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 spaza shops, cellphones and other shops own by foreign owned stores of Nigerian, Somalian/ Ethiopian and Pakistani people that sell cheap, fake and 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, Mount Edgecombe KZN, which is managed by the JHI Excellerate Group owned by Investec / Burstone Group, Tongaat Huletts and eThekwini Municipality for instance there is already Big 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.

I understand Shopping Malls are private businesses I was told by a Mall manager. They can take in as many foreign own businesses as they like. But, tell me as representative our people in our country.
So why are so many new malls being built? I know its profitable for the investors. Accept for a few temporary jobs when the mall is being built and then some retail staff and cleaners that is all the employment it creates. Its very hard and unaffordable for small local businesses and products to get it. Fill it with a few major chainstore retailers and then populate with as many foreign owned businessed like Pakistani cellular/ vaping/ phone and small gadget shops, usually with alot of there own country staffing. So how does this help our economic employment rates? Or create opportunities for local sme businesses to grow. These mall displace and kill local small businesses as explained. I believe future shopping mall building projects should be approved on condition it takes atleast a fair percentage of local small businesses from the area as tenants, at standard reasonable fair rental rates. I am not against these foreigners but really does not sit well with me and feels so wrong when all work so hard here, people from another country must come reap the profits.