a ‘dearth of health inspectors’ where ‘it emerged that there are only 16 health inspectors assigned to oversee 19 wards in Region D1 Soweto. This is considerably lower than the global health standard requirement of one inspector per 10,000 people.’

Whatever you will say of the foreign-owned spaza, one cannot deny that they are highly-organised and have altered the ‘spaza’ which denotes ‘just getting by’ into a highly lucrative endeavour worth an estimated R178bn according to research by Accenture Africa. There are more than 150 000 of these shops with a deep footprint across the township landscape and if Tiger Brands, SA’s biggest food company’s plans to partner with some 130 000 spazas is anything to go by, the industry is blossoming.

However, with such staggering numbers the possibility of malpractice is never too far off. Things like price fixing and monopolising of the township economy are an ever-present threat. For instance, so effective and collaborative are the industry’s communication channels that a message on a WhatsApp group can decide that the price of an item increases overnight across all the businesses in a particular area.

The liquor and cigarette ban during the Covid pandemic was a windfall for spazas. Overnight, the price of a loose cigarette shot up by as much as five times, higher if you lived in more affluent suburbs. Of course, you usually collected the contraband through the backdoor, in case law enforcement came sniffing around. Often those owners who were wary of the cops got willing local residents to do the dirty work from their households.

In May 2020, I wrote on City Press that ‘it is common cause that government’s U-turn on tobacco sales has left manufacturers peeved and black marketers laughing all the way to the bank.’ Back then I was dismissed as some whining smoker. But history shows that spazas have never really stopped coining it given how unfamiliar, cheaper cigarette products have since penetrated the market. Nearly a year after that article, News24 reported that ‘Shoprite lost a sizeable chunk of its alcohol and cigarette sales to the black market during sales bans in the pandemic.’ The CEO Pieter Engelbrecht had told 702’s The Money Show that ‘that business is not coming back.’

Few will dispute that in the township, spazas offer an important service. In these communities, they are known to offer credit facilities to those residents who are on the dole or are full-time employed. However, one cannot dismiss that there are questionable business practices that are almost universal in these businesses and that could likely fly in the face of domestic laws. Following the uproar in Naledi, Daily Maverick reported how one resident didn’t apparently mind that these shops charge R10 for a cash-back transaction. ‘I still don’t mind the extra R10 because I get groceries much cheaper and save on the trip to town or to the mall, which can cost a lot more,’ said the resident.

All sounds good until you dig a bit deeper. These shops charge 10% extra for electricity vouchers even though the slip clearly states that consumers should not pay more than the amount reflected on the receipt. The same goes for airtime and cash-back transactions. Parting with R10 on a R100 cash-back transaction may not be too much skin off one’s teeth, but forfeiting R100 when withdrawing a R1000 is ridiculously steep by any measure. Is it all legal? Seemingly, there is also no cap to the rule, so be prepared to be fleeced of R300 when you urgently need to withdraw that R3000, a brutal pound of flesh when compared to the bank charges.

Mckenzie’s call for mass deportations and closing down foreign-owned spaza comes a little knee-jerky if not counterintuitive. You may deport one owner but his substitute will likely pick up where his predecessor left off, inflated electricity vouchers and all. Such action would hardly punt a dent to the structural issues dogging the industry. It is clear even to an armchair critics that any efforts to fix the spaza would be to insure that the laws are adhered to, that inspectors are a regular presence and that consumers know their rights. They can’t simply be dismissed with a ‘take it or leave it’ that is reminiscent of the Covid-days liquor peddlers when they raise their concerns.

In the course of writing this article, I have had to pay R2 on top of the R20 a beer costs when paying by card. When I enquired what the R2 was for, I was told rather confidently, ‘for card machine [speedpoint].’ Also I was reminded that all card transactions starts at a minimum R20. Bread is R14, hence you can’t swipe for it, not unless you buy something else so as to get to the minimum. On another occasion, a R10 electricity voucher set me back R12. Why? Well, that’s just the price.

Outside of these unnecessary deaths, one can’t deny the microaggressions that go unchecked in the industry. Over the years social media has been inundated with pictures purportedly of foreign nationals producing counterfeit food brands, over-the-counter medication and even liquor, often from within clearly uncondusive settings. Some of these have also found their way onto investigative television features. Despite such interventions, the black market supply chain seems to be spinning onward. For all their media releases, McKenzie and Co, may enjoy some airtime, but until the inherent matters are tackled, they might as well tell the wind to #Abahambe.

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