scholarly journals The changing landscape of the spaza retail outlet amongst black South Africans

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-23
Author(s):  
Shaka Yesufu

The Spaza retail outlet is predominately found in South Africa’s black populated areas or townships. It also has a historical significance to it because, during the apartheid years, black people were not allowed to move freely by the white minority rule. This study is qualitative research where the author carried out an extensive literature review to look first, at the background, characteristics, challenges, and future directions that affect the Spaza micro businesses in South Africa. The research aims to first highlight the importance of micro-businesses. Second, to highlight the need for South Africa’s government initiatives to support small businesses for sustainable growth of the economy and to explore whether this support is far-reaching enough to protect the Spaza retail shops. The authors rely on Karl Marx's theory of class struggle as the theory informing the study. Some of the findings are: Spaza owners need to be more trained in business management, entrepreneurial skills, advertisement, social networking and marketing research, accounting and bookkeeping, technology, and innovation concerning promoting their businesses. The Spaza's annual revenue stream for the South Africa government currently stands at 5.2 % of the GDP.

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-178
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan

The rapid production of films of diversity in post-1994 South Africa has unfortunately not been matched by critical works on film. Part of the reason is that some of the films recycle old themes that celebrate the worst in black people. Another possible reason could be that a good number of films wallow in personality praise, and certainly of Mandela, especially after his demise. Despite these problems of film criticism in post-1994 South Africa, it appears that some new critics have not felt compelled to waste their energy on analysing the Bantustan film – a kind of film that was made for black people by the apartheid system but has re-surfaced after 1994 in different ways. The patent lack of more critical works on film that engages the identities and social imaginaries of young and white South Africans is partly addressed in SKIN – a film that registers the mental growth and spiritual development of Sandra’s multiple selves. This article argues that SKIN portrays the racial neurosis of the apartheid system; and the question of identity affecting young white youths during and after apartheid is experienced at the racial, gender and sex levels.


2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham A. Duncan

Any society and its institutions are coercive. While acknowledging the invaluable contribution made by mission education towards the development of black South Africans, Lovedale Missionary Institution exemplifies the concept of a “total institution” susceptible to the problems of power relations. Those who studied there internalized its ethos. Coercive agency encouraged adaptation to missionary ideology. However, many Lovedale students rejected the mores of the religion and education they received as they challenged and resisted the effects of the coercive agency of internalization. Institutionalisation is, by nature, resistant to change as can be seen in the policies of the respective Principals of the Institution. Consequently, black people were alienated by a process of “exclusion”. The values of justice, love and peace are appropriate tools for a new model of education in South Africa.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan

Twenty-two years into democracy, and South Africa is still producing white films for a black audience. In this film genre, black people participate as part of the cast but they are accorded questionable roles that distort important strides that the country has made to achieve racial reconciliation. Although black South Africans are participating in the production of films in South Africa, they have not been able to defeat the ghosts of liberalism that inform black films. The aim of this article is to draw attention to instances of stereotyping black children and young adults who are part of the casts of Sarafina! and Tsotsi. The article argues that, because people internalise the roles imposed on them, the cultural consequence of the creation of negative images is the production of a mentality among young black Africans that they are permanently disabled. Stereotyping is a pernicious mode of representing blacks because in the context of the post-1994 period, a numerical minority is a majority in terms of creating images and controlling the film industry, and a numerical majority is transformed into a numerical minority that assumes important role models and empowering images in films. This reality, which is informed by the ideology of white liberalism, has ensured that blacks remain marginalised in terms of the cultural creations offered through film in South Africa.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-331
Author(s):  
Zeleke Worku

The purpose of the study was to identify and quantify differential factors that are known to adversely affect sustained growth and development in newly established Small, Micro and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMMEs) conducting business in and around Tshwane in South Africa. The study is based on a 5-year follow-up study (2007 to 2012) of a random sample of 349 small business enterprises that operate in and around the City of Pretoria in South Africa. Data was gathered from each of the businesses on socioeconomic factors that are known to affect the long-term survival of small businesses. The objective of the study was to identify and quantify key predictors of viability and long term survival. The study found that 188 of the 349 businesses that took part in the study (54%) were not viable, and that the long-term survival and viability of small businesses was adversely affected by lack of entrepreneurial skills, lack of supervisory support to newly established businesses, and inability to operators running newly established businesses to acquire relevant vocational skills


