Cape Argus
Fred Katerere
Sunday, December 17, 2006
The deal includes setting up a business training trust fund and an agreement on the prices of goods sold in shops.
The September attacks targeted 14 Somalian-owned businesses, forcing many of the owners to flee with their families to Saldanha, where some of them are still living.
The attacks were fuelled by perceptions that the Somalian business owners were undercutting locally owned businesses and engaging in unfair competition.
But intervention by Community Safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane in September led to an imbizo in which the community was urged to eradicate all xenophobic attacks and also help pave the way for a series of meetings between the feuding business communities.
Masipumelele community leader Nomthembiso Madi-kane said this week that the new organisation, Africa Unite - a non-government organisation dedicated to tackling issues of xenophobia - facilitated a series meetings between business owners, and Somalians who had fled the area were invited to attend.
Madikane said the Somalians who had left the area "gathered courage" to return to Masipumelele and participate in the talks, resulting in pricing structure agreements.
Meetings which were convened by the provincial department of safety and security and Africa Unite resulted in the locals understanding the risk of xenophobic attacks on the Somali refugees, she said.
She said the Somali business owners had also come to understand the concerns of the local business owners, resulting in an agreement to work together on pricing so that there were not vast price differences on the same goods between shops.
The process has also resulted in the establishment of a government-sponsored trust fund - the Siyaka Trust - through which aspiring entrepreneurs could get money for training in business skills.
Madikane said the first workshops on profitability sponsored by the fund would take place early next year. The re-integration of Somalians into local communities is one of few success stories in a year which has seen between 27 and 29 Somalians killed in xenophobic related attacks in Cape Town alone, with business owners being the main targets, many of them gunned down in their own shops.
Roqya Abdi Yussef, a Somali businesswoman and committee member of the Masipu-melele business forum, welcomed the agreement because leaving the area was not an option for some Somalian families as their children were attending local schools and they had invested all their money in their businesses.
Instead of fleeing, they would rather "work together with local people," she said.
"There is no problem anymore. We are working peacefully and now I have got some South African friends who visit me at the business," she said.
Source: Cape Argus, Dec 17, 2006