Ray Nxumalo
AN INSCRIPTION on one of the faded shipping containers standing on Kliptown’s historic Freedom Charter Square _ where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955 _ declares war on hunger, poverty, disease and ignorance.
The war has taken a small step towards being won … thanks to an initiative by the National Consumer Co-operative Union. Inside those shipping containers on the square are a host of flourishing small businesses.
There’s a paraffin merchant, a meat seller, a fast-food joint, a blanket stall, a rest-room, as well as hair salons, sweet stockists, car alarm and radio technicians, live chicken sellers, sorgh-um beer and second-hand clothes merchants. Anything one needs can be had at the square at a competitive _ if not better _ price than in town.
Bertha Seleke, a nursing sister at a private clinic in town, has opened a fast-food joint where local traders, policemen, shoppers and taxi-drivers can relieve their hunger pangs.
Rebecca Matlou trades in sheep trotters, offal, some boerewors and a little red meat. Hers is a sizzling _ if hiccuping _ trade. During our visit to her stall she had to turn away five customers because her suppliers had not yet delivered. While disgruntled customers moaned, she grumbled to me: “When they have that bhabhalazi (hangover) they can get real nasty.”
Matlou wants to increase her weekly order of sheeps’ heads to nearly 2 000 units because the 400 she now receives “sometimes get finished within an hour”.
Johannes “Maswiswi” Matlala is a resourceful paraffin trader who has seen a gap in the market and is now branching out into gas. “While I was still working with paraffin only, I had to turn a lot of people with gas cylinders away,” he said.
Like many traders here, Matlala was retrenched in the 1980s. He used to work at a furniture shop and received no severance package when he lost his job. With sales experience as his only resource, he started selling soft goods door-to-door.
The streetwise Matlala then heard of the NCCU and its container initiative, launched last September. He promptly forked out the R50 joining fee and set up shop. His monthly rental is R200 a month. “The rent is OK, it’s not steep at all,” he said.
One would expect crime to be a worry, but the traders say a firm of security guards looks after them. They have the support of nearby Kliptown police station, and security is further beefed up by the presence of an adjacent taxi rank _ taxi drivers being a breed not to be messed with.
The situation isn’t quite a shopper’s paradise yet: “We have no toilets, water and electricity,” said Matlala. No electricity means shorter trading hours _ and less income. Hair salons have to fetch water from a nearby squatter settlement or filling stations.
More seriously, Matlala worries that the traders are to be relocated: a Soweto investment company has bought the square and intends building a modern shopping centre.
“We would like to see this square belong to us,” he said. “The people who have braved all kinds of weather and have always traded here _ and not see it become another Highgate or Southgate.”