By Buziwe Nocuze
- Zikhona Qothe spends over R400 on fuel each trip to market, accepts R2 for a R3 orange and has stopped stocking beetroot entirely. She was buying oranges and apples for R25 to R30 a bag in 2018.
- The same stock now costs several times more and her customers cannot keep up.
Zikhona Qothe is running at a loss. She knows it. She shows up anyway.
Every morning she sets up her fruit and vegetable stall in Gugulethu, Cape Town, selling oranges for R3, naartjies for R1 each, potatoes from R10, green peppers for R10 and onions from R5. The prices are already as low as she can go. Sometimes they go lower.
“Sometimes others asked to buy with R2 and I take it even though I know that I won’t make a profit,” she said.
She is not covering her costs anywhere else in the business either. Each trip to market costs her more than R400 in fuel, and one market rarely has everything she needs. A box of tomatoes now costs R300. A bag of oranges that cost her R25 to R30 in 2018 costs R50 today. She heard that fruit prices are going up again next month. The market does not warn her in advance. She finds out when she arrives to stock.
So she has started buying less. She stopped stocking beetroot altogether when the price hit R200 a box. Her customers could not pay what she would have needed to charge.
She also extended credit for a while. That did not work either. Some customers refused to pay.
“I stopped selling beetroot because the price increased to R200, there is no use buying something that customers won’t buy,” she said.
She thought about quitting when the tomato price jumped. Then she thought about the eight people at home who depend on her.
“I thought of quitting but how am I going to take care of eight family members that are depending on me,” she said. “I keep pushing because of them.”
She is still there. Still selling. Still taking R2 when that is all someone has.
Pictured above: Zikhona Qothe, a street vendor in Gugulethu township, Cape Town, selling fruit and vegetables to support eight family members despite running at a loss.
Image source: Zikhona Qothe
