Johanneburg - Setting up your own successful business is hard enough as it is. But if you are a foreign national from elsewhere in Africa living and working in South Africa, your hopes of prospering on the business front are far more treacherous.
Not having proper local identification and business regulations that seem designed to stifle rather than encourage entrepreneurship are just two of the myriad problems encountered by African business people looking to set up shop in South Africa.
And then there is the discrimination. And the mistrust. And the violence.
“My company brings in lots of foreign currency into the country and provides a much needed service in South Africa,” said Tendai*, a 53-year-old Johannesburg-based Zimbabwean IT businessman, who has been in South Africa for the past 8 years.
Tendai said that there was a need for fellow blacks to be recognised from the region and the continent and to also give them preferential BEE rating for their business enterprises.
“Although I am a permanent resident of South Africa with a South African ID, I don’t feel as part of South Africa,” he told ANA in the lead up to Africa Day on May 25. “I am reminded at every juncture that this is not home and will never be home.”
He said South Africa needed to integrate “foreigners” into local systems and not make them feel as if they did not belong, or did not deserve to be worked with or to employ South Africans.
“My South African employees have an entitlement mentality and most prefer situations where results are immediate instead of thinking long-term,” he ventured to say when asked about the differences between South Africans and those from elsewhere on the continent.
Seyi*, the owner of a popular salon in Braamfontein, is in his late 50s and said that even though he had businesses back home in Nigeria, he found it much harder starting up in South Africa because he was not able to get funding assistance.
“I had to start from nothing, using money that I had saved myself, and even finding staff was very hard but because I have always been a businessman, I was able to make a plan,” he said.
Seyi said his wife being South African helped with him fitting in but he still has to run the emotional gauntlet of locals threatening to close down his business.
“Most of my customers are South African, but through the years and even now I get threats, especially when they realise that I cannot speak their language,” Seyi said.
He has has been in South Africa since 1994, and says he moved to the country because he always grew up with a “travellers’” mentality and had told himself from a young age that he wasn’t going to live in Nigeria forever.
“People need to learn to treat each other equally and stop judging people by their nationality and colour,” he said.
Seyi went on to say that foreigners who had business minds and ideas should be allowed funding from local banks just like everybody else.
“I wish we could all be treated equally,” said Remigious*, 48, a mechanic from Nigeria, whose workshop was set alight and damaged during the most recent wave of xenophobic attacks in Jeppestown, Johannesburg.
Remigious has been in South Africa for the past 15 years, and said his first business here was a cellphone repair shop in Hillbrow.
“I had a shop in Nigeria but I have always believed that travelling is part of learning, which is why I decided to move to South Africa.”
Remigious said he remembered getting the phone call at around 1am notifying him that his workshop was on fire.
“I have a registered firearm and rushed to the shop with other shop owners in the area,” he said. “We were scared but had to defend ourselves.”
The workshop had 12 vehicles and everything, including the cars, was burnt to ashes.
“I have had my shop for four years and now I have to start all over,” he told ANA. “I used to buy damaged cars from auctions and build them back up, but now I don’t even have tools.”
Half of Remigious’s staff are foreigners from other parts of Africa, and after the attacks last month, most of them decided to go back home.
“My employees from Malawi have all gone back home because they are scared of losing their lives, when they just came to make a living.”
Remigious said he hired mostly foreign nationals because South Africans have told him they refuse to be paid “peanut” by a foreigner.
“My shop was still growing but any amount I offer a South African, they fight me for it unlike other foreigners who just want to make money to send home.”
Remigious added that he had always had a problem of break-ins at his shop and believed that this was because he was a foreigner here.
“I have loved being in South Africa and hate that this has happened but I will not allow this to chase me away,” he vowed.
He added that South Africa was a democratic country where people were able to be free, which is why he left Nigeria.
So what do South Africans who work for foreigners have to say?
“It is a bit unfair that these people are not from here but they are making so much money while us South Africans are hungry,” said one woman who works in a shop owned by foreigners. “I just work because I need to look after my child.”
Others, though, felt differently with some lamenting the fact that it appeared as if South Africans did not believe in helping fellow South Africans make the climb out of poverty.
“I am happy where I am because I feel that foreigners believe in bettering others and giving people a chance, and they themselves are hard workers,” said one South African man from the foreign owned business premises where he works.
Locals and foreign nationals from elsewhere in Africa live and work in this melting pot called South Africa. And yet it is telling that not a single person was prepared to give their name for this Africa Day feature. What does this say about us as Africans?
* Not their real names
ANA