Spazas: An indelible part of township life and our culture

The fingertips of tiny hands cling to the edge of a metal counter, so that the child they belong to can hoist their eyes just high enough to view the wares for sale. Little fingers weave into the metal grate, physically hankering for what's displayed in the colourful room beyond. In townships across the country, spaza shops present neatly packed rows of cans, stacks of starches, eyefuls of soaps, temptations of sweets and snacks, curtains of insect and rodent repellents, and cigarette sections complete with tied-down lighters or stuck-on matchbox strikes. 

Spaza shops are monuments to enduring through trying times. The gritty ethos that they symbolise has influenced how “the township” is spoken to and about. South African visual artists and musicians have frequently referenced the spaza retail experience and the place that these shops hold in the collective consciousness. These artworks allow us a peek beyond the shopfront, above the counter, into the social fibre that holds “the township” and South Africa together.

Apartheid spatial planning prioritised living quarters in townships at the cost of amenities. This meant that formal retail outlets in and around the township were few and far from residents’ homes. Spaza shops developed out of a need for basic amenities; township residents addressed their own need for convenience. Arguably because of the restrictions placed on gathering and social life in townships at the time, spaza shops became multigenerational spaces to gather, exchange and play — most commonly with cards, dice, board games and other forms of gambling, and later, with arcade games and pool tables.

Quickly, don’t gallivant

As a child, I was often sent to the closest and cheapest store to do errands at inopportune times, but it came with benefits. Depending on how many colours you had in your national flag when you were growing up, with the change you were allowed to pocket after completing your mission you could buy yourself some delights.

Cavity burrowing Fizz Pop lollipops, Smoothies sweets and Fizzers from sweet maker Beacon, the minty freshness of Wilson’s Extra Strong and Cadbury Endearmints, jaw numbing Champion Toffee (in the original black wrapping), and Cadbury’s Eclairs, known as “Jackson 5s” were that era’s favourites. Spaza shops across the country were also responsible for genericizing products — brand names became the colloquial terms for some types of products. For instance, in many South African households, Sunlight is the word for soap, Vaseline means petroleum jelly, Sta Soft means fabric softener and Colgate means toothpaste. 

Some brand names have become common nouns that include reference to products repackaged from large containers at the spaza shop itself. AmaSimba and Nik Naks refer to the mouth-and-finger-colouring snacks that come in torso-high plastic tubes and are decanted into smaller bags for sale at the spaza.

Using little space to create visually appealing shop displays is a skill that's benefitted spaza shop owners, consumer brands and art production in our country alike. An interplay of authenticity ties them together in addressing and representing the needs and realities of township residents.

Spaza shops have influenced cultural production in South Africa in several recognisable ways, even for those removed from the township experience.

Not our handwriting

Historically, each spaza shop mural was a unique product that blurred the line between marketing and art. Initially, these murals were painted freehand, seldom employing stencils or established typologies, and used colours the owners liked or  that the muralist had available.

In The People’s Typography, Schalk Venter conflates informal settlements and townships so the reader can assume that the former term includes the latter. Venter gives academic attention to mural creation (not to be confused with graffiti) in townships. He defines “township typography” as “letterforms created in informal settlements, while it also underscores a stylistic formation that's spread past the physical confines of South African informal settlements”.

A walk along the streets of Diepkloof, Soweto today reveals a different picture.  In brand-accurate colours, murals on spaza shop fronts and sides are often scaled reproductions of the logos, packaging and campaign slogans of products entrenched in townships for decades. 

Now, mainstream advertising’s use of spaces that were once reserved for “township style typography” has muted the uniqueness and originality of each shop with a brand-copying pastiche of spaza murals. 

Mainstream South Africa's visual art crowd, including government entities that embrace the spaza shop mural as a form of public art warranting support and archiving, could change how public art is viewed and practised here. Established muralists could, for example, catalogue their unique typographies for use in commercial or artistic settings, or a combination of both.

In the sea of colourful shopfronts surrounding his store in Diepkloof, Soweto, Thami Nzama’s shop is an  island of minimalism. A sign announces “Thami Tuck Shop” in white block letters on a Coca-Cola-red sign. “If you allow people who don't compensate you to advertise on your shop,” Nzama says, “you’ll have a problem when you need to reverse things. It takes two 20-litre PVA buckets to take the signage off and they (the advertisers) are no longer involved at that point.”

Motivated by financial decisions as Nzama’s decision is, the look of the largest street-facing wall of his spaza shop echoes South African visual artist Sam Nhlengethwa’s lithograph, Appointment at Spaza Shop. Part of his Waiting series, this work depicts a man standing with his bicycle in front of a shop with a plain, sky blue wall, a white sign that reads “Spaza” in black and red lettering, and a gated shop window. The man’s hand on his waist could be a sign of impatience or irritation, but his deadpan face doesn't betray any emotion.

