Vigorous lobby group Operation Dudula has described President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech last week Friday as a betrayal of black South Africans.
“President Ramaphosa’s speech regarding foodborne illnesses is a clear message to black South Africans not to participate in the economy of their own country,” said Operation Dudula Deputy National Organiser Che Serobedi in an exclusive interview with Tshwane Talks this week.
“In response to Ramaphosa’s disappointing speech, we as Operation Dudula have taken a decision that no foreigner in South Africa must be allowed to register and open a business in this country,” he said.
“It is puzzling that asylum-seekers who are foreigners are allowed to come into this country and open businesses, how must South Africans survive because we rely on the informal business sector like hair salons and spaza shops to make a living? “Asked Serobedi.
He said due to the discrimination of the previous apartheid regime, blacks couldn’t take part in the formal business sector and have always relied on small informal businesses, but now the government is allowing foreigners to come to the country and compete with local black South Africans.
“As Operation Dudula together with different patriotic organisations in the community we are already chasing foreigners away and preventing them from accessing our government institutions in order to register their spaza shops or any other business for that matter,” fumed Serobedi.
“We are fed-up, and we are saying to President Ramaphosa that the R500 million that he said he would be allocating to people who run spaza shops is eventually going to benefit the wrong people, who are foreigners because they are the majority of spaza shop owners in all the townships of South Africa,” said Serobedi.
“We are appealing to the government to come down to the grassroots and engage with the local communities in order to identify people who are South Africans and have been running spaza shops for many years on their own without help from the government and are therefore the only ones who must benefit from the proposed R500 million,” he said.
“South Africans are prepared to reclaim their spaza shops but we lack resources like funding to buy stock and in Naledi, Soweto, we have started a process whereby 20 spaza shops are now owned by South Africans themselves,” explained Serobedi.
“It is highly puzzling that after seeing the spread of foodborne illnesses coming from foreign-owned spaza shops killing many children in all the nine provinces of the country, the government still gives these foreigners permission to operate spaza shops,” said Serobedi.
He asked as to how these foreigners are going to register their businesses because they are here illegally in the first place and that whatever they do here, including registering their businesses therefore becomes illegal.
“Health inspectors have discovered that these foreigners don’t comply with the rules and regulations of running a business because they sleep and wash inside their spaza shops, use buckets as toilets right inside the spaza shops, sell expired goods, poisonous food, they don’ pay taxes and they are manufacturing sub-par products using dog food, and the whole scenario is unhygienic in their spaza shops,” lamented Serobedi.
He said black South Africans must stand up and do the right thing now as the ANC has betrayed them to foreigners and that in the next two to three years South Africa will be a failed state.