Readers’ Views

Immigrant businesses succeed because they deliver the goods

I refer to Ferial Haffajee’s column “Xenophobia is wrong but so is the takeover of township economy” (May 20). I have lived with Somali businessmen in East Africa and seen the ingenuity they bring into businesses, especially in the informal space.

Many have no formal schooling but are arguably the most hard-working, trustworthy and reliable businesspeople.

So, for a second, let’s forget they are foreigners and just think of them as businessmen from another area. In that context, your column missed some key points.

First, you forgot the township customer and the accrued benefit to the customer. These foreign businesses are thriving because they offer customers something the other businesses do not.

Offering improved customer choice and benefit is why competition exists. Let’s not lower the bar but instead rise to meet the raised expectations and deliver better customer value.

This is the Uber-versus-taxi argument. The customer is king, and we must always put them first. Competition always delivers improved customer value, which we as customers all want.

Second, what can the township businesses learn from the foreigners who have lived in similar but more competitive informal communities for longer in their home countries?

What we are seeing is typical of immigrant businesspeople all over the world, who tend to inject energy and drive into the communities they enter.

Embrace the diversity they bring and learn from them. What they are doing is not rocket science.

Third, how can local township businesses redefine the rules of the game by leveraging things foreign businesses can’t access, for example, BEE deals or facilities that are only available to South Africans, and outcompete the foreign businesses?

This is their home turf, and I’m sure they can learn to offer better customer value and effectively compete against the foreign businesses.

— Frank, Johannesburg

Spaza shops all foreign-owned

Let me put it straight: our government and the ANC in particular do not want to listen. Whenever South Africans raise genuine grievances, they are labelled xenophobic.

In my township, I cannot use an open space and build whatever, but the Somalis, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are all over now — not one spaza shop is owned by South Africans.

Name withheld, by e-mail

Protecting DStv a lost cause

Ron Derby’s column “Muddy waters for MultiChoice as its pay-TV monopoly crumbles” (May 20) refers.

When the CEO of No-Choice says to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa that it must level the playing field, what DStv means is that Icasa must stop disrupters from challenging its rip-off monopoly. Disrupters exist only in markets where the established players tell the consumers what they want, with a take-it-or-leave-it mentality. Disrupters are those that find new ways to better serve consumers at lower prices.

Protecting DStv would be like regulating car sales in the vain hope of establishing a cart industry.

Ricky x, Businesslive