Nzima’s patience is, similarly to Nhlengethwa’s subject, stoically impassive. He's been running his spaza shop since 2008, when he started with a shipping container repurposed into a public phone booth. In the time since, he's counted 11 different tenants of the brightly-coloured spaza shop opposite the road from his. In Nzama’s and Nhlengethwa’s subjects, existence is stripped down to essentials, one that is lived by the former and depicted by the latter.

In the mid-80s visual artist Andrew Lindsay’s practice involved making murals throughout the country. In 2001, Lindsay established Spaza Art Gallery (SAG) in Joburg, initially as a vehicle and platform for self-taught, rural artists to show their work in the city. The gallery's website declares, “It truly became a ‘spaza’ gallery in 2015, when the old gallery space was refashioned as an Airbnb property.” Some people believe that a spaza shop must be attached to a residence to be “proper”.

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The gallery hosted a string of concerts, including the experimental recording of  Mushroom Hour Half Hour, a once-off show by the revolving musical ensemble, SPAZA. The group brought together jazz and experimental music heavyweights Siya Makhuzeni on trombone and vocals, Ariel Zamonsky on bass, percussionist Gontse Makhene, Waldo Alexander on violin, and João Orecchia on electronic effects. Their live recording at SAG features tracks that echo the spaza shop experience in title and cultural alignment. Tracks on the SPAZA recording include the meditative opener Magwinya, Mangola neWhite Liver, the somewhat dystopian and menacing Five Rand Airtime namaeveready: 4000 degrees, and the cleansing Stametta Spuit at the end of the recording. 

It's one of the functions of nostalgia to allow positive memories to fizzle to the top of our recollections of the past. But it's vital to remain critical of the spaza shop space as we explore its cultural significance across various mediums of cultural production. SPAZA’s Tigerbalm nobuhlebakho (Interlude) builds from a lovely vocal tone, incorporates nondescript catcalling and response before a menacing male voice says Hey wena, voetsek / ngiyak’bona ubuhle bakho. This is quickly followed by a forceful Ngiyak’shela, ngizok’shela! serving as a reminder that spaza shops are spaces where the prevalent socio-political milieu of their locations is reflected. They're not sanctuaries from the pressing prevalence of patriarchy in many of the communities where they operate.

In a thinly veiled indictment of intercultural relationships with foreign spaza shop owners, Maskandi music star Menzi sings Usowazi wonke umzimba ka my friend / Thina siyazi ikhanda lodwa / (You are familiar with my friend’s whole body / We only know his face/ That we view where we shop) on his single My Friend. 

Spaza shops have also acted as an incubator for a particular subculture of hip hop developed in the Western and the Eastern Cape in the early 2000s. They were places where artists and audiences would gather to hold acoustic improvised rap exchanges, or cyphers. Rapper Uno was one of the trailblazers of hip hop during this time.

“These corner shops weren’t just places to run errands,” Uno recalls. “Inevitably, they became vibrant social hubs where life happened. For us, they became makeshift stages for cyphers, where some of the hardest bars and deepest inspirations came to life.”

Hip hop piggy-backed on the spaza shop, which was addressing a particular retail need, in order to address a need for spaces in which to create and enjoy art, particularly live performance, in the townships. Uno, real name Unathi July, says, “Spaza hip hop was born out of the creativity of kids from under-resourced areas, who used their mother tongue mixed with slang to vividly depict life in the hood."

The now internationally touring artist sees that era in his career as being formative for him as someone who has mainly rapped in English throughout his career.

“You’d hear someone like El Nino from Driemanskap (another trailblazing Spaza hip hop act) drop a verse that left you floored, and immediately your mind would race: ‘I need to top that next time.’ That cycle of inspiration and competition kept us all on our toes. The cyphers weren’t just about rap, they were about finding a sense of belonging. Each session built our confidence and shaped our character. We came to understand that we weren’t just rapping for fun; rather, we were laying the foundation for something bigger.”

The recent spate of children’s hospitalisations and deaths as a result of their having eaten food from spaza shops tears at the already worn social fibre that township residents from those areas have kept intact. With it, irreparable damage has also been done to the place of spaza shops in the South African collective consciousness. This generation's memory of spaza shops will always be tarnished by the spectre of death looming not far from a delight that you, as a child,  indulged in with your school friends.

The crisis throws into focus what the broader creative community places value on and how that appreciation is shown. Spaza shops continue to be iconographic symbols of township life in South Africa and elsewhere. So pervasive and symbolic are they, that arts and craft markets in the country’s big cities and beyond sell wares depicting or inspired by them, tour companies organise bespoke spaza shop tours and at the recent Back to the City hip hop festival, Maglera Doe Boy’s main stage installation was a spaza shop referencing his 2018 release Bodega.

There are many other examples in which the cultural sector references spaza shops.  An attempt at self-correcting the current situation could see spaza shop owners and the government partner up with the private sector to use spaza-themed cultural artefacts and events to raise awareness around food safety. In art and music, spaza shops are symbols of resilience, empowerment, entrepreneurship, creativity and hope that contribute to our rich cultural tapestry.