Abstract
Concerns about their business practices have precipitated the recent wave of attacks on immigrants in South African Townships. Besides claims that they take away jobs, business opportunities, the locals accuse the immigrants of unfair and irresponsible business practices. All this speaks powerfully to the issue of social legitimacy. Against this backdrop, this paper gauged the business practices of immigrant-owned spaza shops in the hope that the adoption of responsible business practices could act as an intervention strategy for easing the tension between natives and foreign immigrants. The paper followed a quantitative research approach that made use of questionnaires to solicit data from subjects that were purposively selected. The study suggests that immigrant entrepreneurs are treating CSR programmes selectively as issues like training and education, donating to the local communities and employment of natives failed to gain a significant acknowledgement. This, further proves that the CSR ideology has been partially received by the immigrant entrepreneur in the local Townships and thus making it challenging to manage multi-dimensional stakeholder relationships, as issues around credence remain pending. Leaning on the stakeholders and legitimacy theories, this paper advances the case for adoption of CSR by informal businesses and particularly as a possible antidote to the xenophobia that is driven by unfair competitive advantage and unfair business practices by South African township entrepreneurs.
Highlights
Introduction and backgroundThe narrative of migration in Africa remains a trending theme in the sustainable development discourses and regarding poverty eradication
The level of environment-based Corporate social responsibility (CSR) among the small business is contrary to Chazireni (2017) who found out that small firms exert a lesser impact on the environment. 4.2 Society-based CSR Business and society are interlinked, suggesting that no business can progress while development in society is regressing
Notwithstanding the contributions that immigrant entrepreneurs make to the growth of the township’s informal economy, native business operators in South Africa have come to blame them for methodically taking away business opportunities from them through unfair business practices, while other sections of the community regard immigrant grocery shop owners as being socially irresponsible
Summary
Introduction and backgroundThe narrative of migration in Africa remains a trending theme in the sustainable development discourses and regarding poverty eradication. In Africa, most of the immigrants leave their countries, mainly due to economic, social and political problems in the hope of a better life in the host country. Amongst the countries that have become a destination for refugees, South Africa remains the most preferred by refugees from Africa and Asia. Perhaps this can be attributed to its liberal approach to the settlement of refugees (Tengeh, 2019). South Africa has adopted a coherent open-for-business approach that encourages people from all walks of life to start small businesses (Tengeh, Ballard & Slabbert, 2011; Asoba & Tengeh, 2016). The positive approach to immigrant-settlement has come under attack in recent years from locals in the Townships as exhibited by xenophobia and targeted crime (Mukwarami, Mukwarami & Tengeh, 2018)
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