Theorising MSMEs in contexts of urban violence

Ganson, Brian; Hoelscher, Kristian Article Theorising MSMEs in contexts of urban violence Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (JIED) Provided in Cooperation with: LSE Press, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Suggested Citation: Ganson, Brian; Hoelscher, Kristian (2020) : Theorising MSMEs in contexts of urban violence, Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (JIED), ISSN 2516-7227, LSE Press, London, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 222-241, https://doi.org/10.31389/jied.70 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/320618 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ganson, B and Hoelscher, K. 2021. Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development , 2(2), pp. 222–241. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31389/jied.70 RESEARCH Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence Brian Ganson1 and Kristian Hoelscher2 1 University of Stellenbosch Business School, ZA 2 Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), NO Corresponding author: Brian Ganson (brian.g[email protected].za) What are the relationships between and among small businesses, conflict, and peaceful development in contexts of urban violence? Here, the complex formal and informal divisions of economic, political and social power, authority, and legitimacy – and the many grey areas between legality and illegality, necessity and opportunism – create challenging conditions for business operations and for peacebuilding. A grounded understanding is required if peaceand development-positive interventions are to be successful. Yet both the peacebuilding and development potential of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and the specific dynamics of business and conflict in urban spaces, are underdeveloped in the literature assessing and promoting business potential to catalyse positive change. We therefore extract from a broad range of literature a typology representing the weight of the extant frameworks for understanding MSMEs in contexts of urban violence. We then use primary research to construct inductively a framework that captures how those living with urban violence themselves perceive businesses, their relationships to violence, and their impacts on in/security and under/development. Drawing out key areas of synthesis and tension, we propose directions for future study and practice related to small businesses in violent cities, emphasising the need to eschew simple understandings of actors, agency, and objectives in favour of a more nuanced and humane inquiry into the pain and potential inherent in the local context. Keywords: SMEs; business & peace; urban violence; conflict & fragility; South Africa 1. Introduction Private sector actors have complex relationships with peace and conflict dynamics. Businesses have the potential to meaningfully foster peace and sustainable development (Miklian 2017; Ford 2015; Miller et al. 2019; Ganson & Wennman 2016; Oetzel et al. 2010; Peschka 2011) and are being asked to ‘become full partners in broader peacemaking and peacebuilding assessment, planning and execution’ (Ganson 2014: 71). At the same time, businesses can also undermine development and create or sustain conditions that foster conflict (Miklian et al. 2019; OHCHR 2008; Drohan 2004) and may face significant constraints on their agency (Ganson 2019a) with regard to conflict and peaceful development. These contradictions demand a better understanding of the presumed mechanisms of how and why businesses may motivate or not, and succeed or fail, in creating positive impacts for peace and development. Two areas of note require further scrutiny. First is the role of smaller businesses – particularly local small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The literature typically links the development and peacebuilding potential of the private sector with large, predominantly Western multinationals operating in lowerand middleincome countries (Getz & Oetzel 2009; Banks 2016; Kanashiro & Starik 2016; Kolk & Lenfant 2012; Hoelscher & Rustad 2019). Yet this obscures the role of SMEs, and their markedly different abilities and incentives to engage in peace and development activities. When expanding further to consider micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) – which includes businesses such as sole traderships and those with up to 5 or 10 workers (OECD 2005) – we know even less about their ability to affect change, the constraints on their agency, or their motivations. For instance, capacity limitations, embeddedness in violent communities, and dependence on social networks – particularly those with illicit actors – may limit MSMEs peace or development potential (e.g., Hoffmann & Lange 2016). Conversely, due to their embeddedness, these businesses may be Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence 223 potentially more likely to play a role in conflict prevention activities (Felgenhauer 2007; Rettberg 2004; de Vidovgrad 2015) or be central players in supporting, for instance, post-conflict private sector development and disarmament, demobilisation, and reconciliation (DDR) activities (Strachan 2017). These competing contentions make clear that the mechanisms underpinning the