THERE was a rather odd photograph of ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe in The Times this week. It was taken on Wednesday, at Luthuli House, in Johannesburg, at the end of a post-lekgotla press conference in which Mantashe, among other things, had outlined the party's proposals to bar foreigners from owning land here.
Mantashe had been captured, mid-declamation and waving his right hand about the place, as he left the room. He was wearing an ANC leather jacket and, dangling comically over the expanse of his belly, a ridiculously short necktie with black, green and gold diagonal stripes.
It was rather school-boyish, the sort of thing Richmal Compton's Just William character might have poking out from underneath a grubby shirt collar, and you could easily imagine former potential foreign investors thinking, oh dear, but he even dresses funny.
The other noticeable thing about the photograph was that it featured Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu. Here at the Mahogany Ridge we'd never seen Mantashe and Zulu in the same room together and had previously presumed they were one and the same person. It's an understandable error given the similarity of their attitudes towards foreigners.
Earlier in the week, Zulu had been pinning back ears with intimations of a sinister conspiracy by foreign spaza shop owners. Call it Big Somali, but somehow these guys were selling goods to township residents - and keeping the money. Obviously a grave error on their part.
"Foreigners need to understand that they are here as a courtesy and our priority is to the people of this country first and foremost," Zulu told reporters. "A platform is needed for business owners to communicate and share ideas. They cannot barricade themselves in and not share their practices with local business owners."
She may as well have demanded they reveal their cloven hooves and witches' teats while looters were helping themselves to their goods.
Mantashe, meanwhile, was out scaring the locals with a few conspiracy theories of his own. Speaking in Doornkop, Soweto, where the xenophobic attacks began last week, he burbled on darkly that weak immigration laws could lead to such terror organisations as Boko Haram and Islamic State - Big Jihad! - opening up shop around the corner.
Mercifully, the Department of Home Affairs was on the case, and was going to investigate the legal status of foreigners doing business in Soweto. According to a spokesman, it would appear that some of the victims may have entered the country without the necessary paperwork.
Away from such nonsense, though, details of the foreigners' devilry were slowly emerging. It seemed the unholy practice of opening up for business very early in the morning and closing only late at night gave them some kind of entrepreneurial edge over their competitors.
Local shop owners could not do that. It seemed they were hamstrung by labour legislation. As Herman Mashaba, chairman of Lephatsi Investment, told The Times: "Try opening your shop in the early hours of the morning and close in the evening and see if South Africans [workers] will not take you to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration."
Cunningly, the terrorists appear to have exploited a loophole of sorts here and, by opting to do all the work themselves, have not employed anyone. Thus no disgruntled local workers traipsing off to the CCMA with complaints of work.
Operating in large networks, rather similar to our own stokvels, they are also able to buy goods in bulk from wholesalers at a discounted price. Lower overheads, naturally, means that prices can be kept down - with the result that local shop owners claim they are being undercut and squeezed out of the market.
These grievances are quite vexing. According to Soweto Business Access chairman Mputhi Mputhi, common complaints about entrepreneurs from Somalia, Bangladesh and Pakistan were that they didn't employ locals, they didn't plough money back into the township economies, they didn't pay taxes and they were rude.
Mputhi warned them not to reopen their businesses until locals' "core issues" had been resolved. "We believe that we must first listen to South Africans," he said in a statement. "Let South Africans come up with solutions on things like how jobs can and will be created from local small businesses. Thereafter, we can engage the foreign nationals. But it is the interests of South Africans which must be prioritised.
"If they come back, their safety is not guaranteed as these fundamental issues would still be outstanding. We want Soweto to set the benchmark that will improve businesses in other townships."
He means business, you could say. If that was a threat, it's not one I would take lightly.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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