PAINT IT BLACK ...
... and struggle of township businesses
● Bonga Masoka spent much of his childhood living with his mom in an informal settlement in Kya Sands, Johannesburg. His modest upbringing spurred on his dream to succeed in life.
Last week, the 33-year-old entrepreneur — who says he is an activist at heart — was named in Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s state of the province address as one of the success stories in the province’s efforts to revive township economies.
“Splash Coating Africa, owned by Bonga Masoka, is a 100% youth-owned township paint manufacturer that empowers women ... The company has recently been onboarded into the Takealot marketplace. This is one of many success stories from the township,” Lesufi said.
The premier said in the past year alone, “we spent R2.2bn on township businesses, which demonstrates our substantial investment to empowering township communities, leading to increased economic activities, job creation and a positive impact on unemployment”.
In 2022 Masoka received funding to build paint shops from the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller, an agency of the Gauteng department of economic development.
In the same year, he entered into a R1m public-private partnership to supply paint to a social housing project in Soshanguve that was implemented by the provincial department of human settlements.
“With that funding, we were able to increase our stock and now have three shops — Soweto, Soshanguve and Garankuwa,” Masoka told the Sunday Times.
His factory produces wall coating, primers, roof paint, waterproofing, sealant and water-based enamel. He employs 10 permanent staff and 20 contract-based painters, working mostly in Joburg and Tshwane.
Masoka’s vision is not just to make money but to make an impact in communities. Last year, he started a corporate social investment (CSI) project called One Bucket Splashed Dreams. The aim was to paint all the grade 1 classrooms in Soweto. He plans to extend this across the province. He uses a percentage of revenue to fund the initiative, which has so far painted 24 classrooms in three Soweto schools.
Masoka said his passion for paint and art had led to him to quit school in grade 9 to follow his dream — only to return to complete matric after realising he needed an education to succeed.
He admitted he had picked up bad habits after leaving school to study graphic design and painting at the Central Johannesburg College. He dropped out and began smoking marijuana and sitting at home all day.
But a visit from an uncle, an ambassador, inspired him.
“I loved everything about him — beautiful wife, beautiful children, beautiful car. When he left I asked about him and I was told he had studied political science. I wanted the same thing for myself. That was my definition of success at that time.”
And so he returned to his family home in North West, matriculated and went on to graduate with a degree in political science from the University of the Western Cape.
While studying, he started his first formal business, producing T-shirts and selling them to students. He used his profits to buy educational toys for early child development centres in Khayelitsha.
In 2015 he returned to Joburg and in 2017 registered Splash Coatings Africa and began selling paints supplied by Medico Coatings.
“I don’t know how I survived that time. I would buy paint from the company in Pretoria and drive all the way to Soweto to deliver it,” Masoka recalled.
He identified a need in the township for professional painting services, and hired three painters. In 2019, he was able to build a factory in Midrand to produce paint.
It started with just two colours — grey and dark grey.
But he struggled to grow his business because he had no distribution line. Government funding in 2022 helped with this.
But Masoka believes the provincial government should do things differently if it wants to grow township businesses.
“Formalising township business is not just about registering a businesses, but about building infrastructure to enable them to be protected from the rain. Every school has mothers selling stuff to children, all you have to do is to create infrastructure that enables them to do well.”
He said there were limits to what the government could procure from township businesses. Therefore it was better if the business first succeeded in its own community and became self-sustainable.
“The baker should sell bread to his neighbours before supplying Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital.”
The Gauteng government wants to grow township economies to fight unemployment in line with the Township Economic Development Act, which was signed into law in 2021. The act compels provincial governments and municipalities to procure goods and services from local township-based businesses owned by South Africans while encouraging enterprises to manufacture goods locally to create jobs.
Lesufi has set a target of procuring 60% of all goods and services required by the province from townships. This translates to about R35bn.
In his state of the province address, the premier said his government had invested in various township projects, including supporting landlords and spaza shop owners and that 3,000 such shops had been refurbished by the state.
“Over the past five years, provincial government has spent R15bn on businesses from the townships. In the past year alone, we spent R2.2bn on township businesses ... leading to increased economic activities, job creation and a positive impact on unemployment,” Lesufi said.
But a 2020 study conducted by the provincial treasury found that 70% of all products and services in the townships involved the sale of cooked food, salons and beauty parlours, tuck shops, fixing of electronics, sewing, fast food, driver transport and supermarkets. This created a mismatch between what the provincial government wants and needs and what township businesses supply.
Bheki Twala, founder of the Township Economic Commission SA, a lobby group established to transform and grow township economies, said most businesses were failing to get any contracts from the provincial government.
Responding to Lesufi’s claim of spending R2.2bn on township businesses, he said: “I can’t believe something I have not seen or experienced. I challenge you to go to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital now and wait at the gate to see who is delivering goods there. It is not township businesses. Businesses in the township are angry, they are not getting what they were promised.”
He said a lot of businesses in the townships were still informal, with no tax registration. “They say we must organise ourselves as business and we have done so. But the government will never come to us and say this is what we want to do. They plan and come up with programmes that fail because we are not involved.”
He said township businesses struggled to overcome red tape and access funding. “You need to teach township businesses how to access opportunities in government ... If you bid for a contract and don’t get it, you need to be told why you didn’t get it, so that a person does not try [and fail] 10 times.”
The Gauteng department of economic development said it was implementing all of its township projects by way of a publicprivate partnership model.
“Big corporates are providing solutions, including market access opportunities through value chain supplier development programmes,” said Masha Mathopane, who is director of inclusive economy in the department economic development.
Among the partners were Coca-Cola Beverages SA, which was investing R100m in the township economy. To date, more than R30m had been spent on the supply of coldstorage facilities, bulk stock supply, training and development, Mathopane said.
Uber SA had invested R200m to unlock ecommerce and more than R10m had already been given to support township enterprises, Mathopane said.
Indlu Living has partnered with the provincial government on a backyard shack upgrade project to help homeowners unlock the potential of their property in an investment of R200m.
Provincial treasury spokesperson John Sukazi said the department conducted outreach across the province “almost daily” to register township companies on a central supplier database.
Sukazi said they ran workshops to help businesses learn how to access government tenders and grow their enterprises.