agency and peace and development potential of MSMEs are not fully understood. Though business for peace research is beginning to catch up to economics, development studies, business studies, conflict resolution, and entrepreneurship fields in looking at the nuanced and complex positionality of smaller and indigenous firms in fragile spaces (Barkemeyer & Miklian 2019; Katsos & AlKafaji 2019; Miklian & Bickel 2020) it ‘has yet to identify if or how these businesses can meaningfully generate peace at any level in society’ (Joseph et al. 2020: 4). A second area is how businesses and conflict dynamics intersect in urban areas. As we approach 60% of global population being urban, cities are vitally important to the Sustainable Development Goal agenda, with Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declaring that ‘our struggle for global sustainability will be lost or won in cities’ (Moon 2012). While cities offer profound opportunities, they also challenge development and peacebuilding trajectories due to organised criminal violence, civic conflict, urban political violence and warfare (Beall et al. 2013; Kilcullen 2015; Dilegge et al. 2019; Konaev 2019). Here, SMEs are often seen as key peace and development actors, being vital job creators and forming deep ties in their communities (World Bank 2018). Yet the evidentiary base for SMEs driving peace and development-positive changes is generally weak – and positive impacts anecdotal or presumptive – belying a reality where local businesses are deeply embedded in the complex dynamics of urban violence. Broadly summarising, we might simplify the current terrain as being characterised by three overarching perspectives that we can interrogate: 1) A recognition that businesses potentially play a role in peace and development processes, but how or why (or why not) is not always clear or consistent; 2) A general under-recognition of how MSMEs engage to support or undermine peace and development in fragile contexts; and 3) A lack of focus on how the specifically urban dynamics of violence and conflict intersect with private sector engagement in peace and development processes. In engaging with these perspectives, this article explores how businesses in contexts of fragility are characterised in literatures vis-à-vis their peace and development roles, and how this maps onto real world experiences of small businesses operating in violent cities. However, rather than taking an outside-in view that characterises how firms in violent contexts behave, or an instrumental view of what firms can or should do, we favour an inside-out perspective that recognises that business actors’ embeddedness in contexts of violence should drive our understanding of MSMEs in violent cities. The article proceeds as follows. In Section 2 we briefly review the literature to extract a simplified typology that synthesises how businesses in contexts of urban violence are conceptualised across disciplines. Section 3 presents empirical findings from exploratory field work in the Langa community of Cape Town, South Africa, to identify and systematise how businesses are seen from the perspective of one set of MSME owners and urban stakeholders. In Section 4 we identify areas of conceptual intersection and tension between how businesses are conceptualised in the academic and policy literature, and how they are understood in the Langa case. This leads us to question the former’s characterisation of actors, agency, motivating objects, and goals in relationship to the lived experience in Langa of business, violence, and development. We conclude in section 5 with directions for future research and practice, warning that the dominant binary characterisations of MSMEs and their roles risks obscuring the broader structural context, as well as suppressing the voices and aspirations of the most affected individuals and communities. 2. Contextualising Small Businesses in Violent Cities Contexts of violence, fragility and conflict exist where ‘political, social, security and economic risks correlate with organised violence’ when ‘states or institutions lack the capacity, accountability, or legitimacy to mediate relations between citizen groups and between citizens and the state’. (World Bank 2011: xv–xvi). This is increasingly true of urban areas, where violent and non-violent conflict have interlinked social, economic, and political causes (Winton 2004; Moser 2004; Moser and McIlwaine 2014; Kruijt 2007; Hoelscher & Nussio 2016). The challenges of urban violence in Latin America are well known (Balán 2002; Jütersonke et al. 2009; Pearce 2020) and are becoming increasingly important in African countries (Büscher 2018; Elfversson & Höglund 2019; Raleigh 2015; Urdal & Hoelscher 2012). Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence224 Businesses – particularly smaller and local private sector actors – are regularly victimised by urban violence. Extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and insecurity increase input relative to output costs, deter investment, constrict demand, reduce business confidence, affect where businesses are established and increase security costs and volatility of supply chains and operations (e.g., Goldberg et al. 2014; Rettberg 2008; Greenbaum & Tita 2004; Kimou 2015; Rozo 2018; Rosenthal & Ross 2010; Almeida & Montes 2020). Yet some business may benefit from violence and insecurity (Ajide et al. 2018), strategically seeking out violent markets (Bates & Robb 2008) or adopting a ‘palliative approach’ that has a limited interest in actual violence prevention given an inherent interest in a state of insecurity (Mathéy et al. 2014: 7). In theorising MSMEs in violent cities, our review of the cross-disciplinary instrumental literature on business, violence, and fragility reveals a broad and somewhat disconnected series of scholarly endeavours. Concepts, terminologies, and representations of businesses in fragile or violent contexts differ across scholarly domains including political science, development studies, economics, law, sociology, and business studies. In synthesising, two dimensions – albeit imperfectly delineated – tend to reoccur. First, whether businesses intentions or impacts on peace and development outcomes are either productive or destructive; and second, the degree of agency businesses maintain such that they are active or passive actors. Drawing on this, one way to understand how businesses in violent contexts are conceptualised in the literature is using a framework of four stylised representations of firm types – predators, condoners, catalysers, and perserverers (Figure 1). The four business ‘types’ emerging from this framework by and large align with examples in the literature (e.g., Goldberg et al. 2014) that show how SMEs engage through public and private mechanisms of collective action (catalysers), accept violence and increase security spending or adapt business strategies (condoners), directly engage in violence (predators), or curtail growth or even ultimately exit markets altogether (perserverers). However, as we discuss later in the article, these representations may not correspond with how businesses exist in real-world contexts. Predators Predators (active, destructive) are firms that are seen to willingly engage in or embrace the necessity of violence as part of their commercial operations. This may be either through an active and strategic use of violence, or a tacit recognition that close relationships with violent actors are required. Here the outcome is one which is negative – both economically and socially – as growth is stifled, resources are misallocated and violence undermines social and institutional stability and longer term development potential. Much of this literature finds its entry point at the level of how businesses operate in wartime economies, engage in illicit markets, or act opportunistically during institutionally precarious conflict or post-conflict phases to negatively impact economies and societies. From early colonial and imperial conglomerates like United Fruit or the Dutch East India Company to the more recent entanglements of diamond or oil interests propping up parties in civil conflicts, predation and violence for private gain has long been linked with operations of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in conflict or post conflict contexts (Ganson & Wennmann 2016). Figure 1: A stylised model of representations in the literature of businesses in violent contexts. PRODUCTIVE PASSIVE PERSERVERERS  Avoid violence  Passive resistance CATALYSERS  Oppose violence  Active resistance ACTIVE CONDONERS  Tolerate violence  Passive acceptance PREDATORS  Embrace violence  Active acceptance DESTRUCTIVE Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence 225 This resonates in discussions of predation in war economies prolonging conflicts (Günduz et al. 2006b), and with warlords engaging in illicit business activities during conflict (Reno 2009). Predatory businesses are also commonly discussed in literatures around illicit economies and corruption (Naylor 2003). These businesses are seen to be ‘peace negative’ by exploiting and weakening institutional and rule of law deficits, using coercion and corruption for economic gain and political influence, often transforming to become semi-legitimate actors that mix licit, legal business interests with illicit and illegal economic activities (Cockayne 2010). Closely linked with the notion of predation is the parasitic business (Torvik et al. 2006). Here, rather than being a business that engages in productive activities and contributes to the economy, ‘parasites do not produce’ and ‘survive at the expense of productive activities’ (de Carvalho 2015). Parasitic businesses are seen as organised, violent criminal organisations or politically connected gangs that use or threaten violence for profit, and are linked with similar concepts including violent entrepreneurs (Volkov 2002) or destructive entrepreneurs (Baumol 1990). What these concepts tend to have in common is that in the absence of stable political and legal institutions, violence is able to be used by criminal and quasi-criminal businesses to engage in rent seeking and illicit earnings (e.g., Brück et al. 2011; 2013) and that this undermines productive economic activity. However, as Naylor (2009) points out ‘there is little or nothing in the inherent logic of illegal markets to lead to the expectation of violence in their conduct’ and that ‘to the extent (that) violence does occur, the best place to look for its explanation is in the societal and political context’ (Naylor 2009: 