Soweto shop owners want three months to register their businesses

Veronica Manase, 62, a grocery supermarket owner in Soweto, believes President Cyril Ramaphosa should have given spaza and informal traders three months to register their businesses. 

Manase from Jabulani inherited her supermarket which sells groceries and cooked food from her parents when they passed away. She said she had been operating the shop for more than 34 years.

Manase was among local business owners who visited the Jabulani Civic Centre on Wednesday to register her shop, when ActionSA supporters marched to the centre. 

“I have been running my business for years and it was already registered, but now they said we must register again. This process [registration] takes forever, and they want a lot of documents.

“They want a fire compliance certificate, they need building plans, you must have two fire extinguishers in your shop and they need registration with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission,” she said. 

She said there was a lot of money involved and the deadline was looming while she was trying to sort out her registration. She feared that 21 days would lapse before her business was registered. 

“I sell vetkoeks and kotas as well — they want me to pay R1,400, and you must know that CK [close corporation certificate], every year we pay R150 and now it's R200. At least they should have given us three months, because some of them [local business owners] are struggling and don't know what is required,” she added. 

Manase said the government should have funded local business owners, especially those whose businesses could not compete with spaza shops owned by foreigners.

She added that over the past three decades that she had been in the business, she had seen some of the shop owners who couldn't keep up with the competition closing down. 

“Now those owners don't even have money to reclaim their shops. I have been competing with my neighbour for years who is a foreign national, but I worked very hard to remain in business.

“Fortunately I have experience in running a business and I know what to do when the situation is like this. I have six employees at my shop. They work in shifts. I am helping the community and those people are paid every week,” she added. 

Gugu Zikala, 41, also owns a grocery shop in Soweto. Her business had been sustaining her family.

She said the process of registering her shop this time had been frustrating and reckoned government should have researched how small businesses and tuck shops worked. 

“They should not compare the process with what they use when they are registering bigger supermarkets. The process of registering should be different, and they should have been helping us on how to make the process easier if they want the township economy to be better,” she said.

Zikala urged the government to make it easier for spaza shop owners to register and not spend time running around trying to acquire required documents instead of growing their businesses. 

“The 21-day period is too short. They should stop trying to play with our minds and running away from the problems that we have. The problem is more about the foreign nationals who are illegal in this country,” she said.

She said the government should focus on immigration and home affairs and should regularly conduct inspections and check if the foreign nationals were legally in the country.

ActionSA on Wednesday led a “Spaza4Locals” march in Soweto, where they handed a memorandum to Johannesburg officials at the Jabulani centre. 

Lerato Ngobeni, ActionSA MP, said their march was to highlight irregularities that they had witnessed since the president announced the 21 days for registration. 

“The 21 days ends on December 13 and we have witnessed a lot of irregularities. We spoke about the issue of fronting where our people here in South Africa are registering [allegedly] unwittingly on behalf of illegal foreign nationals — a lot of them,” she said. 

She said the march was to inform the officials to warn people who were allegedly trying to register the businesses on behalf of illegal foreign nationals. 

“If you are doing this you must remember that you will be the owner of the shop. You will attract certain taxes, and Sars, and you will attract a whole lot of legislation to yourself and not these individuals.

“For us, it is an awareness campaign because the government says they will run awareness campaigns, but we have not seen any,” she said. 

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba, who was on the march, told his supporters at the centre that the march was just a beginning and they would organise them all over the country. 

“This matter is going to land in the president’s office one of these days, because he is the one who created this mess,” he said.

Mashaba said when the president was addressing the plight caused by unregistered spaza shops, he was very casual and it looked like the president was not serious about the problem. 

“When he announced a few weeks ago about the registration of spaza shops, he never mentioned anywhere about illegal foreigners killing our children. He spoke about this matter as if people are given 21 days to register. In the meantime, we know who is killing our children,” he said. 

TimesLIVE