Lessons from Yeoville

by Dr Raymond Perrier · March 23, 2014

Every city has an area that acts as a �gateway district�. In London it has traditionally been the East End; in New York the Lower East Side; in Johannesburg, it is Yeoville.

Two of the US business students who looked at entrepreneurship in Yeoville.

This was where Jews fleeing Nazi Europe came in the 1930s and �40s; it is where Portuguese and Italian post-war economic migrants came in the 1950s and �60s; it is where returning exiles came in the 1990s. And now it is the point of arrival in South Africa for thousands of people fleeing poverty and/or violence from DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Somalia and many other parts of Africa.

These waves of immigration in turn make their mark on the religious architecture of the area � the oldest churches are Presbyterian and Methodist, after this came the synagogues, then the Catholic churches with distinctively Mediterranean features, and now some of those buildings are finding new uses as mosques, Coptic churches and Pentecostal meeting places. God�s presence endures in Yeoville � even if the face of God changes from decade to decade.

I had the privilege of seeing something of Yeoville from the inside recently while accompanying a group of American students. They were doing one of the most expensive degrees (a masters in business administration) at one of the most prestigious universities (the Jesuits� 220-year-old Georgetown), before going on to work for Goldman Sachs or the CIA or some other �Master of the Universe� career.

I think it is important that students (and indeed even tourists) should go away with an experience of South Africa which gets below the surface of the country and gets below the surface of their own skins.

That is why they spent a day in Yeoville. New immigrants are often among the most resourceful of people�they have to be to have had the courage and the means to get out from their home countries and then, in their new places of residence, they know that they must survive on their own wits and skills.

Perhaps that is why the wandering Jew or the Indian trader � and now the Somalian shopkeeper � have had such a bad image: not because they are lazy and incompetent but because their hard work and skills can be a contrast to the more laid back approach of those born into a place.

But sometimes new arrivals need not a hand-out but a hand-up: some help to get them on the bottom rung of the ladder so they can climb from there. The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) works with African immigrants who want to set up small businesses in places like Yeoville and cannot easily get access to courses or capital. Our visiting business students were there to share their experience and skills with some of the JRS start-up businesses.

Three people really stand out for me, perhaps not coincidentally all of them women and all from DRC. One was running a tiny food shop (barely larger than a corridor) specialising in the pulses and dried fish that her Congolese neighbours would most miss from home. Our MBA students had all studied the classic business variables: point of difference, customer loyalty, differential pricing, cash flow, international trading. They were perhaps surprised to see that this woman was practising each of those in making sure her business was successful and was feeding her family.

By contrast the second woman was the very opposite. She had set up a hair salon and had been given the same skills training and the same start-up capital as the first woman. But instead of hearing about how she was overcoming challenges, we heard nothing from her but complaints and requests for further assistance. I was struck by how much attitude and personality drive success in business (at all levels).

The third was the most surprising: a young sprightly woman carrying round a bulky insulated box containing ice creams for sale. She had come to get advice � but had also brought her goods to sell, spotting the chance to make some money from our visitors.

A conversation with her revealed that she was an ice cream vendor only while waiting to get back into the profession for which she had been trained: as a video journalist. And she walked away having exchanged business cards and secured at least one invitation for a commission.

Three women all dealt similar hands of cards had played them very differently. One saw problems that others had to solve; one saw challenges that would help her to grow; the third saw opportunities round every corner.

The people of Yeoville, today as in the past, have much to teach us.