241). Particularly for economists, violent entrepreneurship is deeply destructive for growth, squeezing productive businesses on both sides with the threat of violence and demanding use of their services for protection from violence (Mehlum et al. 2002). Here it is emphasised that ‘in developing countries bandits not only control and protect small-scale informal enterprises such as street sellers and sweat shops’ but that ‘the surplus from large-scale modern firms are also dissipated by organized middlemen and professional plunderers’ (Mehlum et al. 2000: 2, our emphasis). The result is an exacerbation of poverty, a stifling of productive entrepreneurship, economic stagnation, and the normalisation of violence for contract enforcement, where economies become mired in a ‘Predators Club characterised by a vicious cycle of poverty and predation’ (Mehlum et al. 2003: 275). Condoners Condoners (passive, destructive) may be seen as a grouping which accepts that violence is an inherent characteristic of their business operations and that they must tolerate its presence. While these businesses may not be violent themselves, and even bemoan the presence of violence, they recognise that they must engage with it in order to operate. This may include the payment of bribes and protection, selling to criminal organisations, or relying on informal relationships with illegal actors to ensure operational continuity. This type of characterisation of the destructive firm is one that while they may or may not directly use or threaten violence, they condone its use or their operations rely on being embedded within a network of violent or illegal actors. This can often relate to legal and business perspectives around the nature of regulation and formality. The assumption is that unregulated, irregular, or informal businesses operate outside of oversight architectures and thus actively or passively condone the use of violence. Examples such as spaza convenience stores (Charman & Piper 2012) and shebeen liquor stores (Charman et al. 2014) in South Africa, and the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (Perks & Vlassenroot 2010) highlight how irregularity and informality in productive sectors is linked with persistent violence. Some of these conceptual linkages between the negative characteristics of firms in fragile contexts can be seen in the post-conflict private sector development literature, and are indicative of how the ‘destructive firm’ is seen in political economy and development circles. According to Mac Sweeney, ‘private-sector activity is often opportunistic and irregular, and lacks regulation or standardised systems of procedure’, and though informality is seen to have some positive aspects, it ‘will eventually pose major problems (for) government revenue collection and successful regulation’ (2008: 21). Furthermore, as in the case of the South African taxi industry (Dugard 2001), business actors step into regulatory voids to become ‘informal agents of regulation, protection and extortion’ that ‘have been allowed to develop and expand virtually unchecked by the authorities’, using ‘their considerable firepower and weight to resist recent government attempts to re-regulate the taxi industry.’ They ‘are symptomatic of more generalised rising levels of organised crime in post-apartheid South Africa’ (Dugard 2001: 3–4). Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence226 Catalysers Catalysers (active, productive) can be regarded as the businesses that resist and fight back against violence, such as by refusing to pay bribes or sell to criminal networks. Beyond this, they may also organise and support individual or collective action to push back against violence in their communities. These virtuous firms are seen to have the potential to break cycles of violence and are the key to narratives of how businesses can support development, community building and peacemaking, often characterised as agents of positive change that the development community must support. The catalyser narrative is one that sees businesses as an essential force for economic growth, employment and the assumed inherent good of formalised markets and commerce in fragile economies. In many ways this may be seen as an extension of the post-conflict private sector development wave of thinking that emerged in recent decades which has meaningfully shaped the discourse around the nature of businesses in fragile settings and their linkages with the dynamics of peace, conflict and development (e.g., Bagwitz et al. 2008; Guimond 2007; Mac Sweeney 2008; Naudé 2007). These representations broadly see firms as being able to use their capacities and relationships to either directly resist or oppose violence, or to create economic conditions that will reduce the risks of conflict emerging or being sustained. The productive firm view is also seen in accounts of firms that actively or passively challenge the proliferation of violence – aligning with how much of the Business for Peace, post-conflict development and DDR literatures see as the ‘transformative’ potential role of the private sector. Here, the broader economic returns to entrepreneurship are seen as ways to enhance intergroup cohesion or dialogue, and may therefore constitute platforms for conflict reduction or peacebuilding