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Opinionista

Believe it or not, South Africa, you have the power of choice

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Gushwell F. Brooks is an LLB graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand. He did not go on to become an attorney, but much rather entered the corporate rat race. After slaving away for years, he found his new life as a talk show host for Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape Talk.

Xenophobia, and there is no other word for it, has reared its ugly head in some of our townships in Gauteng. Naively, I assumed that a conversation that I have been having for close on to four years was serendipitously doing the rounds again. As far as I was concerned, the usual narrative of ‘them’ coming in to take ‘our money’, ‘jobs’ and anything else the heart desires, just happened to pop up again.

What I had not realised was that on Monday, in Soweto, a confrontation between a youth – that the community describes as a recidivist thief and nyaope addict – and a Somali shop owner, followed by the brandishing of a weapon, led to full scale looting.

The conversation started on Tuesday evening with the usual litany of complaints about foreign shop owners. Complaints that these foreign owned businesses are fronts for drug peddling, that these business owners do not pay taxes. Claims that the income generated does not impact on the local economy, that foreign business owners are here on asylum and as refugees and therefore are all in possession of illegal firearms. Stories that they fail to employ South Africans and because they supposedly buy in groups, and therefore in bulk and receive major discounts, they undercut local businesses. These allegations peppered the entire late night talk radio conversation.

Each and every single one of these claims is either a blatant lie, a gross generalisation, extreme exaggeration or what can only be described as simple hate-mongering. Not every immigrant, even those from the continent, are here as asylum seekers or refugees. The truth about immigration is that people leave real bad luck with countries where they were born and hope to find a better living. Somalia is a perfect example of one such really shitty country whereas South Africa, in contrast, is seen as a country that provides hope for a better life. In fact the governing party insist on reminding us that they give us “a better life for all”, so maybe the marketing campaign has spread continent wide.

These very same foreign business owners that operate within our townships rent homes and premises from where they conduct their business, live or a combination of both occupancies, from South Africans. The food they eat and the wholesalers they purchase from operate from within South Africa. So even the portion of the money they send home to family and community does not cause this fragile South African economy to haemorrhage significantly.

The worst of the arguments presented have nothing to do with illicit or unbecoming business conduct; in fact they speak of hard work and business savvy. So we do not like the fact that people from outside our borders have discovered this thing that existed since men’s earliest bartering days: bargaining power. So because some foreign business owners have decided to join forces, increase their purchasing power, which enables them to negotiate lower wholesale prices, which in turn allows them sell cheaper at a retail level, has some of my compatriots’ knickers in a knot. The fact that they seem to open their shops earlier and close them later has also caused great consternation. To paraphrase one listener, the average South African – for some strange and unknown medical reason – cannot work such long demanding hours.

Really? That is why we do not want these businesses in our communities, foreign business owners have some superpower that enables them to work longer and harder and that places us local types at a disadvantage, and so they must go? If the ridiculousness of this argument does not strike you then, maybe the reasons why we continue to support these businesses most certainly will.

Assuming that assertions such as tax evasion, poor health and hygiene standards, drug fronting and a range of other objectionable business practices are in fact true, why the hell do we let foreign business owners into our townships, for them to “muscle local business out” and break the law in doing so? I asked this very question and the answer I got was even more ridiculous than some of the aforementioned assertions about foreign business owners.

So despite our anger at the fact that money leaves our shores, that businesses run by locals are being killed off, that foreigners seem to have superhuman selling abilities and evade taxes, we continue to buy from these businesses because their goods are cheap, people are poor and they are conveniently located. If we were really so upstanding and we wanted all businesses to be ethical, law abiding and tax-paying then those businesses owned by locals – businesses that assumedly paid their taxes, ensured that money circulated within the South African economy and employed good old born-and-bred South Africans – would have not only continued to survive, but would be thriving at the expense of these horrible foreign owned businesses.

The reality is that for the most part there seems to be a comfortable symbiosis between foreign owned business and businessmen and the communities they serve, until resentment kicks in. This resentment sadly stems from the rampant poverty we see across most of our townships and it is a bitter pill to swallow when the business of an “outsider” thrives while locals continue to struggle.

Those locals have two serious questions to answer. Firstly, why do those businesses seem to thrive, relative to the poverty that persists within that community? Secondly, why is it that if there exists a perception that these businesses are adding so much to the social ills within these communities, do we continue to support them and stifle the enterprises of our fellow countrymen?

The answer to both these questions is simple: like bargaining power, it has existed for time immemorial; it is peaceful and environmentally friendly too. Boycott! If a business is doing harm to your community, simply stop supporting it. It saves much more energy than having to go through the arduous labour of looting, burning, assaulting and pillaging. The difficulty with this approach is that it might hurt the pocket, because the local business you support is assumed to pay tax, employ South Africans at a decent wage and add to the local economy, so their prices would be naturally steeper. The real kick in the teeth is that you would actually have to make a principled decision.

Amid the killing, mayhem and looting we have forgotten about the silent, peaceful protest and power of the consumer. The top two suspects for this amnesia is, of course, xenophobia, which is an intense hate of those from outside my country. After all, it is always easier to blame the outsider for my misery than to take stock of what internal mechanisms have caused me injury. The second of these suspects is our inability to take responsibility for ourselves and our communities. It seems that we have surrendered our choices, conveniently finding a boogieman to blame for our misfortunes rather than take stock of what we can do to alleviate our miseries.

It is true that some foreign business owners flout trading laws, fail to pay taxes and fail to comply with basic labour and health regulations. Some are in possession of illegal firearms and others do use apparent legitimate businesses as fronts for drugs and other illicit businesses. Where these abuses occur, the obvious solution is to alert the relevant authorities. But even when the authorities sit on their haunches and refuse to do anything about these, a business only survives with your contributions.

So what we really need to examine are the reasons we find to attack foreign owned businesses driven by a sense of injustice to the local community, or are we getting pissed off at the fact that we are being beaten at a game we should have the home ground advantage over? It sucks when someone flees their war-torn motherland, land on the shores of the land of milk and honey and we as locals lose the advantage we should have had all along. DM

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