The room is quiet and dimly lit. I take a sip of warm bottled water and stare at the PowerPoint presentation in front of me. It is 2018, and I am attending a university workshop in Cape Town on the informal food sector. The presenter, a tall tense-looking man with fine light-brown hair, is discussing informal enterprises in Philippi East. The projector makes a quiet humming sound which makes me drowsy.

I am shaken out of my peaceful state by the presenter announcing with a sense of certainty and authority: ‘Many of the spaza shops we looked at are essentially agents of wholesalers …’ I force myself to pay attention. ‘They are not autonomous entities,’ he goes on. ‘They are simply providing an outlet for the very same products that are being sold in supermarkets.’ I sit up in my seat, now fully awake and attentive, expecting further elaboration, but the presenter has moved on. That informal sector businesses stock similar food items to those sold at supermarkets, he says, shows that the two sectors are ‘very closely linked’. Both formal and informal sectors operate ‘within a corporate controlled food system, with the vast majority of profits going to corporate entities’. None of these remarks sheds any light on his conclusion that spaza shops are acting as agents of larger enterprises.

Several minutes later the presentation comes to an end and neon lights are switched on. The workshop facilitator, with hair tied up in wispy bun and a more relaxed and mellow air about him, introduces two respondents to provide comments. The first, a South African woman who works with informal workers, begins by thanking the presenter but does not go on to address the presentation itself or the points it made. Instead, she proudly highlights the work of her organisation and laments the general plight of South African informal workers in the country. ‘We want a hand up and not a hand out,’ she declares, before ending her contribution with a call for closer relationships between informal and formal sectors, and the government.

The second respondent, a Somali community leader with a serious demeanour, is next.