activities (Tobias & Bourdreaux 2011). Other instances in the literature point to the roles that businesses play in resisting and opposing violence or supporting conflict resolution. Austin and Wennman (2017) outline the important role Kenyan business interests played in dampening electoral violence in 2007–2008 through mediation between conflict parties, petitioning political elites to respond in ways that deescalated tensions, and lobbying the media to soften inflammatory rhetoric. Similarly in Latin America, Hoelscher (2019) has highlighted the role of public utilities company Empresas Publicas de Medellín as a key financial and ideological supporter of successful public space and public security interventions in the city. Focusing on links between business, politics, and urban violence, Moncada has also noted how business elites align with political elites to support policies that have addressed urban violence in Colombia (2013). Perserverers Perserverers (passive, productive) can be viewed as those businesses that may be lesser targets for extortion or intimidation that are able to evade the attention of violent operators. They understand that violence is an inherent aspect of how or where they operate, but passively resist engaging with it, perhaps at the expense of their commercial prospects. They may, for instance, avoid forming relationships with violent actors, or limit size or growth in order to avoid becoming targets for extortion. Such passive, productive firms may understand the reality of engaging with violent actors within a violent systems, yet engage in forms of resistance or evasion in pursuit of non-violent goals, strategies Ramírez et al. (2015) describe as acquiescence and avoidance. More recently, Moncada (2019) has examined how and why businesses challenge extortion from violent actors. He takes a political economy approach to show how firms resist criminal violence and rackets in violent contexts, identifying how the visibility of resistance can be either public or private, and the intent of resistance can be to overthrow a dominant power or negotiate the terms of domination. Here, a nuanced perspective on structural, subversive, everyday, and hidden resistance emerges, with the implication that strategies will depend largely on the political and economic resources available to firms. This highlights the continuum of active and passive roles that firms of different sizes and with different resource endowments can take to challenge and confront violence. MSMEs, violence, and the grey zones of action and agency On one hand, MSMEs are seen as highly precarious and vulnerable to violence and with limited political capital or access to finance to work through violence and grow their businesses. On the other hand, MSMEs are seen as critical partners in a dizzying array of development goals, including job creation, poverty, and inequality reduction, building trust and community cohesion, supporting state building and business formalisation, and acting as early warning systems for community conflict (Günduz et al. 2006a; Cordaid 2014). Yet it is difficult to tease out or generalise how and where these characterisations of MSMEs may apply, as Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence 227 the vast majority of mechanisms linking MSMEs, growth and peacebuilding remain unsubstantiated (Brück et al. 2015). This diversity of roles is laid out in one of the few studies of SMEs in contexts of urban violence, where Ramírez et al. (2015) examine SMEs strategic approaches in Monterrey, Mexico. Rather than finding that businesses are necessarily ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actors, the authors highlight that SMEs differentially use approaches of manipulation, acquiescence and avoidance to contend with organised violence. Here, SMEs tend to remove themselves by relocation to less violent places, succumb to violence and accept the threats and coercion of violent actors, or become co-opted by violence and actively exploit it for commercial gain – but rarely do they actively resist violence. Similarly diverse strategies are noted in Joseph et al.’s (2020) study of MSMEs in Lebanon. They highlight that ‘local business activity can simultaneously foster both peace and socially destructive outcomes’ and that ‘the importance of economic development was elevated for local businesses, suggesting that peace through mechanisms such as social development, the rule of law, and training, is only achieved if economic needs are alleviated through these measures’ (Joseph et al. 2020: 1). While the framework above outlines stylised portrayals of ‘typical’ business types, the literature also shows that these are not rigid categorisations – and many scholars in the field would likely suggest that they are imperfect. Yet while MSMEs are likely more fluid and diverse, these types of categorisations are still commonly deployed in the literature despite lacking real explanatory traction. We contend that this may be reflective of an underdeveloped theoretical understanding of MSMEs as embedded within systems of violence and the ways that this is understood in the context of communities beset by violence. Rooted in the literature are normative and operational assumptions about the nature of violence, the structure and agency of ‘firms’, how they should or could behave instrumentally, and the resoluteness of their strategic relationships vis-à-vis violence and violent actors. In particular, the model of business types that we identify from the literature appears to imply an actor (the MSME) who has agency (to engage or not engage), and which undertakes (or fails to undertake) actions which are inherently productive or destructive with respect to the object of overt violence with the goal of either violence reduction and/or an economically-oriented notion of development. Yet as we outline in the following case study of Langa in Cape Town, South Africa, we conclude that this framework may inadequately describe the actors and their agency, objects, and goals as they are experienced and expressed by people in such places. 