For the #MEC for Safety in Gauteng to say with such absolute certainty and conviction that the outbreak of #Violence and #looting of #Foreignshops in #Soweto is not
xenophobic but Criminal is but a smoke screen on its own, the reality is that
"For having to have allowed this influx of Foreigners into the country to
open shops was a failure by #Government".
Government needs to acknowledge first that it has failed to
come up with an effective small business support programme (never mind a
programme to encourage Entrepreneurship), I’m saying this because the majority
of these foreign shops are established where a Black business/shop
failed/closed down, this tells you that if so many Black owned Spaza shops in
the Townships are closing down, something is wrong and in my view it boils down
to Government failure.
When the Government of the new dispensation took over, the
focus was on encouraging fake entrepreneurship through programmes such as
#ASGISA, a misdirected programme which in fact lead to the death of small black
owned businesses like Spaza shops, how on earth does a developmental
programme's aims and goals become "to eliminating the second
economy", that's outrageous.
Then as we thought we were moving swiftly towards growth and
development, the Apartheid of business was introduced in the name of #BEE, then
later BBBEE. Indeed these became very instrumental in achieving AsgiSA goals of
eliminating the so called second economy, in fact they helped kill Black Small
Businesses in the Townships and introduced fake Entrepreneurs, and existing
small businesses such as Spaza Shops and Supermarkets were neglected further.
More focus was given to the so called SMME sector, which is a sector that has
always been misinterpreted as a sector that excludes informal businesses such
as street vending and spaza shops. What all this then produces was a bigger
monster which was to be the downfall of many black South Africans in their
quest to become entrepreneurs, the misperception among our people that business
is about Tenders, Big money, Big cars and fun, fun, fun and more fun, little
did the system tell them that Tenders shall be given to those who are
connected, BEE means nothing if you do not have the knowhow of the business you
are in, preferential procurement means nothing if you have not complied with
the basic necessities of formally registering a business and other compliance
policies such as that of SARS.
In a nutshell I am trying to say, the situation was bound to get to this as more and more young South Africans become more and more desperate, languishing in Townships across the country not knowing what to do next, there is an element of criminality which is nothing new as crime in our country becomes more and more complicated by day, criminals are finding new ways of committing crimes and smoke screens such as xenophobic attacks are part of those efforts, however Xenophobia is a great reality in this case, who wouldn’t be jealous of a foreigner coming into a poverty stricken environment and striking it rich overnight, black people know very well that the Spaza business is a simple one that does not require much apart from a small start-up capital, once that is the case it then becomes the responsibility of government to provide support to these entrepreneurs through training programmes that will ensure the sustainability of the businesses.
One question remains in my mind though and that is “Chinese
Malls/Shopping Centres are growing at a similarly rapid rate in South Africa,
how long will it take before we see the same kind of attacks against them”?
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#MeditationsOfTheHeart
