Toby Shapshak: Pattern Recognition

innumerable studies on the positive financial effects that immigrants have on an economy. Without a safety net, they are forced to forge a new life in a new country without being able to fall back on state resources.

They are forced to be pioneers in the urban jungles and broken economies of the Old World. Or the townships of SA’s stagnant economy, where 20somethings travel from far away to make a life for themselves running spaza shops.

The justification that foreignowned shops “sell things cheaper so where are they buying them from?” or the innumerable conspiracy theories miss the point. Immigrants stick together because they speak the same language, practise the same religion, attend the same schools and provide the support you can only get from a community. Why are they cheaper? Perhaps because they are desperate for an income and without legacy overheads they can charge less.

And at the drop of a hat, suddenly and scarily, the people who bought their daily bread from them morph into hostile looters. It’s a sick indictment of what our country has become, with election promises long forgotten by government officials more interested in lining their pockets than serving our people.

Corruption, among other failings of the financially illiterate Zuma administration, is killing our country. Entrepreneurs, wherever they are from, are being targeted and penalised for being brave enough to open a shop to sell bread. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley, for instance, is awash with Indian-born engineers and entrepreneurs, including Satya Nadella, CEO of the world’s largest software company, Microsoft.

It’s deeply ironic that the lifeblood of the developed world is coming from the emerging world. These are the hungry people any society needs, the fresh blood, the new perspectives. They should be welcomed and celebrated. Shapshak is editor and publisher of

Stuff magazine (stuff.co.za). Follow him on Twitter: @shapshak