Small business, big problems — SA's entrepreneurs still face uphill battle

Daily Maverick

6 hours ago

In post-pandemic South Africa, the phrase 'small business is the backbone of the economy' has become something of a national mantra. Small and medium enterprises account for more than 60% of jobs and roughly 40% of GDP, according to estimates from Stats SA and the Treasury, yet continue to face regulatory bottlenecks, financial exclusion and bureaucratic roadblocks that larger corporates are typically better equipped to manage.
Business Maverick's latest webinar, 'Small Business, Big Problems: What Government Could Be Doing', brought together Business Maverick's editor, Neesa Moodley, Sourcefin CEO Joshua Kadish and Regent Business School's academic dean, Dr Shahiem Patel, for a candid conversation on why South Africa's entrepreneurs still face an uphill battle — and what could actually unlock progress.
Forget the pitch deck: start anyway
'There's a shift,' said Patel, referring to the changes in the small-to-medium business environment in South Africa. 'You don't really need capital to launch a business. You need finance to scale a business.'
This mindset shift — from funding as a prerequisite to funding as a growth tool — was echoed throughout the session. Entrepreneurs today launch Instagram stores and TikTok businesses in under an hour. What they need, increasingly, is not startup capital, but scale capital, according to Patel.
Kadish agreed: 'Traditional banks in South Africa base credit decisions on past performance, collateral and tax compliance. But early-stage SMEs [small and medium enterprises] don't tick those boxes. What they need is forward-looking credit.'
The irony? The very regulations designed to protect consumers are choking the businesses meant to employ them.
'It's not just red tape,' noted Moodley. 'It's the weight of compliance — especially when you're a one-person startup juggling five roles.'
Death by paperwork
Kadish outlined an inhibiting bureaucracy where something as basic as opening a bank account requires repeated Fica (Financial Intelligence Centre Act) submissions, even across the same financial group, causing needless hurdles for small businesses looking to enter the market.
'There's no central repository,' he noted of the process required for the verification of a business and the personal documentation required for everything from opening a bank account to lines of credit. 'You Fica yourself 14 times for 14 institutions. And even then, it takes a week to open a transactional account.'
And compliance hurdles don't end there. New policies — like the Ultimate Beneficial Ownership filing regimen — threaten deregistration for startups unaware of such technicalities. Tax complexity, uncertainty about the Protection of Personal Information Act, and ambiguous VAT obligations compound the confusion.
'We need to stop seeing regulation as an inhibitor,' said Patel. 'It can be an enabler — if implemented accessibly.'
Both speakers emphasised the need for a single digital compliance portal — a centralised, Application Programming Interface-enabled interface for the SA Revenue Service; Companies and Intellectual Property Commission; Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act; Unemployment Insurance Fund, and others. The technology, they insisted, already exists. What's missing is the political will — and a user manual.
A hurdle for the informal sector
When asked about support for the informal sector, where millions of rands move in daily trade without tax filings, documentation, or even bank accounts, Kadish was blunt.
'Without documentation, you're confined to the informal sector,' said Kadish. 'You'll never really graduate.'
The post-Covid boom in contactless payments (via tools like Yoco or SnapScan) offers new data trails — but even these haven't brought the informal economy fully into the funding fold.
'Financial institutions have long treated informal trade as no-go zones,' explained Kadish. 'That's slowly changing. But we need tailored products, not copy-paste corporate credit models.'
Patel added that policy incentives, like VAT breaks or employment-linked tax deferrals, could catalyse formalisation without suffocating early-stage ventures.
Red tape and repayment
Public procurement — a potential growth engine for SMEs — has its own catch-22.
'To do business with the government, you often need a performance guarantee. But no one wants to issue those to small businesses,' explained Kadish. 'It's the same cycle: no track record, no credit; no credit, no growth.'
'The education gap is real,' said Patel. 'So is the mentorship gap. We need layered support — formal, informal, and from peers.'
Lessons from Singapore
In his closing remarks, Kadish offered a bold suggestion: learn from Singapore, long held as a symbol of fostering economic development, particularly small businesses and services in the financial sector.
'Early-stage startups there pay no tax on their first $250,000 in income,' he said. 'Investors also pay no capital gains tax, provided they invest early. And the government will match private investment rand-for-rand.'
Rather than handing out grants with minimal repayment pressure — often abused and never recovered — Kadish proposed co-investment models, tax incentives and tighter public-private partnerships that reward both performance and transparency. South Africa's current grant schemes, by contrast, often suffer from weak repayment enforcement, limited milestone tracking and low auditability.
'Let the government earn upside too,' he argued. 'Let's get creative with how we fund risk.'
Shepherding from incubators to ecosystems
Patel warned against romanticising incubators or JSE boardroom mentorships as panaceas to the real challenges that those starting businesses really face.
'Executives aren't entrepreneurs,' noted Patel. 'They have different skill sets — and while their advice can be valuable, it's not always informed by the daily triage of early-stage entrepreneurship.'
He highlighted initiatives at Regent Business School like the RED (Regent Enterprise Development) Hub, where students blend theory, practice and entrepreneurship into job-making ventures. Projects like biowaste-to-energy converters and automated irrigation rigs are already showing promise.
The real ask of regulation: enabling, not overreach
If there was one message from both speakers, it was this: the government must enable, not entangle.
Patel put it plainly: 'We need electricity. Roads. Data access that's not the most expensive in the world. Regulation that protects, not paralyses.'
Kadish agreed, offering a crucial perspective on the importance of basic infrastructure in enabling an environment that facilitates business development, contrasting South Africa with a country in a much more challenging situation. 'Even in Ukraine, under bombardment, the trains run. The lights stay on. Here, it often feels like war just trying to keep your bakery open,' he said.
'We talk about SMEs being critical,' concluded Moodley. 'But until support becomes accessible at scale, it's just talk.'
For a country that claims SMEs are the future, South Africa has a long way to go in making that future viable. DM