3. MSMEs in violent contexts: Experiences from Langa, Cape Town Violence – even if embedded in broader sub-nation or national systems of conflict – presents within its own local context (Kalyvas 2006; Justino, Brück & Verwimp 2014). In order to understand the frameworks for understanding and frameworks for action that have currency at the intensely local level at which violence or development unfold, we therefore conducted a localised study of attitudes and experiences at the intersection of MSMEs and violence. We make no claim that the perspectives emerging from this one place are generalisable. Rather, we rigorously examine the understandings emerging from one well-delineated context so that they can be compared with the extent literature explored above, helping to uncover potentially uninterrogated assumptions and unanswered questions. Langa, a suburb of Cape Town of roughly 52,000 inhabitants (Statistics South Africa 2011), was chosen because it is in many ways typical of similar suburbs across the municipality and South Africa, and of neighbourhoods of other cities around the world characterised by pronounced social, economic, and spatial segregation and inequality. The white government designed Langa in the 1920s on the then-outskirts of Cape Town as what both academic analysts (Coetzer 2016) and some residents describe as a ‘concentration camp’ in which control over black workers could be maintained. It was never intended to ‘develop’; many of the streets are too narrow for two cars to pass, for example, because it was never expected that black residents would own cars and only police patrols needed to use them. Langa is a mix of brick and more informal structures, traversed by both paved roads and alleyways so narrow that two people cannot pass without touching. Langa remains intensely poor: as of the latest census, 72% of households had a monthly income under the official poverty line of roughly US $400; 40% of the population lived in a shack or other informal dwelling; under 40% of the population 15–64 years old was employed; only 40% of those aged 20 years and older had completed grade 12; and 65% of the population had no access to the internet from home, work, or elsewhere (Statistics South Africa 2011). With a murder rate as high as 69 per 100,000 inhabitants, Cape Town is one of the most violent cities in the world; and with a murder rate that may exceed 100 per 100,000 inhabitants, Langa is one of its most violent suburbs (SACN 2019). At the same time, Langa was historically, and today remains, a vibrant centre for political activism, social and economic self-help, and the performing and visual arts. It is a place of both immense pain and immense pride. Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence228 While the dominant dynamic of Langa for most of its history has been its forced segregation from, and deprivation in comparison to, the historically white areas of Cape Town, Langa also has a history of internal divisions that have contemporary repercussions. Langa was the product in 1927 of the forced relocation of black South African families from other parts of the City under the Natives (Urban Areas) Act No. 21 of 1923. The growing demand for labour, particularly in the Second World War, brought thousands more workers to Langa. These migrant men from rural areas lived in hostels, had no right to remain beyond their employment contracts in the City, and would be arrested even within Langa if they were found outside of the narrow corridor from the hostels to the train station. A divided suburb emerged, with separate shopping areas and social and cultural communities. With the Abolition of Influx Control Act (1986), some existing migrant workers brought their families to Langa, and many more arrived over the years, establishing sizeable informal settlements which in turn developed their own economies, social and civic structures and senses of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Langa today is even officially divided into two Wards, corresponding roughly to ‘old’ Langa and to the ‘new’ informal settlements. Thus the dynamics of Apartheid divisions persist today. Twenty interviews were conducted, supported by secondary research. The research followed an interpretivist paradigm (Alasuutari et al. 2008; Brand 2009) with the intent to not predefine dependent and independent variables. This was in recognition of the emergent nature of the inquiry around MSMEs and urban violence, and to ensure that the frameworks for understanding