Biasness & Inaccessibility of Retail trading space in Shopping Malls for small local businesses in favour of foreign owned businesses

I am at my wits end here. I am a South African Indian woman with small business owner based in KZN.It is a registered and tax compliant small business that includes as clothing manufacturer & retailer where we make clothing with a few women from my community that have joined us in this journey and we then sell direct to the general public since 2017.

This issue I am having been trying to up scale our model. Which means increasing our retail outlets. This has been a largely self financed business. But I am experiencing biasness and inaccessibility for small businesses to rent or lease trading space in shopping malls and centres in our country.

With the onslaught of shopping malls that are being built everywhere but do not incorporate any space or allowance small locally owned businesses. If they do, its priced so high that its almost impossible to get in. Recently, a shopping Mall in Durban quoted me like R21 000 for a 37sqms store per month excluding utilities and vat, and then I need to pay up front first month rental and advance deposit to move in which is about R50 000!

We are small businesses. Proudly making and selling our products, but has bigger shopping malls zone into our towns, rural areas, townships and cities they are summarily displacing local small businesses, has bigger mainstream retailers move into the malls and shopping centres that are relatively safer and more entertaining to shop in for consumers. The smaller businesses outside on the street are slowly dying off. The empty shops and buildings are quickly then filling up with lots un asethic looking ****a shops, cellphones and other shops own by foreign owned stores of Nigerian, Somalian/ Ethiopian and Pakistani people that sell cheap, **** even expired items, like the one in the news that the lives of innocent little children were lost consuming products from these stores. CBD's around us, are becoming empty, delapidated and unprofitable. I know Malls are big businesses especially for investors and job creation but also takes away trade from local businesses in the area, that cannot afford the conditions impacted upon them.

So I am quiet upset that Malls are so inaccessible and unaffordable to small local businesses, if you look at Cornubia Shopping Mall which is managed by the JHI Excellerate Group owned by Investec, Tongaat Huletts and eThekwini Municipality for instance there is already Chinese store, a Malawi man married to a South African lady that has a kiosk/table is selling belts, hats and walkets with his Malawian employee and about five Pakistani/Indian mobile repairing, phone covers, vaping stores and kiosks in that same shopping mall but they have no space for locally owned businesses , and if they do give you a quote its like so incredibly outrageously high. The Gadget Candy kiosk, has a Pakistani owner that lives in Pakistan, but rents an apartment in Umhlanga somewhere for all his staff from Pakistan to come live here and stay together, I was told this by one of the Pakistani guys that work in the kiosk themselves. Their salaries are paid to their families in their country, has the owner covers all there costs here from accommodation to food. So how does this even resonate to becoming local jobs, for our people. He has these kiosks and cellphone stores in almost every prominant mall in KZN as this Gadget Candy or another name that prints photos on phone cases/covers. From Pakistan they can easily afford to pay these big leases or hurdles that shopping malls put before real small business locals that hinders them from taking Mall trading space.

I used to be a pop up store tenant at the above mentioned mall. On a month to month contract since December 2022. I cancelled that contract last year due to my finances. But took another contract on a month to month basis with the mall. It was a quiet shop on a difficult quiet side of the mall. It was empty for a while. Nobody was interested in it. So when they offered me the space I took it to try it and see, since June tjis year and it has worked for us, customers found me. But now another near by Mobile store owner of Pakistani orientation had seen our shop potential and has signed with management to take over the shop lease and we have been notified to vacate the premises at the end of November this year. We carried the shop in the quiet times like every tenant in mall waiting for December peak trading season but we just have to go and look elsewhere to make way for these foreign store owners. Its so unfair, my rent is all paid and up to date, we brought life to a dead place. But all the Mall Management see's is profit before people. I am truly powerless to do anything in this situation I know, the manager told me in a mail, with my current turnover I cannot make the rental and deposit advance she wants for the place, neither is she able to accommodate us anywhere in the mall or exhibition space as she is fulled up for December! Where can small businesses owners like myself go for help in this country. We are just working honestly and hard. Should we all just quit and wait on that government R350 grant!

For the hard working small business owners of this country, I hope policy can be changed or implemented at government level for it to be mandatory for Shopping Malls to take on a certain percentage of small local businesses at standard reasonable and fair rate?

We as small businesses are feeling the pressure, with raising crime, increased foreigned owned ****as and **** goods shops raising up, delapidated neglected old trade buildings in our cities and in our cbd's. Had the increased wave of building of Shopping Malls is taking over country fervently, let our small businesses especially of retail and product kinds, be accommodated within this sphere. As they are becoming eroded, displaced and closing up. So powerless what can we do. As profit before people takes over.