Mlondi Mdluli: Township Businesses Don't Lack Ambition. Red Tape Is Locking Them Out

Yes.

So, basically, that op-ed stems from the Kapsun Commission report that had been dropped, which found that, you know, that the small township and rural areas already continuing to be left out of the economy.

And that forced me to think deeper and to actually do a reflection,

which then led to me writing the op-ed.

We argued that these are small businesses in township and in the rural economy.

are not doing bad or are not underperforming because the people that are leading them are maybe incompetent, but just because they don't have the support by the government.

And there I did provide some proposals

as to how this can be fixed.

One of them was capital, and I argued that it's not really financial.

There's many types of capital out there.

that can be offered to these guys to ensure that they also perform at the level that they can be performing, which can then be a positive add to the economy.

There's also four more, but maybe we can unpack on those, and then I'll unpack one by one, just to put you in frame as to what my understanding was and how I...

Perfect.

Well, I think before we go, I should have probably started the interview with this question, but I'll take us a step back just so we're clear on terms.

And when we're talking about small businesses, how do we actually define that in South Africa? What is a small business? Yeah.

So a small business is a business that has, you know, so when you look at the number of people that it, you know, like employs, usually these businesses are led by maybe a single person or, you know, or two people and that's not the leadership and it's very small as to amount, you know, of people that they employ.

So not more than 20 or even in most cases 10, but they're very small.

And, you know, I had a very good chat with J.K. Alcock, who's actually a specialist in this.

And he took me into the different types of small-principal speaking, because we actually make this mistake by sort of like having an umbrella term, you know, whereas they each are different and, you know, they each have a difference.

function and they can't all be categorized as the same.

But the main way to actually categorize them is the amount of people that they employ, which aren't really a lot.

So I'd say most can't, you know, but you find that in these townships and these rural spaces, they are literally just laid by one person who's maybe like a mama who's no end up.

Who just tries to sell cakes or tries to sell some sandwiches to ensure that she feeds her family.

And so then you take it back in, apologies to the audience for jumping around a little bit here, but we'll now focus back into these five reforms.