in the extent literature were not imposed on respondents. Selection was opportunistic, snowballing from multiple seeds (Morgan 2008) within the close contacts of one of the authors with activists in the community who then provided bridges to others. All the same, interviewees with diverse characteristics – across race, sex, age, class, profession, and sector (see Appendix I) – were consciously sought out, allowing for the possibility of divergent views and experiences within the primary data and a fuller complexity of human sense making (Kaplan & Maxwell 1994). At the same time, by selecting interviewees all of whom had experience of Langa, diverse perspectives could contribute to a more coherent systems perspective necessary to understand conflict and violence (Ganson 2019b). This methodology took into account both the need to locate members of a difficult to reach population (Spreen 1992) – in this case, people willing to talk openly about the specifics of conflict and violence in a context in which they lived and worked – and the recognition that the purpose of the study was not to establish a cohort that was representative per se, but rather to listen carefully to the narrative that emerged from the stories of one set of actors – in an in-depth and contextualised ‘exploration of a central phenomenon’ (Creswell 2005: 203) – that could be compared to extent theoretical frameworks. The foundation of the inquiry was a primary, opened-ended inquiry: ‘When you put three thoughts together – Langa, small businesses, and conflict and violence – what comes to mind for you?’ While each interview may have used a number of other probes and follow-ups to maintain the conversation (see Appendix II), people were primarily invited to tell their stories. The goal was to allow participants maximum latitude to define for themselves the contours and boundaries of the inquiry. Their reflections are filtered through three lenses below: a narrative lens, using a series of vignettes that represent stories told that were typical of the broader interview pool; a thematic lens, drawing out from those vignettes and other primary data recurring observations and perspectives; and a comparative lens, probing points of intersection and divergence with the extent literature explored above. Stories of SMEs, conflict and violence in Langa The following vignettes highlight the reflections of different interviewees. They represent stylised stories that synthesise multiple conversations. First, individual interviews were completed; then, interview notes were harvested for common themes and story elements and the vignettes drafted; then these were discussed between a sub-set of interviewees for verification and refinement. The vignettes are presented here in part as entry points for reader into the rich world that is Langa, without the use, as a matter of conflict sensitive research (Svensson 2013), of quotations or unique stories that might identify informants. They are also concrete examples of the many rich expressions of ‘violence’, ‘MSMEs’, and the context of ‘Langa’ in which they unfold that bely any easy characterisation of the nature of, motivations for, or experiences of the interrelationships of small businesses with violence. The street vendor With money he has somehow saved or perhaps pulled together from family and friends, a man walks 10 km round trip to the city market across the railway tracks where he can buy not-quite-rotten fruit and vegetables at a discount. He must be up very early: the best deals are gone before 5:30, and in any case, Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence 229 his first customers may be on a taxi to work in the city centre before then. He knows that the police can steal his goods or money; or that on a given day price at which he can sell will not be better than the local corner stores. So he doesn’t see himself as in the ‘produce business’. He’s in the business of identifying and seizing any opportunity that lets him turn his human and minimum financial capital into a small profit he can scrape by on – produce today, something else better if that comes up tomorrow. He’s a friendly man, happy to chat between customers. But if someone insisted on selling at his regular spot? He’d have to kill him. The development corridor The municipal authorities from time to time advance plans for a road that would lead towards the airport. They argue that the stores that could be built along the improved byway would bring needed jobs and tax revenues. But the experience of local residents is that the profits from such ventures are extracted by the outsiders who have the capital for investment and the employees whom they bring in from their own networks. The project will thus undermine rather than build local business and employment. Additionally, the improved road would impinge on a green space where family members of all ages gather for picnics. If the young men who play sports there are forced away, where will they go and who will keep a watchful eye over them? The project is stalled in part because the municipality knows that the community will protect its interests with protests that history says can easily escalate into violence. The taxi owner A retired teacher decides to supplement his inadequate pension. He combines savings with