![]() ![]() A critical reading of the list in the Bill shows that these are in the main businesses that currently form the township informal economy. The Bill uses a positive listing of businesses that cannot be owned or run by non-citizens or permanent residents. Owning or operating a business in the townships is prohibited for non-South Africans. The Gauteng Township Bill effectively reserves township businesses to South Africans and permanent residents. The main political parties of the ANC, DA, EFF and the Action South Africa have raised immigration as an issue in their campaigns. There is no doubt, therefore, that the Gauteng Bill is in a way part of that milieu. ![]() ![]() And for the first time, immigration seems to be getting mainstreamed into the country’s election issues. The country goes to local government elections in 2021. The former manifesting as policy and the latter through xenophobic attacks directed against immigrants, mostly of African descent. In the past, immigration has vacillated between the Department of Home Affairs and vigilante groups in the townships. Ultimately the Bill is symptomatic of the permeation of immigration as an issue within the South African body politic. While the Township Economy Bill would no doubt have been conceptualised before the Covid pandemic, there is no doubt that the lockdown and the light it shone on the country’s inequalities would have injected a sense of urgency into the Gauteng Provincial Government processes. The Gauteng Township Economic Development Bill’s release comes at a time when the country’s economy has slowly started to emerge from the ruins of Covid-19 related restrictions. On the 30 th of September 2020, the Gauteng Provincial Government released, for public comment, what has become a contentious draft bill on township economies. ![]()
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