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Before the Great Apartheid of the 1950s, South Africa was deeply divided, and South African society remained firmly controlled by white settlers. Two different paths of development have long emerged for social development.
The state apparatus ensured that non-whites were kept away from the state political apparatus and urban administration through systematic policies of exclusion and oppression, and the liberal traditions that prevailed in Cape Town earlier than those of other landlocked British African colonies failed to survive.
Introduction of compulsory measures
During the colonial period, in order to control the indigenous labor force, the British colonial government established a poll tax collection policy in the colony, forcing the indigenous people to enter the colony to work.
At the same time, in order to increase the availability of land for colonial economic development, the reservation system established by the British Colonial Office classified less than 13% of the land as indigenous ownership, and nearly 87% of the vast land was in the hands of whites.
In 1913, the Federal Government of South Africa promulgated the Land Act, which prohibited indigenous farmers from farming on white farms, prohibiting indigenous people from buying land in areas designated as white-owned, and the living space of non-whites in South Africa was further oppressed, and blacks facing the demise of indigenous rural communities could only be forced to enter the city to work as cheap hired labor for whites.
Subsequently, in 1923, the Influx Control Act and the Aboriginal (Urban Area) Act were passed to tighten the control of urban black labor, and the federal government legally controlled the rural-urban movement of Aboriginal labor; A series of segregation legislations, such as the Group Area Act and the Bantu Education Act, established during the apartheid era, even more grandly excluded non-whites (mostly indigenous) from South African social development, especially from cities, where everyone living in South African cities must be white.
Because in the eyes of urban whites, cities are products of European civilization, and indigenous people have their own homeland, they should return to their homeland to continue their tribal culture.
But scope restrictions, forced evictions, and educational isolation have only perpetuated non-whites, especially indigenous people, into poverty and lost their avenues for ascent.
Informal economy
The informal economy is emerging in non-white communities, where unemployment, lack of goods, and cultural vacuum have all contributed to the emergence of informal economies.
Segregated discourse deprived non-whites of the right to live permanently in South African cities, and indigenous people could only enter the cities during the day to provide cheap labor and take low-level jobs, and when the work was over, they needed to return to their towns and homes; With the support of poor white (white Afrikaans) in South Africa, more jobs are tilted towards poor whites, and indigenous people face more severe unemployment problems.
Some of them live in informal settlements close to the urban fringes, and are constantly threatened by overcrowding, lack of sanitation, air pollution, etc., and the extreme poverty caused by unemployment makes them bear a heavier burden of survival.
Small businesses in private homes became a means of livelihood for some unemployed residents, and although this illegal business had been hampered by the government in the mid-20th century, it had sneaked up in informal settlements, homes, and some dilapidated shacks, one of the most notable categories of which was street traders, a wide variety of barbers, vegetable vendors, stall merchants and so on.
Although participation in the informal economy was the main source of livelihood for most unemployed indigenous people, it was not encouraged by the South African government, and at the same time hoped to completely deprive them of development opportunities through negative policies, when a series of municipal regulations were issued prohibiting street trade (because illegal trade affected the trade monopoly of white enterprises).
These policies are meant to maintain public health and order, but their main purpose is to eliminate the number of illegal transactions in urban centers, and regulations that define where street vendors operate and the extent to which they sell goods, and set move-onrules that require street vendors to move every 20 minutes.
The South African government's regulations on informal street trade have severely restricted the profitability of vendors, but they have not been able to curb or eliminate informal street trade as completely as hoped.
Although informal trade activities have been present in South Africa since the pre-2050s, widespread discussions about the informal economy did not begin until the 1970s when Keith Hart coined the term informal sector; The 1972 ILO Kenya Report, which formally defined informal economic activity, defined it as small, unregulated, family-owned and dependent on indigenous resources.
A survey in the late 1970s showed that there were more than 200 hawkers engaged in street trading in the centre of Johannesburg, and the open spaces in the inner city and central business districts were always filled with flea markets, street hairdressers, shoemakers and other hawker trade;
In addition, informal businesses such as family nurseries, spazashops and bistros have emerged in slums, informal housing areas, shanty towns.
Spaza Shop
Spaza shops have become the most common form of informal economy in South Africa since the early 20th century, and since the beginning of segregation, shops have been opened in private houses, hiding from government authorities and city punishment, especially in shanty towns or slums.
Interpretations of the word spaza vary, with some suggesting that it comes from the Zulu word "isiphazamisa" (meaning to create obstacles); Some believe that spaza means "camouflage or hiding"; The South African English Dictionary describes it as a way in which traders are forced to run their shops underground, as SPAZA shop operations often violate existing rules and regulations.
Despite its small size, the shop sells a wide variety of products, including daily staples such as bread, milk, and food, as well as daily products such as alcohol, cigarettes, and soap, and some store dangerous items such as paraffin wax outside the store.
The number of SPAZA shops operating in the Grand Cape once exceeded 15,000, mostly in the Kaya Liša area, which is surrounded by informal settlements.
