Diepsloot Woman Earns R60,000 a Month Selling Braai Chicken and Pap

• Miss Mafumo built a thriving food business called Hile Kaya in Diepsloot, Johannesburg, serving braaied chicken, steak, and pap to local residents
• Her monthly revenue of R60,000 puts her annual earnings at around R720,000, making her one of many unsung township entrepreneurs
• Her story sheds light on South Africa's informal economy, and how entrepreneurship is the way to building generational wealth

Miss Mafumo runs one of Diepsloot's most quietly impressive businesses. Operating out of one of Johannesburg's most densely populated townships, her food stall, Hile Kaya, pulls in roughly R60,000 a month by doing something deceptively simple: braaiing chicken pieces, steak and serving pap to local residents who keep coming back. That monthly figure adds up to around R720,000 a year, a number that would make many formally employed South Africans take a second look.

Hile Kaya is one of thousands of informal businesses scattered across South Africa's townships, and together they form an economic force that continues to surprise analysts. According to the latest State of the Retail Nation report by NIQ South Africa, traditional trade outlets, which include spaza shops, food vendors, taverns, and independent wholesalers, generated R43.1 billion in sales during the first quarter of 2026 alone. By comparison, modern retail channels, including major supermarket chains and online platforms, recorded unit sales growth of just 1.7% over the same period.

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An economy that is hard to count

What makes this economy so difficult to assess is that it largely runs on cash, operates without formal registration, and does not appear in official government or corporate databases.

Because businesses like Hile Kaya rarely hold commercial leases or business licences, they tend to be left out of employment statistics entirely. Some economists believe the true size of South Africa's informal sector could be closer to R1 trillion, with certain estimates pushing that figure to R1.125 trillion.

Entrepreneurship builds generational wealth

Capitec Bank has previously pointed to its own merchant and transaction data as evidence that millions of small business owners and entrepreneurs exist well outside what official statistics capture. Miss Mafumo's story, a woman turning a braai grid and a bag of chicken pieces into a six-figure annual income, is a reminder of exactly what those statistics are missing.

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3 Other Briefly News stories about entrepreneurs

• A young Mpumalanga businessman's life was cut short following a deadly confrontation outside a popular eMalahleni entertainment venue.
• A young South African man is filmed running a mobile breakfast business in his township.
• Bredell faced a significant setback early in his business career, which could have ended his entrepreneurial journey.

Source: Briefly News