A South African cabinet minister said that the government should ban foreign nationals from working in the country’s informal sector.
Small Business Development Minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, argued that South Africa should follow the Zimbabwean and Botswana model of reserving some sectors of the economy for locals in order to prevent “problems” in that country. She said:
We as a department, we are going back and check within the provisions of our law that says, within this threshold, foreign nationals cannot participate… But we are going to be specific, like what they have done in Ghana, what they have done in Zimbabwe, in Angola, in Botswana. We are going to engage with Cabinet to say, Cabinet, if we are not definitive there is going to be a problem.
Ntshavheni said that banning foreigners from working in salons, small shops, and as street vendors would prevent recurring xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals.