A published piece about this got it wrong, writes Vanya Gastrow, and didn’t highlight the potential contributions of foreign informal enterprises
A published piece about this got it wrong and didn’t highlight the potential contributions of foreign informal enterprisesRecent research on foreign spaza shopkeepers in SA shows how intensely the market is misunderstood — not just by people on the street, but by academics studying the topic. This is illustrated by Prof Andries du Toit’s article .
He believes that employers’ absence indicates that shops are not owned by small business owners, but by ‘larger, upstream wholesale business’ While making broad assumptions on foreign traders’ financial positions and ability to formalise, Du Toit leaves out key information that directly relates to their ability to enter formal economies. This includes lack of access to bank accounts, language barriers, low levels of formal education, frequent relocations due to crime, and xenophobia from property letting agents.
But Du Toit gives traders’ responses a completely different and bizarre interpretation. He believes that employers’ absence indicates that shops are not owned by small business owners, but by “larger, upstream wholesale business”. There is no explanation in the report how the researchers came to this conclusion.Apart from the sometimes-absent employer, the only other evidence mentioned in the report was visiting wholesale outlets “to observe the business linkages first-hand”.
Du Toit does not discuss average shop incomes in his opinion piece, he only lists the very lowest income levels his researchers encountered. Furthermore, he ignores that “middleman minority” traders have, for centuries, frequently resided on shop premises — including Indian traders in SA at the turn of the 20th century. Such customs should be addressed with greater cultural awareness rather than crassly equated to exploitation.
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