Archive post. Issued by SAMNET in October 2024 and published here as part of SAMNET’s advocacy archive.

There are as many local businesses guilty of the same things — in different ways.

When is it xenophobia, when is it bad business practice, when is it protectionism by locals, when is it a local mafia, when is it shady foreign operators, and when is it simply poor monitoring and compliance?

The focus has fallen on “foreign” owners when many local businesses do and supply exactly the same things. Not all foreign-owned businesses are bad, and not all locally owned businesses are good. For authorities to single out businesses because of who owns them is not different in kind from the way non-white businesses were singled out under apartheid.

Mobs don’t let facts get in the way

The children suspected of dying from tainted food — the trigger for the raids on foreign-owned shops — were subsequently found to have died from a chemical used in rat poison. That finding arrived long after the narrative had set and hardened, which is how scapegoating works.

Who counts as “foreign”?

“Foreign” has become a catch-all for “other”. We have already seen criminal, mafia and “business forum” groups exclude legitimate locally owned businesses from operating in an area — funeral services, trades such as plumbing, even municipal services.

Urban food deserts

When geographic monopolies form, it is the end consumer who suffers. The result is often an urban food desert: food stores stay out of areas considered unsafe or economically unviable, leaving a shortage of affordable, nutritious food in the poorest parts of a city. The elderly Gogo and the child-headed household are the first to be exploited and the most vulnerable, and that feeds the next cycle of social problems.

Honesty and integrity, against greed and envy

The underlying issue is our values. Unscrupulous and unethical businesses must be stopped — but profiling one group of outsiders lets others get away with it, or worse, hands them the monopoly.

If we do not change course, soon nobody will be trading outside their own area — and then we should not expect to find a job, grow a business, or get services outside ours either.

Sources

Shared by the South African Muslim Network (SAMNET) in the interest of public safety, good values, equal economic opportunity, social justice, and fighting xenophobia, racism and poverty.