Breaking point: Maria Khoza used to buy a bundle of spinach for R12 but now she pays R25 and has to break the spinach into smaller bundles priced at R10 because her customers cannot afford R30. (Lesego Chepape/M&G)
Street hawkers in the townships have not been spared from the pressure of higher food prices, which have forced many households to pare their grocery lists to just the bare essentials.
When Maria Khoza started selling vegetables at the Tembisa train station in 1992, she had a big stall boasting a wide array of fresh fruit and vegetables. Three decades later, she sits on an upended bucket, under a makeshift verandah. In front of her is a brick shelf covered with cardboard, on which a few bundles of spinach are laid out.
“I did not think things would have turned out the way they did. I am sitting here with the hope that one day things will get better, but deep down I know that this is it,” says a despondent Khoza.
She buys her stock from Swazi Inn, a market in Tembisa where wholesalers sell produce to hawkers.
“I have seen so many people come and go, selling different kinds of things, but I have remained at this same spot, selling the very same thing,” she says.
“I used to buy a bundle of spinach for R12 a couple of years ago and now a bundle costs R25. I buy three bundles and, on a good day, I will buy five then make the bundles smaller and sell them for R10 because there is no one who will buy a bundle of spinach for R30. Look around you, no one has money.”
Adjacent to Khosa is Khathutshelo Rathogwa, who has a fruit stall and also plaits hair a few metres away, as a side enterprise.
Rathogwa tries to hold back her tears as she relates the economic struggles that have forced her to run two businesses at once.
“My daughter is 18 years old and completed her matric last year. Now she has to sit here and tend to the stall while I do people’s hair.
If I explain further the hardships I am facing, I will cry,” Rathogwa says.
She points at the fruit on her stall, which have started spoiling, and says she will have to either sell them for a much lower price — at a loss — or worse still, discard them. That means she will not be able to restock the stall.
“I have spent R650 on this produce, which I bought a month ago. I was hoping to make at least a R1 000 but in just a couple of days, I will lose it all,” Rathogwa says.
Asked why she won’t move to a busier area in the township to sell her wares, Rathogwa explains that those areas are already saturated with other hawkers who have been there for years and fiercely protect their territory.
“I like to compare our business with that of the taxi industry; we can’t just go into each other’s territories as we please, we have to respect each other’s operational areas,” she says.
Mimi Mashile has been selling chicken giblets for the past 20 years. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, things have not been the same and intensified rolling electricity blackouts over the last few years have made it even tougher to run her business.
“We have to serve fresh stock and if we do not sell out then we have to keep it in our fridges,” Mashile says.
“That is another problem, because of load-shedding. We always have to explain that cost prices have increased, and we have to charge more to meet our accounts. But, it is hard for everyone to understand as many are struggling to make ends meet.”
Carlos Khoza says his customers are desperate and so is he. (Lesego Chepape/M&G)
Most hawkers are struggling to keep afloat, according to Julekha Latib, of the nonprofit organisation One Voice of All Hawkers Association, which represents street traders.
“Some of them do not even operate every day, they have chosen to open for business on weekends, month end or on days where people get their social grants,” Latib says.
“Some stay in Soweto or other townships and they have to travel everyday to the city centre, only for them to get there and not make money. It is a loss for them because people will not buy because of the high prices caused by high prices where they get their stock.”
Maria Lubisi, a Mozambican living in Tembisa, came to South Africa in the early 1990s to try to give her family a better life and has been selling vegetables at the Swazi Inn market ever since.
“When I started selling vegetables in 1993, I would buy spinach bundles for R1 and now a bundle costs R15 and I sell each bundle at R25,” says Lubisi, who has to factor in transport and storage costs because she lives about 10km from the Swazi Inn market.
“Back in the day I had the stamina and strength to carry all this back home with me but I am now 56 years old and my body cannot take that much strain, which is why I have to pay to store my stock in a house nearby,” she says.
Carlos Khoza, 20, has been selling tomatoes, onions and potatoes at Swazi Inn since 2018, when he was about 16 years old, and is also struggling.
“I am the youngest of five children and our circumstances are not the best. I would come and sell vegetables after school just to try to contribute and make things better at home” says Khoza, who buys his stock from a market in downtown Johannesburg.
A 10kg packet of potatoes costs him R90 and he resells it for R110, at smaller bundles on a plastic plate, costing R10 each.
“People don’t buy as much as they used to. It’s too much money. I remember a plate of five potatoes in 2018 cost R5. Sometimes you can hear the desperation in the customer’s voice coupled with my desperation to make a sale, so we end up negotiating, meaning I will now work at a loss,” Khoza says.
Mark-ups down: Hawkers’ profits are paltry. Transport costs to markets and to their stalls, as well as storage costs eat away at their income. (Lesego Chepape/M&G)
Khoza’s pricing model is determined by the transport costs he incurs to buy the produce as well as storage costs, and the little profit he needs to make to contribute towards the family income.
Lizzy Shabangu, who sells fruit and vegetables in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, says wholesale prices at the market where she gets her stock have doubled over the last two years.
“I am now paying double for a box of tomatoes and potatoes. What is sad is that we cannot increase our mark-up by much because we will lose customers, so we are settling for a small profit that barely covers the business costs, which have also gone up because of load-shedding,” Shabangu says.
Official data shows food prices have eased slightly from their peak earlier this year, which saw them registering a year-on-year increase of 14.4% in March, the highest rate of food inflation since March 2009.
But a recent food price survey showed that South African households are still struggling to put nutritious food on the table, with the cost of staples such as maize and rice rising to unsustainable levels.
The township consumers who buy from street hawkers like Shabangu, Lubisi and the two Khozas, told the Mail & Guardian about the toll that high food prices have taken on household finances. Many of them mark the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 as the time things became much tougher.
“Before Covid-19, with R2 000 I could buy groceries that would last for the whole month, but now everything has gone up and I am really struggling,” says Nontethelelo Khumalo, a single parent in Alexandra township supporting a family of five.
“My boys are growing and the food is never enough. I cannot even say eating vegetables on their own, without meat, is cheaper, because they are also expensive.”