In order to avoid police inspection, SPAZA shops were mostly opened in family houses at the beginning, and transactions were made through a small window, which was not only for the need to avoid inspection, but also for the need to protect the safety of goods;
Some open shops in corrugated tin rooms or abandoned containers, and if they are opened in containers, the store transaction window will be set on the longer side of the container, from which you can see the entire internal product category, and a counter will be set up on the door side for trading.
In shanty towns and slums, the chaotic and complex social environment has led to many dangers for spa owners, and the constant appearance of theft and violent robbery has made them more cautious in their business.
Most of these shops are run in-house by family members, do not employ employees, have very little turnover of assets, and naturally do not have business licenses.
Overcrowding, inadequate food, environmental pollution and violence plague every shantytown, but they do provide refuge for indigenous people fleeing remote, barren homes and relative freedom in the grey zone.
The SPAZA shop offers affordable, easily accessible daily goods, while the bistro becomes the main place for entertainment and cultural dissemination in the indigenous community.
Development of the tavern business
Shebeen was seen as a gathering of private spaces, illegal pubs, and social gathering places in South Africa, mostly run by women, responsible for the production and sale of alcoholic beverages, and the consumers were almost all men.
Bistros are the most common type of informal economy in South African cities, with pub revenues accounting for a significant portion of total income from the informal economy. Its initial emergence is closely linked to structural unemployment among indigenous South Africans and to the influx of indigenous women into cities.
There were also some taverns in early white and colored residential areas, but they were based on private housing in indigenous townships.
Data show that in the indigenous settlements of Pretoria, Durban and Wittbank, one in five private houses is used for bistro business, with little available space, mostly unconverted private dwellings with simple furnishings and mainly selling traditional sorghum beer or homemade beer.
As the illegal trade in taverns expanded, large taverns appeared, occupying larger township houses, sometimes the size of two or five houses, with more comfortable furniture, mainly serving the emerging indigenous petty bourgeoisie (mostly teachers, merchants, doctors, nurses, etc.) selling "white liquor";
In addition, there are pubs that offer recreational performances and even illegal activities such as gambling, cannabis smoking or prostitution. Taverns have flexible opening hours, and they usually open after the first customer arrives and close until the last customer leaves.
South Africa's alcohol control stems from the labor management system of mining towns, where white employers have restricted the drinking behavior of indigenous workers in order to regulate labor behavior and ensure the time that workers work;
Although the office initially restricted the sale of spirits such as "kafir", "kafir gin" or "kafir brandy" in order to encourage the labour force to stay in the working towns, in 1897 the Transvaal banned the supply of alcohol to the indigenous people through a ban, which was later absorbed by Act No. 32 of 1902, which regulated the sale of traditional indigenous beer (only employers could provide it to indigenous workers);
In Johannesburg, the alcohol business was controlled by European settlers, especially the sale of wine and spirits. As a result, the illegal sale of alcohol began to expand, and in the early days, it also attracted a large number of poor whites to engage in illegal alcohol sales.
Most of the alcoholic drinks in bistros are illegally brewed by indigenous women or bought from white towns and smuggled here, home-brewed beer is the type of beer sold more in early pubs, brewed by indigenous women, brewed at very low cost, mostly fermented using sugargen such as bread, syrup, raisins, figs, etc., in addition to yeast secretly sold from bakers and food store owners.
To increase the alcohol concentration, even fermentation (industrial grade) using carbide, methyl alcohol, tobacco, or bluestone, this illegal brewing can sometimes lead to disastrous consequences.
In addition to home-brewed alcohol, there are also white beers purchased from retail stores in white urban areas, most of which are secondary processed and added to other blends to increase profitability (even up to 600%).
Before the thirties, there were taverns run by white settlers. After the enactment of the Slum Act of 1934, a large number of urban slum demolitions led to the closure of a large number of white pubs, and the forced relocation also allowed more Indigenous-run pubs to appear in informal settlements and some shanty towns.
The popularity of taverns in non-white residential areas is the result of a lack of culture, and unemployed indigenous South Africans have no real home to return to, and they are in desperate need of spiritual comfort in their towns and cities; The prohibition of non-white social activities under segregated discourse also impoverished leisure activities that could be enjoyed by indigenous people. Taverns naturally became social refuges for indigenous populations.
But soon, the ban on the sale of alcohol changed, and in order to increase municipal revenue, the municipality introduced the municipal beer hall, which became the only place for indigenous people to drink legally, and the tavern was repeatedly attacked and prosecuted by the municipal police, but some profitable taverns were able to support fines and continue to operate, and illegal alcohol sales were still common until the 50s.
In indigenous towns and some shanty towns, official commissions of inquiry estimate the scale of the illegal alcohol trade, with large quantities of illegal alcoholic beverages reaching consumers through the illegal channel of bistros.
In the late '50s and early '60s, more than 13,500 gallons of illegal alcohol were brewed every day in informal settlements near Durban; In 1961, the property was worth R3 million in Johannesburg.
bibliography
Ebenezer Howard, Jin Jingyuan, trans.: The Pastoral City of Tomorrow, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2010.
Fries, Urbanization in Europe: 1500-1800, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2015.