Johannesburg, 16 June-(ANA)-The business acumen of foreign nationals, rather than xenophobia, triggered the attacks against Somalis and other migrants in the South African port city of Cape Town, a report commissioned by the city has revealed.
The report surveyed 214 locally owned and 138 foreign-owned spaza shops in Khayelitsha, a sprawling township established in 1983 by the apartheid government in an attempt to manage the migration of black people from rural areas to the city.
Khayelitsha was initially envisaged to accommodate 220,000 people, but the number has ballooned to nearly 10 times that, and has an unemployment rate of about 50 percent.
Apartheid planners ensured that Khayelitsha, like other townships, was divorced from South Africa's commercial mainstream by distance and poor transport systems, so spazas (informal shops) filled the vacuum, providing residents with basic goods from maize-meal to cigarettes, but often at higher prices.
The demise of apartheid has not altered the commercial dynamic of the township, but has seen a shift in demographics as African immigrants are drawn there both by their socio-economic plight and the business opportunities that townships present.
In 2006, it was estimated that the spaza industry was responsible for about 4.7 percent of retail trade, or more than R9 billion (US$1.1 billion).
The report speculated that attacks on Somali-owned businesses were "ethnically motivated"; but "there are issues of pricing, consumer choice and the growth of supermarket-like spaza shops that has an impact on retail business in the area," it noted. (ANA)
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