The growing campaign against foreign nationals operating businesses in SA has become one of the most emotionally charged conversations in the country.
Depending on who you ask, communities are either standing up against economic exclusion or participating in outright xenophobia.
Yet perhaps the moral shouting match is masking some really important and useful questions about deep structural issues.
Because beneath the outrage lies a few hard and uncomfortables truths.
What we are witnessing is not merely frustration about immigration. It is the collapse of trust in local economic participation.
For years, township and informal economies have been romanticised as centres of resilience.
In reality, many local entrepreneurs experience increasing economic displacement in spaces where ownership should, at minimum, feel accessible.
One question many South Africans are asking is not simply, “Why do foreign nationals own businesses?” They are not fooled by populist leaders trying to fan flames to deflect attention from their own glaring “to do” lists.
How is resilience made?
They know the real questions go deeper than that. Let’s start here:
How is it that communities burdened by unemployment, weak access to finance, low economic mobility and inscrutable regulatory authorities are somehow still able to establish, sustain and expand businesses at a pace few locals can match?
This question should not be dismissed as ignorance or prejudice. It deserves serious economic interrogation. Because informal markets do not operate on equal terms.
SA entrepreneurs, particularly in township economies, often survive entirely on cash flow. Today’s profits determine tomorrow’s stock. One bad month can collapse years of effort.
Traditional finance institutions remain largely inaccessible, especially for those operating informally or semiformally. Most are undercapitalised from the beginning.
Yet across the small hair and nail salons, the pavement eateries, the tailors, phone repair booths, car services, hardware supplies and countless other, there are operators who survive — who are able to absorb losses, extend operating hours, buy stock aggressively and survive razor thin margins over long periods.
How? Maybe collective financing systems, informal lending networks, pooled capital, transnational family support or stronger business ecosystems than a faltering neighbour.
It is less important than the simple reality that the market is not experienced equally.
And perhaps this is where we need more honesty.
Billions moves through
Let’s stop repeating the convenient lie that townships lack money. Billions move through township economies every year. They are extremely economically active.
People buy groceries, clothes, transport, building materials, alcohol, school uniforms, beauty products, fast food, funeral cover and household essentials every single day.
So — the issue is not whether disposable income exists.
The real question is this: who captures township spending and who ultimately benefits from it?
Because if wealth continuously leaves already marginalised communities without meaningful local asset accumulation, business ownership or reinvestment, then frustration becomes inevitable.
Wholesalers can’t be forced to favour local entrepreneurs over foreign nationals. Business follows incentives. Suppliers respond to volume, consistency and purchasing power.
So let me ask this: Why do local entrepreneurs continue operating individually, underfunded and fragmented, when so often they are competing against networks that buy collectively and survive collectively?
What would it take?
Yet equally, we must resist the temptation of easy answers.
Driving people out is not an economic strategy.
Empty storefronts do not automatically become thriving local enterprises.
Anger may be understandable, but it won’t create sustainable business plans or economic inclusion.
Without structural intervention, the same conditions that weakened local enterprise in the first place will remain.
This is where the debate usually loses coherence.
Instead of asking who should leave, we should ask what systems must be built.
What would it take for local township enterprise to genuinely compete?
- Perhaps township-based bulk purchasing systems would boost local entrepreneurs’ pricing power.
- Perhaps accessible working capital for informal and township businesses is a more responsive model than those designed for formally bankable companies.
- Perhaps fair and consistent compliance enforcement applied to everyone, regardless of nationality, would clear the air and level the playing field, because selective enforcement deepens resentment.
- Perhaps finally treating township economies as serious economic zones worthy of deliberate industrial strategy rather than survivalist afterthoughts, would go a long, long way, too.
History’s call
This is a moment in our history that demands honesty from all of us. It could change everything.
Communities are reacting to exclusion. To economic anxiety. To the bleak feeling that even within spaces historically built through struggle and sacrifice, meaningful participation in the economy seems forever out of reach.
Ignoring these frustrations is dangerous.
But weaponising it is worse.
Because beneath all the slogans, the outrage and the political theatre lies the real question SA has avoided for far too long:
Who does the township economy work for, and who is left outside of its growing wealth?
Buzani is a business consultant and youth empowerment advocate, as well as a founding member of an award-winning SME and the vibrant Mdantsane entrepreneur network Kasi Konversations
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