Before we even talk about registering businesses owned by foreign nationals, Home Affairs must give us an assurance that those foreign nationals are in the country legally because the current legislation says a foreign national who is in this country and doing business must invest in businesses of R3 million upwards, and not less. That is what the law provides for.
Secondly, it provides that refugees can do businesses, but they must apply for licensing. There is a challenge currently with our licensing and registration of businesses; not registration in terms of CPIC, but also registration to make sure that we know who is doing what business where.
To mitigate that, we are proposing an amendment of the legislation. I am working with Office of the Chief Law State Advisor to draft an amendment to the legislation to allow us to regulate two things: Regulate businesses that are strictly reserved for South African nationals; and to also regulate the registration and licensing of
businesses as a way of strengthening municipalities with their bylaws and requirements, to register and licence businesses operating in municipal areas.
The third issue that we are working on is: How do we support our small businesses in the townships and rural areas? You can regulate and ban everybody from doing everything, but if our own people are not ready to take up that space, there will not be an economy. It is not true that South Africans are not entrepreneurial. We have been entrepreneurial. We have been raised entrepreneurs.
We have grown up with shops that were owned by South Africans but we need to strengthen the ability of South Africans to work together. We are working on mechanisms of how to do that. What is good for us is that the Competition Acts exempt SMMEs from working together, co- operating and collaborating to advance their business goals. Thank you.