Hope for retail's future rests on the rickety foundations of the exploding number of spaza shops, tuckshops and other services in the townships, the informal and the traffic-light traders, says Vic Snyders, retail director of property service company McCreedy Friedlander.

A recent survey by a local NGO shows that 80% of township retailers had left regular employment to take up an opportunity in the townships.

Snyders said to Financial Mail that as most corner stores were being put out of business and even large retail centres fail, embattled retailers should look at the townships. 'The future is in the hands of the small trader - we must build up their skills again,' he says. Snyders is lobbying the government to supply funds to this end.

There was a flicker of growth in small stores when a flood of government officials took early retirement and spent their pensions on new shops or franchises in the second half of the Nineties. But a large number lost their life savings, and every time an oversized centre opens, a dozen more join them.

Now, however, it is a time of great opportunity for privately owned and managed shopping centres, says George Skinner, executive director of the SA Council of Shopping Centres