By Kouthar Sambo
There has been an urgent call for action to return the thriving tuck shop business back to South Africans. This comes amid the recent spike in cases of poisoning, which emerged and were blamed on foreign shopkeepers, as children were falling sick from food and snacks purchased from the small businesses.
Speaking on VOC’s PM Drive show on Monday, political analyst Sandile Swana described the move as a rather “racist call.”
“How to run a business and the entrepreneurship that goes into it post-1994 was not attended by the state, and so the competition between the Pakistanis, Somalians, and our locals in the spaza shop market is not decided by anything else other than the background knowledge and the skills of the Pakistanis and Somalians versus the uneducated, unmentored and unsupported black locals,” remarked Swana.
Furthermore, Swana said that politicians are diverting focus and evading responsibility by blaming spaza shops for the spike in poisonous cases.
“The state and our municipalities are no longer funded and equipped with enough manpower to do full-on health inspections to maintain food safety in South Africa, so now politicians are now looking for scapegoats to cover up their carelessness,” asserted Swana.
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