In recent weeks, I have been asking Somali shopkeepers in Cape Town the following two questions: are your businesses more or less successful than those run by South Africans in your neighbourhood? If yes or no, why?
These are loaded questions, and the answers I received were similarly loaded. Almost everyone said that they did better than their South African competitors. But the reasons were mischievously eccentric. Few people claimed to be more astute or better traders. Rather, many said, they did better, paradoxically enough, because they were frightened and ill at ease.
Consider, for instance, Somalis' and South Africans' respective relationships with wholesalers. South African spaza shop owners generally buy their stock as lone retailers. So do Somalis. But, typically, all Somalis in a given area patronise the same wholesaler. The result is a de facto economy of scale. It makes sense for wholesalers to sell to lone Somali traders at bulk prices; combined, all the Somalis in an area constitute the equivalent of several supermarkets. It also makes sense for wholesalers to extend credit to their Somali customers, to accommodate cash flow problems, and to be lenient at times of crisis and disaster, for they know that their Somali clients are there for the long haul.
When I asked how Somalis go about picking a wholesaler, respondents did not talk about profitability, but about safety. "We choose the person who protects us," one said. "We are at our most vulnerable when we buy stock. We have a lot of money in our pockets, and everyone knows that. We are walking into a place where most of the people are South African, so we are outnumbered. We are surrounded by our competitors, who hate us. It is very easy for them to bring tsotsis to rob us. They know that the police will not come and save us. So we choose the wholesaler who protects his premises, and the area outside his premises, and instructs his security staff to intervene when Somalis are victimised."
According to this story, an economy of scale is created not from a collective strategy to buy cheap, but by fear.
As for their relationships with their customers, some of the Somalis' comments were similarly surprising. "Our customers hate us," one of them said. "They are rude to us and try to cheat us; but they still prefer buying from us than from South Africans." Many reasons were given: Somali shops are always open, no matter the time; Somalis pay close attention to what their customers are buying and ensure that nobody ever asks for something that isn't stocked. But the most interesting answer was this: "Our shops are in the poorest parts of South Africa. Most of our customers are unemployed or on welfare. They are the laughing stock of South Africa. But when they come to our shops, they are king. They can come with R2. There are only a few things you can buy with that: single cigarettes, one or two chewing gum sticks, sweets. The customer can come with his coins and say, 'Give me a cigarette.' I get one. He says, 'No, I've changed my mind; I want chewing gum.' I say, 'Yes, Bra,' and get it. By the time I am back at the counter, he has changed his mind again. 'No, Kwerekwere, I want sweets.'
"A South African shopkeeper will not tolerate that. He will say: 'You are wasting my time. F*** off.' A Somali cannot afford to say f*** off. He can only say, 'Yes, Sissie. Yes, Bra.' And so the laughing stock of South Africa come to us because our shops are the one place in their own country where they can say, 'I want this!' and someone will respond."
There are, I suspect, all sorts of other reasons why Somalis trade well. For instance, their extended kin ties have served as business networks for generations, with result that capital and risk can be shared among virtual strangers; a person can thus arrive alone in a strange land and within months set up a business.
But my respondents chose not to speak about these things. They wanted, instead, to talk about their fear. While their answers to my questions were not untruthful, neither were they really intended to inform me about Somali business practices. Their purpose was rhetorical and cathartic. They were talking back to South Africans; they were letting off steam. "You hate us for doing well," the Somalis were saying. "But we are doing well, you idiots, because you hate us."
•Steinberg is a senior researcher at Huma, University of Cape Town
Source: timeslive.co.za
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