How a local KZN businessman helped quell racial tension among the riots

Racial tensions have been boiling over in parts of KwaZulu-Natal since last week, but when a local businessman man saw the fires being stoked in his community, he decided to do something about it.

The businessman ended up quelling the flames by bringing together people from all walks of life – from neighbourhood watch members to taxi operators and businesspeople.

The Greater Outer West area on the outskirts of Durban incorporates both middle-to-upper-income areas – such as Botha’s Hill, Hillcrest and Kloof – as well as lower income areas, such as the rural village of KwaNyuswa.

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Nick Nzama has deep ties in both.

A successful strategic planner and motivational speaker, Nzama hails from humble beginnings.

He grew up on a compound on a local chicken farm where his mother worked. But one afternoon, he had a chance encounter with a teacher from Kearsney College – a prestigious private school, which sits above a hilltop overlooking the farm.

He was cutting through Kearsney on his way home from his own school when the two got to talking and that meeting eventually wound up helping Nzama secure a scholarship. 

Nzama moved to KwaNyuswa as a teenager, but he now lives in Botha’s Hill.

The voice of reason

When the unrest first began escalating, he decided to join one of the local patrol groups holding the line. But he was gutted by what he saw.

“I realised the way it was being done was all wrong,” he said.

“They were stopping any black person from going past”.

He began engaging some of the other patrollers about why this was a problem, though, and said it wasn’t difficult to convince most of them.

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But still, the problem persisted further afield.

Nzama was among the first to float the idea of working alongside local taxi operators to try and secure local businesses – a tactic which wound up proving successful in various parts of the province where police were not able to assist.

The first taxi operator who offered to help got stopped at gunpoint himself by a member of a local neighbourhood watch while en route to meet with Nzama and other community leaders.

They managed to diffuse the situation, but said Nzama, that was when “the penny dropped for everyone”.

“We were worried we were on the brink of a Phoenix situation,” he said.

Preventing a ‘Phoenix situation’

Phoenix – situated north of Durban – was designated an Indian township under apartheid and is today still home to a largely Indian community.

It became a hotbed of violence during the recent unrest with an official death toll at 22 there. This has begotten increased tensions between black and Indian residents, with allegations of a “massacre” of the former.

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Desperate to avoid this where they live, Nzama and his team held a meeting with the heads of all the local neighbourhood watches and of the taxi associations, as well local business owners.

“We came together and said what can we do? First and foremost, guns down,” Nzama said.

He said they also decided if there were going to be barricades, there had to be people of all different races manning them.

“And that worked like a charm,” he said.

After that, they were also able to reopen vital local businesses – like the Spar and the petrol station which had shut up shop after the violence began for fear of falling victim – with the help of the local taxi operators who offered up their private security.

Christian Ngcobo – the chair of the Qadi Nyuswa Taxi Association and a long-time friend of Nzama’s – says they were happy to do their part.

“Taxi people – most of the time – are seen as bad people. But this time, we have shown that we are not bad,” he said.

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Ngcobo said the situation had reached a tipping point.

“We were fed up by then,” he said, adding they needed to help open up the area so residents of KwaNyuswa could get access to essential goods and services, after the handful of stores that do operate in the area were hit.

For Nzama, what’s most exciting are the plans he and his team now have to try and address the core issues of poverty and unemployment in the surrounding low-income areas, by developing empowerment opportunities specifically aimed at ensuring job creation.

Said local businessman Steaphan MacDonald – who is working alongside Nzama and Ngcobo, among others, to do this – they had realised the solution comes from within.

“From a business point of view, we now want to mobilise our connectedness and get key bus leaders inclusively to create a structure that can drive action,” he said.

Anthony Cox – also a local businessman – said they were already looking at ways to, for example, give rural farming operations greater access to the market through local retailers.

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