Khumbudzo Ntshavheni Minister of small business development

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Like her counterpart at tourism, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has also come under fire for applying race-based criteria to Covid-19 relief funding.

When the lockdown took effect, Ntshavheni announced a debt relief funding scheme to assist SMMES that were negatively affected by the shutdown.

The DA approached the high court to overturn the criteria attached to that funding, but lost after the court ruled that “race, gender, youth and disability” must be taken into account in the awarding of state relief to businesses stricken by the pandemic.

However, the court said the state’s criteria for evaluating these factors were “vague”, and therefore unlawful and invalid, and so it referred the matter back to Ntshavheni for “reformulation”.

The department received more than 35,800 applications for funding, and approved the allocation of more than R513m, allowing it to save more than 21,400 jobs. However, many small businesses closed because they could not access the scheme due to bureaucratic red tape, leading to huge job losses.

Organised businesses warned that helping out SMMES during the pandemic was crucial, as about 70% of them together employed about 6-million people.

Sarakinsky says Ntshavheni failed to get funds to businesses expeditiously. “The closure of so many small businesses might have been moderated by decisive and timeous action,” he says.

Fikeni says while Ntshavheni has made interventions on behalf of small businesses, she tripped up in relation to how funds would be used — especially when taking transformation and racial factors into account.

“She has been busy in her portfolio … though there seems to be no clear strategy for the sector in the face of Covid-19 affliction,” he says.

Judging by the number of SMMES that did not survive the lockdown, Mathekga believes Ntshavheni “didn’t really come through for small businesses”.

He says: “They didn’t do well at all. Look at all the companies that closed down.”