money borrowed from someone the authorities would call a loan shark to buy a minibus taxi. He pays a trivial fee to the city for his taxi license; and then between US $3000 and $5000 to join the ‘voluntary’ association that controls the apex industry in the township economy. He treads carefully; he knows he has entered the system as a privileged outsider, not having come up the ranks from fare collector to taxi rank manager to driver to owner. But he must also be firm. Taxis outside the association will always be trying to opportunistically steal his business by driving his route in front of him. This must be stopped, violently if necessary. This is in part because his lender, operating in a system outside of the constraints or protections of the rule of law for the small operator – borrower or lender alike – will feel compelled to make an example of him should he not repay his loan. The immigrant A refugee from a neighbouring country makes her way to Cape Town. Having a bit better education than most locals willing to work for such little pay, she finds a job in town. But spatial segregation of rich and poor means that she cannot afford to live anywhere nearby. She rents a shack in the backyard of a Langa home. She keeps to herself, both from lack of community connections, and from exhaustion. She discovers that she can buy chips cheaply in town and sell them for a bit more from home. Slowly she adds to her wares, and her shack becomes a store. Her landlord doesn’t seem to mind; it makes her more dependable with the rent. But a robbery is explained to her as a warning to stop. When she doesn’t, her shack is burned and she is chased away. The local consensus was that she took income away from a local resident who didn’t have the same opportunities, and who without work would become a burden on the community. The restauranteur Having been discovered and trained by one of Cape Town’s leading restauranteurs, he became a chef in his own right with a career in leading hotels around the globe. Now he has decided to return home to raise his own family where he grew up. He opens a restaurant that combines local dishes with a top-notch kitchen and professional front of house operation – even though guests sit at simple outdoor picnic tables. They are a mix of locals, tourists on township tours, and better off Capetonians who find it exotic to venture into a ‘black’ area for lunch or Sunday jazz. The owner takes pride in his high staff turnover; after all, he has taken in young people many would have called ‘unemployable’, trained them, and then placed them in fine restaurants across Cape Town. His business is safe. No local would attack him, embedded as he is in the community; and an outsider would do so at his peril. The creche director In her home, she used to care for children of neighbours who commuted for long days of work in the city’s richer suburbs. She knew that the authorities considered this an ‘illegal’ unlicensed child care facility. But Ganson and Hoelscher: Theorising MSMEs in Contexts of Urban Violence236 Appendix II: Interview Guide Collecting perspectives on Langa small businesses, conflict and violence Interview guide 1. When you put three thoughts together – Langa, small businesses, and conflict & violence – what comes to mind for you? Notes: This is an intentionally open-ended and ambiguous question. The best responses are as unprompted as possible: ‘Just tell me what comes to mind’, or, ‘Imagine putting the three words – Langa, business, and violence – on a piece of paper. What connects (or separates) them in your mind?’, or ‘You can just tell me stories that come to mind’. The following questions are possible prompts if useful to continue or expand the conversation. 2. What kinds of business activities are diminished or hurt – directly or indirectly – by what kinds of conflict or violence? In what ways? Can you give a concrete illustration? Notes: Direct would be, for example, a corner store getting robbed. Indirect impacts can take many forms: not being able to get finance because of Langa’s bad reputation, for example, or not being able to trade during certain hours (or be in business at all) because it’s too unsafe. 3. What kinds of business activities are increased or helped – directly or indirectly – by what kinds of conflict and violence? In what ways? Can you give a concrete illustration? Notes: Direct would be, for example, a money lender who can get away with using violent tactics to ensure repayment. Indirect impacts can take many forms, for example, not having competition because outsiders are too afraid to do business and only ‘locals’ can. 4. What kinds of business activities for the most part stand apart from conflict and violence? How so? Can you give a concrete illustration? Notes: This might be, for example, a gig worker (graphic designer, bookkeeper…) who is home based, so she experiences conflict and violence as a resident, but not so much as a business person. 5. (A) Now that we’ve had a chance to reflect and talk, let’s come back to the primary question: ‘When you put three thoughts together – Langa, small businesses, and violence – what comes to mind for you?’ (B) Is there anything else you would add? Notes: Make it clear that any and all thoughts are welcome. 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