I remember as a child driving around the week before Christmas to shop for all the food for the rest of the big days.
We would stop at some or other shop in Athlone, followed by one in Wynberg and another in Mowbray.
Then it was off to a butchery in Upper Wale Street in the Bo-Kaap and finally Wellington’s Fruit Growers in town, to supplement the luxuries hamper that already arrived the previous week.
On another day, we would visit a small shoe shop in Maitland, where the family had a credit account with the elderly Jewish couple, who ran it for years.
If I was lucky, I would get three pairs of shoes for the year – school shoes, church shoes and tekkies.
Each shop was chock ‘n block with people, but everyone was jovial and I remember the palpable excitement in the air with fondness.
Then the malls came along.
Besides the Golden Acre, which seems to have been around forever, the first proper one I visited was the Hypermarket in Ottery and then Maynard Mall in Wynberg a few months later.
These days it seems like malls have always been around.
And now an interesting conversation swirled online about the business model of shopping centres and even whether they have any value in our society.
The debate was started by the looting riots up north that saw close to 200 malls raided and damaged to varying degrees.
Let me start out by saying that I am not fundamentally opposed to malls, but I do think there is a lot of room for improving how they do business.
The overarching problem with shopping malls is how they came and displaced all those small shops and businesses that I used to visit as a child.
And they did this under the guise of having them all conveniently under one roof.
But at the same time, they shifted the capital as well.
That is par for the course in a free market system.
There are always innovations that result in money being redirected from the old way of doing business, to the new way.
Newspapers can vouch for this – social media came and systematically dismantled advertising income streams that had been intact for decades.
Money that had circulated inside communities and domestically is now flowing offshore and into the pockets of the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
One of the more thought-provoking arguments is that people in general (but looters in particular) don’t see malls as part of the community, as something that benefits them, but rather as something that exploits their labour and the income.
They see it as a structure owned by the wealthy that stifles the growth of the community. This is an important insight to help address the problem so that something like this doesn’t happen again.
And there have been enough observer and commentator warnings that there’s a strong possibility of a repeat.
It is not only the government that needs to act against poverty, inequality and unemployment, but big businesses as a whole need to use this as a moment of introspection and self-evaluation. But let’s keep our focus relevant and on malls.
There needs to be a drastic change to how you view your responsibility as corporate citizens and how you integrate into communities.
This extends to both ownership and tenant occupancy.
Convenience, a steady supply of cheap labour and an eager customer base can no longer be the only benefits for the surrounding communities.
Of course you must have the big anchor tenants who can afford basic rental and ensure steady foot traffic.
Their presence is important and they can also part-subsidise the smaller tenants.
But the bar to entry for those tenants must be lowered.
You can’t expect a small family business to afford the massive deposits that you demand.
As long as you do, your retail space will be dominated by chain stores and franchises.
And most importantly, in a fragile global economy, the exorbitant basic monthly rentals charged by malls is an outdated concept that puts a lot of pressure on entrepreneurs and struggling business owners.
You should be looking into a system that ties rental to turn-over.
For example, monthly rent for a small family muffin business could be 15% of turn-over. But don’t do both, the way some malls currently do.
It takes the pressure off the family, while motivating both parties to work towards the success of that business.
As I’ve said before, doing good is no longer a moral prerogative. It is also good business sense; excellent PR and seemingly an insurance against destruction.