He might have been lucky, but Olebo told me he was not facing such prejudice. There were several riots in Ratanda 2012, when he and other foreign shopkeepers were looted and closed for several days, but otherwise he was welcomed in the community. He married a local woman and three children were South African citizens. His business flourished and he told me with pride that at some point he had three cars.
Spaza shops, where locals buy small household items such as food, toiletries and cigarettes, have long been the battlefield in the war between South Africans and outsiders. Immigrant groups, particularly Somali and Ethiopian groups, are thriving in this niche and causing resentment from the locals. After years of avoiding such violence, Olebo missed his luck in the fall of 2023.
To me, an anti-immigrant activist mob, including supporters of a group known as Operation Deudura, blocked the streets with fiery tires and flocked the town. They burned and plundered foreign-owned shops, including Olebo. He went to town later that night to investigate the damages and save what he could, but was confronted by an armed man.
“They brought their guns and they shot me,” Olebo told me. “But God saved me.”
Olebo is the latest lineage of immigrants over the centuries and has created the country we now know as South Africa. This has created waves of immigrants, each shaping its culture, politics and language in a profound way. About 1,700 years ago, the Bantu people of West and Central Africa moved south, bringing agriculture and other innovations to the land that was home to the nomadic Coucault and Sun communities. European explorers arrived in the 15th century, followed by a wave of white settlers, mainly from the Netherlands, France, Germany and the UK. Thousands of enslaved people stolen from East Africa and Asia were forced to work there.
