South Africa

South Africa

Xenophobia: African business owners express fears for their future

Xenophobia: African business owners express fears for their future

Cape Town has been less affected by the current outburst of xenophobic violence than Durban and Johannesburg, but past events have proved that xenophobic currents are alive and well in the city. On Thursday, business people from across the African continent came together to talk about the challenges and frustrations of commerce in a country that sometimes seems to hate them. By REBECCA DAVIS.

“Sometimes, people talk to us as if we are governing for foreign investors,” African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Gwede Mantashe said recently. “They are not citizens. The interests of citizens come before foreigners.”

The group of people gathered around a table in Cape Town on Thursday afternoon were under no illusions that South Africa was being governed for foreign investors. Business people from across Africa, they had ploughed time and money into developing enterprises in South Africa – and were still worried they could stand to lose it all.

The meeting was termed “quite extraordinary” by Tim Harris, the former Democratic Alliance (DA) shadow finance minister and current CEO of Wesgro, an agency which promotes trade and investment in the Western Cape. The businessmen and women around the table had been asked to attend by Wesgro, trying to understand the ways in which their business challenges were unique, and also intending to cast light on the positive contribution made by other Africans in Cape Town.

The future of our city is as an African city,” Harris said.

The meeting’s attendees were drawn from eight different African countries, and they spoke frankly of their concerns. Ange Bukasa, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, owns an events management company which employs five locals. Though all her staff members are highly capable, Bukasa said that she has to monitor the mood continuously in case anyone tries to “take advantage” of the current xenophobic tide. Bukasa expressed reservations about expanding her business “if something is not being done about the mindset of people”.

Damian Ohajunwa, a Nigerian Cash Crusaders franchisee who lectures part-time at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, also voiced doubt about the wisdom of expansion in the current climate. “I want to acquire more [Cash Crusaders stores] but obviously there is a fear,” Ohajunwa said.

Cameroonian Stephano Nana, the CEO of a company which trades mainly in wood, said he was being advised not to travel to Niger because of anti-South African sentiment. “All of a sudden there is some type of fear,” he said. “We are not sure what will happen.”

All the businesses represented around the Wesgro table employed multiple staff members. Aloy Onuorah, a Nigerian who runs a Cape Town-based model agency, said he had 2000 people on his books. “We are actually making an impact here in the community,” he said.

Audrey Bading, a tour company operator originally from Gabon who has spent 14 years in Cape Town, told the table she runs a social responsibility programme through which she does life coaching in deprived areas like Dunoon using her own resources.

Their frustrations were multiple, but one of the constants was the bureaucracy of home affairs department. Complaints about immigration laws caused nods of agreement around the table. Uhud Abdulkadir, a lawyer from Burundi who worked for the South African justice department before starting his own practice specialising in immigration law, criticised the government for being blind to the fact that a tourist might be so taken with the country that they would subsequently choose to invest in it.

If you’re not making it easy for tourists you’re indirectly saying, ‘Don’t come and invest’,” Abdulkadir said.

An anecdote was recounted of a friend who had wanted to invest R12 million in South Africa but found the bureaucracy so impenetrable that he gave up.

Burundian Ancalet Mbayagu suggested that foreigners also find themselves at a disadvantage when attempting to do business with government. “To get a tender as a foreigner… is almost impossible,” Mbayagu said, again drawing murmurs of assent. He described the government’s approach in this regard as “xenophobic” in itself.

Some practical suggestions were made as to how business development could be facilitated for foreign nationals. The DRC’s Philippe Bakahoukoutela, an investment consultant who also sits on the board of the Western Cape’s Black Management Forum, called for the establishment of some kind of permanent forum where pan-African business people could come together to swap ideas and chart progress. Bakahoukoutela noted that there still tended to be low levels of contact between entrepreneurs from Francophone African countries and those from Anglophone areas.

He also suggested that South Africa needed to grow its investment in the rest of Africa. When visiting countries like Cote d’Ivoire, he said, “you must see the appetite that locals […] have for partners from South Africa, the esteem that South Africa carries”.

It was noted, however, that this esteem is a double-edged sword – in terms of the attractiveness of South Africa as a destination for other Africans.

South Africa is like the United States of Africa, that’s how I see it,” Ohajunwa said, urging other African to scrutinise the leadership failings of other African governments. “There’s something wrong with leadership on the continent,” he said. “We need to start asking the right questions of our leadership.”

Blame was also placed at the feet of the South African government, in terms of its apparent failure to meaningfully curtail xenophobic violence.

This is the third [outbreak of xenophobic violence] that I’ve seen,” Ohajunwa pointed out.

We know that the xenophobia we are currently experiencing is the result of many issues,” Bakahoukoutela said. “But we know it is not the average South African that you meet on the road that is orchestrating this.” He suggested that one of the problems was a lack of “civic education” for the country’s citizens: to sit down and say, “Look, you don’t need to benefit from so and so, he is actually your brother”.

Ohajunwa also expressed frustration with the apparent lack of retribution for the perpetrators of xenophobic violence. “There has to be consequences,” he said. “I haven’t seen anyone who has been punished for their role in looting. That’s stealing! It’s not acceptable!”

Several attendees spoke poignantly of the fears expressed by their children, and how they hadn’t known quite what to tell them in response. At the same time, however, a deep commitment to South Africa’s future was expressed.

We are so in love and passionate about South Africa,” Bakahoukoutela said. “In the bigger scheme we know the beauty and capability of South Africa. We are first and foremost ashamed… We are deeply saddened.” DM

Photo: Foreign nationals and members of various South African civil society groups take part in an anti-xenophobia march through Cape Town, South Africa, 22 April 2015. EPA/NIC BOTHMA

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