GUGULETHU Mall in Cape Town has been quiet.
Shoppers are showing up but they are very few, and there are no lines outside some shops for Black Friday.
Nomsa Mandlana (34), a shopper, said she woke up early thinking that it will be full as usual on Black Friday.
“I arrived at 6am and I thought I would see long queues but I was surprised when there were less than 10 people around the mall.
“When the shops opened I managed to go to almost all the shops in the mall which had few shoppers.
“This is strange because people always go shopping, taking advantage of sales in the shops,” said Nomsa.
Shopper Thandeka Mpofu (41) said people didn’t show up on this year’s Black Friday because they don’t have money.
“It won’t make a change even if the retailers can extend the Black Friday, we do not have money,” she said.
Amandla Sawutana (30) said Black Friday should have been cancelled this year.
“I think most people are afraid of the coronavirus and they decided to stay at their homes.
“Another contributing factor to the poor showing from shoppers is that many people lost their jobs this year because of Covid-19 and some are still trying to pay their debts,” said Amandla.
“We only have money to buy food, we are worried about Covid-19 and stressed on how are we going to get jobs back,” said Amandla.
Another shopper, Slindile Nkomo (46), said it was the first time that it was not full in Gugulethu Mall.
“This year is another year, I was shocked when I came in to see few people. This shows that Covid-19 has messed up our lives. We cannot do things that we normally do this time of the year,” she said.
The SunTeam also spoke to a cashier who didn’t want to be named.
She said: “We were shocked to see there were no queues in the morning when I arrived at work.
“Even though we have specials, the shoppers didn’t come. It’s the first time that something like this is happening, we were expecting more people and long queues but we never experienced such a thing like today,” said the cashier.