‘Unwanted But Needed’ In South Africa: Post Pandemic Imaginations On Black Immigrant Entrepreneurs Owning Spaza Shops
‘Unwanted But Needed’ In South Africa: Post Pandemic Imaginations On Black Immigrant Entrepreneurs Owning Spaza Shops

Author(s): Sadhana Manik
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Psychology, Essay|Book Review |Scientific Life, General Reference Works, Geography, Regional studies, Sociology
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: immigrant business entrepreneurs; spaza shops; xenophobia; South Africa
Summary/Abstract: This chapter is an attempt to imagine the policy environment and socio-economic spaces of what a post pandemic SA could be for immigrant small/micro business entrepreneurs, who are owners of ‘spaza’ shops. I present a focused gaze for this sub set of immigrants (developing the informal economy in SA) who have been experiencing a cornucopia of challenges pre-pandemic and during the pandemic based on their status as immigrant entrepreneurs, the most pronounced of which has been xenophobia which is cocooned within the explicit aim of purging South Africa of immigrants. It is for this reason that I trace the realities of the landscape pre COVID-19 and during the pandemic before offering up three ‘imaginations’ (O’Tuathail, 1996) as possibilities for the future of immigrant spaza shop owners. I draw on existing securitization policies, political utterances and practices, socio-economic events and immigrants’ experiences in post- apartheid South Africa which has created particular ‘auras’ ( Roy, 2005) and anti-immigrant discourses that provide some insights into what a post pandemic future could be.

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