This report presents the results of a SAMP survey of informal entrepreneurs connected to cross-border trade between Johannesburg and Maputou during 2014. The study sought to enhance the evidence base on the links between migration and informal entrepreneur-ship in Southern African cities and to examine the implications for municipal, national and regional policy.
Zimbabwe has witnessed the rapid expansion of informal cross-border trading (ICBT) with neighbouring countries over the past two decades. Beginning in the mid-1990s when the country embarked on its Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), a large number of people were forced into informal employment through worsening economic conditions and the decline in formal sector jobs. The countrys post-2000 economic col-lapse resulted in the closure of many industries and created market opportunities for the further expansion of ICBT. This report, part of SAMPs Growing Informal Cities series, sought to provide a current picture of ICBT in Zimbabwe by interviewing a sample of 514 Harare-based informal entrepreneurs involved in cross-border trading with South Africa.
Zimbabwe has witnessed the rapid expansion of informal cross-border trading (ICBT) with neighbouring countries over the past two decades. Beginning in the mid-1990s when the country embarked on its Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), a large number of people were forced into informal employment through worsening economic conditions and the decline in formal sector jobs.
The new edition of Historical Dictionary of Mozambique covers the Bantu expansion; the arrival of the Portuguese navigators and their str competition with local African power centers and coastal Arab-Swahili trading towns; the trade cycles of gold, ivory, and slaves; the establishment of the semi-Africanized prazos along the Zambezi Valley; “pacification” campaigns; and the period of Portuguese weakness in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when vast tracts of land were rented to concessionary companies. In the late colonial period the Salazar dictatorship tried to reassert Portuguese power, but after ten years of armed struggle for national liberation, Mozambique gained its independence in 1975. The book contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Mozambique.
One of the defining characteristics of many large cities in the rapidly urbanizing global South is the high degree of informality of shelter, services and economic livelihoods. It is these dynamic, shifting and dangerous informal urban spaces that refugees often arrive in with few resources other than a will to survive, a few social contacts and a drive to support themselves in the absence of financial support from the host government and international agencies. This report addresses the question of variability in economic opportunity and entrepreneurial activity between urban environments within the same destination country - South Africa - by comparing refugee entrepreneurship in Cape Town, South Africa’s second largest city, and several small towns in the province of Limpopo. The research shows that refugee entrepreneurial activity in Limpopo is a more recent phenomenon and largely a function of refugees moving from large cities such as Johannesburg where their businesses and lives are in greater danger. The refugee populations in both areas are equally diverse and tend to be engaged in the same wide range of activities. This report shows that different urban geographies do shape the local nature of refugee entrepreneurial economies, but there are also remarkable similarities in the manner in which unconnected refugee entrepreneurs establish and grow their businesses in large cities and small provincial towns.
Debates about international migration in South Africa often centre on the role of international migrant entrepreneurs who are seen to be more successful than their South African counterparts, squeezing them out of entrepreneurial spaces, particularly in townships. This report explores and compares the experiences of international and South African migrant entrepreneurs operating informal sector businesses in Johannesburg.
Small businesses owned by international migrants and refugees are often the target of xenophobic hostility and attack in South Africa. This report examines the problematization of migrant-owned businesses in South Africa, and the regulatory efforts aimed at curtailing their economic activities. In so doing, it sheds light on the complex ways in which xenophobic fears are generated and manifested in the countrys social, legal and political orders. Efforts to curb migrant spaza shops in South Africa have included informal trade agreements at local levels, fining migrant shops, and legislation that prohibits asylum seekers from operating businesses in the country. Several of these interventions have overlooked the content of local by-laws and outed legal frameworks. The report concludes that when South African township residents attack migrant spaza shops, they are expressing their dissatisfaction with their socio-economic conditions to an apprehensive state and political leadership. In response, governance actors turn on migrant shops to demonstrate their allegiance to these residents, to appease South African spaza shopkeepers, and to tacitly blame socio-economic malaise on perceived foreign forces. Overall, these actors do not have spaza shops primarily in mind when calling for the stricter regulation of these businesses. Instead, they are concerned about the volatile support of their key political constituencies and how this backing can be undermined or generated by the symbolic gesture of regulating the foreign shop.
This report examines the impact of xenophobic violence on Zimbabweans who are trying to make a living in the South African informal sector and finds that xenophobic violence has several key characteristics that put them at constant risk of losing their livelihoods and their lives. The businesses run by migrants and refugees in the informal sector are a major target of South Africa’s extreme xenophobia. Attitudinal surveys clearly show that South Africans differentiate migrants by national origin and that Zimbabweans are amongst the most disliked. This report is based on a survey of informal sector enterprises in Cape Town and Johannesburg; and 50 in-depth interviews with Zimbabwean informal business owners in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Polokwane who had been affected by xenophobic violence. In many areas, community leaders are ineffective in dealing with the violence and, in some cases, they actively foment hostility and instigate attacks. The fact that migrant entrepreneurs provide goods, including food, at competitive prices and offer credit to consumers is clearly insufficient to protect them when violence erupts. However, the deep-rooted crisis in Zimbabwe makes return home a non- viable option and Zimbabweans instead adopt several self-protection strategies, none of which is ultimately an insurance against xenophobic attack. The findings in this report demonstrate that xenophobic violence fails in its two main aims: to drive migrant entrepreneurs out of business and to drive them out of the country.
While increasing attention is being paid to the drivers and forms of entrepreneurship in informal economies, much less of this policy and research focus is directed at understanding the links between mobility and informality. This report examines the current state of knowledge about this relationship with particular reference to three countries (Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe) and four cities (Cape Town, Harare, Johannesburg and Maputo), identifying major themes, knowledge gaps, research questions and policy implications.
This report compares the business operations of over 2,000 South Africans and refugees in the urban informal economy and systematically dispels some of the myths that have grown up around their activities. First, the report takes issue with the perception that South Africans are inexperienced and unmotivated participants in the informal economy. Many have years of experience and have successfully grown their businesses. Second, it contests the view that refugees enjoy a competitive advantage because they come to South Africa with inherent talent and already honed skills. On the contrary, over 80% of those surveyed had no prior informal sector experience and learned their skills on the job and after coming to South Africa. Third, the report shows that there is fierce competition in the urban informal sector between and within the two groups. However, business competition between refugees and South Africans is mitigated by the fact that they tend to dominate different sections of the informal economy with South Africans dominant in the food sector and refugees in the household products and personal services sectors. Finally, the report takes issue with recent arguments that all informal sector businesses are equally at risk from robbery, extortion and other crimes. It shows that South Africans are affected but that refugees are far more vulnerable than their South African counterparts. The report therefore confirms that xenophobia and xenophobic violence are major threats to refugees seeking a livelihood in the informal sector, especially if they venture into informal settlements.
