What’s with foreigners and spaza shops?

Protest takes many strange forms in South Africa but the recent Sharpeville upheaval warrants some introspection.

If one takes issue with foreign nationals running shops in one’s area, how does looting and consuming or looting and burning help?

Anybody can tell you for free and a chappie that we’re not in short supply of foreign nationals.

If these protests happen every couple of years, it still makes commercial sense for these shops to keep opening.

Desperate people do weird things even in the face of danger. Why else would people keep rebuilding their houses in Tornado Alley as they do?

So, either the looting protest needs to become more frequent to really disincentivize foreign nationals from opening up shop or these protestors need a better plan.

I’m not one for xenophobia but if you’re going to make a meal of foreign-owned stores while you’re looting them, you may as well take the stuff to stock your own shop.

If you’re already stealing it, it’s not any significant stretch to sell it from your own store.

But no, there is no store to supply and moving the goods there will be too much effort. Rather burn it or eat it.

Alternative?

It’s difficult to understand why locals are so upset by foreign owned stores when the alternative doesn’t seem to exist.

What prevents locals from opening their own stores? Competitive pricing?

It’s not like suppliers are any different to the existing ones.

Perhaps they don’t have the capital but its not like desperate foreigners had much either.

Oh, and all the business funding for small enterprises going around is also helpful especially when foreigners rarely have access to it.

And then consider the language, understanding of the community, and greater access to supply chains.

Maybe it’s blunt to say it but people clearly need shops and if locals aren’t offering the service, no wonder foreigners are swooping in.

It sucks to know that marginalized communities are bleeding money that is sent to overseas families. It sucks that the informal economy leaks so much opportunity.

Not the solution

The existence of the situation isn’t by some divine plot to induce further poverty in township communities.

It’s because people need shops to buy things and the shops that have answered the call and remain viable are the ones that seem to be foreign owned.

You don’t solve that problem by burning those shops down. Do you know why? Because people will still need to shop.

No amount of looting will stop the demand. It may hurt the supply but tomorrow, you’ll still need bread and now you’ll pay an inflated price for it because the new shop owner wants to reclaw their capital before the next looting.

And I can tell you for free and a loosey that that new shop owner will probably be a foreigner.

That’s not an assumption based on this annoying idea that South Africans are lazy.

That’s an assumption based on an important question; If it’s easier for locals to open a spaza shop in South Africa, why are so many foreigners doing it instead? Where are the locally-owned spaza shops?

Building your neighbourhood economy

Where is the local commitment to the economy?

If you’re going to be toying on the fringes of xenophobia and trying to rid the townships of foreign owned shops, why not go all the way set up locally owned stores and market them as such?

If enough people care about the local economy to go out and loot, surely enough should care about where they purchase their goods from.

We know that there’s desperation out there so there’s no surprise that a big part of this is pricing.

And if you cannot offer to your own people what foreigners are offering in terms of pricing, sweat and labour then you have no business being upset at the people who can.

People who order off Temu care more about their own bargains than the local economy. Why would you expect it to be any different in the spaza shop sector?