Xenophobia’s wrong but so is the takeover of township economy
Ilive in Somalia. I’ve long suspected so, but had it confirmed over the Easter weekend when I was standing outside my house. An Indian (from India) and a Somali now resident in South Africa were struggling for parking at the annual fete in the area and, frustrated, neither was letting the other pass in the street, parked chock-a-block. The Indian man shouted at the Somali: “This is not Mogadishu!” The annoyed man retorted: “This, this here is Somalia.” I was about to put my nose in the business and shout: “Actually, it’s South Africa. Can you stop being arseholes and one let the other pass?” But I thought not to do so as Mayfair in Johannesburg is now largely foreign-run. There are parts where the urban landscape is so changed that you would swear you were in the Somali capital. The suburb rivals Nairobi’s Eastleigh as a centre of Somali enterprise, a headquarters for refugees and exiles who have established entrepreneurial networks across the globe.
The roads are rutted by the trucks headed in and out with supplies that fill the township spazas and larger retailers the Somalis have started. The trade gurus project their pimped 4x4s like the drivers of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid careening down a road during war times. There is a sense of ownership in how the Somali immigrants drive, and while it can be frustrating, it’s also a mark of a peaceful and largely embracing part of South Africa they have settled in.
From Mayfair, the Somali traders have fanned into the hinterland, despite the horrors of attacks and murders which are captured in bonechilling detail in Jonny Steinberg’s book A Man of Good Hope. With
Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Ethiopians, they now largely own the local township economies. These traders are wily. Fordsburg, which abuts Mayfair, has always been a vibrant trading hub, but it died at night. When the migrants arrived as apartheid ended, they began to open restaurants, tailors and clothing shops. Go to Fordsburg now and it has one of the most vibrant night scenes in the city, all foreign-run.
Mayfair and Fordsburg can absorb the immigrant economy because it is an additive to a thriving business sector and a service to a largely middle- to upper-middle-class community. There is strong inward retail trade from the rest of Johannesburg and the continent, whose traders regularly come to buy wholesale.
But what of the rest of the country? This week’s headlines are again screaming warnings of xenophobia as the North Region Business Association (based in Durban) has issued written warnings to foreign traders in Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu, giving them 14 days to leave.
The attacks on foreign shopowners reveal growing South African small-trade xenophobia, but the fact that they are so widespread tells another story: black South Africans who own small and microenterprises have faced more competition than the blue-chip companies and established small and medium-sized enterprises in the more regulated and wealthier parts of the economy.
In many areas, they have been wiped out by the better skills and smarts of the foreign traders who use group buying, marketing and merchandising as well as credit extension to quickly take over. It’s competition, but it is deadly competition. Both soft and hard power is necessary to stop it: the law must be used to stamp out xenophobia and to tell organisations like the North Region Business Association that they do not have the power to evict and attack.
But soft power also requires understanding how black South Africans are being squeezed out of the only local economy they truly owned. It’s a long-tail story that deserves attention and care which can include co-operation between local and foreign traders, skills sharing, peace-making and conflict resolution, all of which have been tried but only in very localised pockets.
Black South Africans are being squeezed out of the only economy they truly owned