Shutdown of South Africa's 'spaza' shops sparks tensions

DW (English)

South Africa has cracked down on convenience stores after the deaths of more than 20 children from suspected food poisoning in October. The shops, known locally as spazas, are at the center of a heated dispute over food safety and immigration.

Transcript

00:00A convenient place to buy essential items, or a deathtrap for children.

00:07That's a question plaguing South African communities, where shops like these are a convenient source of food and other household products.

00:17Called Spazas, until recently they operated with little oversight or health inspection.

00:25But then, a group of immigrant shop owners were accused of being responsible for the deaths of several children.

00:33This was the trigger for anti-foreigner vigilante groups, who even forced some shops to close.

00:40Abera Joore, from Ethiopia, owns one of them.

00:45The experience left him scarred and without a living.

00:50They come and they break the shop, they loot and they vandalise.

00:54And then, even they burn, like, two, three cars.

00:58They beat our brothers.

01:01Even they burn some shop.

01:03They just, we save some of our brothers by a lot of struggle from the shop, when they try to burn the shop.

01:13Even though none of the affected children were from his neighbourhood, Joore was forced to shut up shop.

01:29The people behind the attacks say they're acting to protect the community at large.

01:35But many local residents depend on the shops and want them to stay.

01:40I don't have an issue with the spaza shops.

01:43If the shops, they get maintained, they send food safety to be checked,

01:48every month, maybe every month, or after six months, they must visit the stores and check the store that they're selling the good product.

01:56But the controversy over the convenience stores isn't just about contaminated food and the alleged poisonings.

02:04It's also about money and who's earning it.

02:06South Africa's spaza shop economy is estimated to be worth 10 billion euro.

02:11Some local business and community groups argue that too much of that economy rests in the hands of immigrants.

02:19They say that all these shops should either be shut down or transferred to the hands of locals.

02:26These business owners in the Waal area, south of Johannesburg, have formed a group and call themselves the Waal Keepers.

02:33They've been leading calls for immigrant-owned spaza shops to close.

02:38And they want the government to change the regulations so that only South Africans can own such stores.

02:45We don't want to compete with these people because, one, they're doing things illegally in our country.

02:50Number two, they're not even paying tax.

02:54The authorities are already clamping down.

02:57As well as ordering all the spazas to get registered,

03:00South Africa's government has responded to the anger surrounding immigrant-owned shops by increasing on-site inspections.

03:08But food inspectors aren't going there alone.

03:12They're accompanied by immigration officials on the lookout for violations.

03:17I am charging you for immigration.

03:21Human rights activist Dale McKinley says the government clampdown is more about garnering votes.

03:28Again, it's part of a deployment of a particular politics.

03:34I think we've seen it with Trump, we've seen it in the United States, we've seen it all across Europe,

03:38which is deliberately peddling and conscious peddling of misinformation in order to stoke political tension,

03:45in order to get votes, in order to get support for an anti-immigration agenda.

03:55As the deadline approaches for the spaza shops to register with the authorities,

04:00anti-immigrant sentiment here shows little sign of fading.

04:05But for Abera Jawore and many other immigrant shop owners, South Africa is home.

04:10Us, we don't have any way to go.

04:15He believes local communities, the government and shop owners will need to work together

04:21to ensure children's lives are protected and the rights of immigrants too.

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