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Koliswa Notshulwana

In 2014, the then president of South Africa, Mr Jacob Zuma, delivered his State of the Nation Address in Parliament and promised that economic transformation would take centre stage. This promise was made against the backdrop of transformation having stalled and difficulties being experienced in reducing social inequality and poverty. He called on social partners to debate the issue of wage inequality and the possibility of instituting a national minimum wage to reduce income inequalities. He promised that the structure of the economy would be transformed through industrialisation and broad-based black economic empowerment and through strengthening and expanding the role of the state in the economy. However, these commitments have not been kept and remain under threat given the extent of corruption in national government departments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The revelations in the financial reports of the Public Protector and the Auditor-General on SOEs raise key questions relating to the role of the national government departments and SOEs in driving radical economic transformation. A fundamental and radical change is required if the economy is to be run to the benefit of all poor South Africans, the majority of whom are black people. One possibility is to institute ethical leadership and an executive that is accountable. Twenty-three years into freedom and democracy, and the majority of South Africans, black people in particular, are still economically disempowered. This is a concern given the developmental objectives of government as espoused in its National Development Plan (NDP) 2030. As long as the country continues to battle with the persistent triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality, radical economic transformation remains a pipe dream. Considering the current state of affairs, the objective of radical economic transformation (i.e. to place the economy on a qualitatively different path that ensures more rapid and sustainable growth, higher investment, increased employment, reduced inequality and the deracialisation of the economy) is far-fetched. Any political posture not aimed at giving effect to the NDP, the New Growth Path and the Industrial Policy Action Plan to stimulate growth, employment and the re-industrialisation of the South African economy will not lead to radical economic transformation.


Author(s):  
Mpfariseni Budeli

South Africa was under the apartheid rule for around fifty years. Apartheid was formally established by the National Party when it came to power in 1948. In terms of the apartheid policy, the government belonged to the White people who enjoyed all human rights and were entitled to rule the country to the detriment of the Black people despite the latter constituting the overwhelming majority of the population. The apartheid regime eventually came to an end in the early 1990s. Following the ending of the dictatorial regime, a new Constitution was adopted and the first democratic elections were held in South Africa. [T]his paper reflects on the road that South Africans have gone from Apartheid to democracy and good political governance, on what they have achieved as well as the challenges and prospects for democratic governance in the country. Keywords: South Africa; apartheid; Constitution; governance; democracy and human rights.


2021 ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Shaka Yesufu

With the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, new police service was needed to promote the transition to democracy. Community policing was introduced from the United Kingdom in the 1990s into South Africa as a channel to heal the wounds and injustices of the past. Over Twenty-five years down the road, community policing in South Africa has made little or no impact on the majority of South Africans who will openly admit that they do not attend their local community forums, because they simply do not trust the police because of its oppressive past. It is a widely held view by several South Africans that the Police Service simply cannot change overnight from being a very brutal force to become the protectors of citizen’s human rights. This research is a qualitative study; whereby an extensive literature review was carried, exploring the issues and concepts related to community policing. The findings are that community policing has achieved its desired results. All citizens must go back to the drawing board again to bring community policing back on track for the benefit of all citizens to whom the police serve and protect. The author argues that the bitterness and divisions of the past must put be put to one side and that all citizens must co-create a country, where all South Africans are proudly part of and allowed to make their contributions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edson Mbedzi ◽  
Munacinga Simatele

Orientation: As lack of access to credit hinders small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) success and lending technologies being conduits transmit credit access, more focus must be on the effect of lending technologies on credit rationing.Research purpose: To analyse the extent of credit rationing amongst SMMEs based on lender and firm characteristics.Motivation for the study: In South Africa, SMMEs are funded by different lenders using different lending technologies, but little is known about which ones are more effective.Research approach/design and method: The study takes a quantitative approach. In this study, 321 SMMEs are sampled from 1486 small businesses on the registers of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber and the Border-Kei Chamber of Business in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Financing of SMMEs is captured with a categorical credit-rationing variable. Accordingly, a logit technique is used. The first model captures credit rationing as a binary variable. In the second model, the nature of credit rationing is disaggregated resulting in a four-measure categorical variable.Main findings: Little rationing occurs when asset-based and venture capital methods are used. Microfinance and privately owned development financial institutions have high rationing levels, similar to commercial banks, defeating the purpose of their special existence to address excluded groups. Black people-owned and female-owned businesses are the most rationed. Credit rationing decreases with firm size, but the effects are amplified by race.Practical/managerial implications: To improve SMMEs access to finance, the government should focus on allocating funds to firms using SMMEs’ credit rationing risk profiles.Contribution/value-add: Lending technology, lender type and SMME characteristics relationships indicate that SMMEs can benefit from a well-understood rationing risk profile of firms in the economy. Therefore, policies on support and regulation of the distribution of loan portfolios aligned to empirical rationing risk profiles can improve SMME growth. However, this study has used SMME data from the Eastern Cape province only, one of the nine provinces in South Africa. Thus, the provincial heterogeneity effects are not captured in this study.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-73
Author(s):  
Michael Kok ◽  
Jan K. Coetzee ◽  
Florian Elliker

The institutionalized racism that once subjugated the Black majority during South Africa’s apartheid years gave way after 1994 to legislature that aims to bring the country into a new era of egalitarianism. A striking result of this has been the steady flow of young Black people achieving upward mobility and making the transition into the middle- and upper-classes. This article explores young Black South Africans’ lived experiences of upward mobility, as well as their efforts to negotiate between separate and often contrasting identities by applying an interpretive sociological framework to their narrative accounts.


1993 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 979-982 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Naidoo ◽  
Basil J. Pillay

The study examined parasuicide behaviour in black (people of African origin) South Africans. The subjects comprised 51 cases of parasuicide, with a mean age of 23.5 yr. (the majority being women), referred over a one-year period. For most patients it was the first parasuicide attempt, and the majority used methods of self-poisoning. In addition, they were mostly single and had experienced early parental loss.


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