Township Spaza Counsellors and the Price of Advice

There’s a red plastic table at the back of Mma Lethabo’s spaza. It’s not the main counter. That space is reserved for NikNaks, candles, and airtime recharges, the daily hustle. The red table is tucked behind the freezer that hums with quiet fatigue, past the racks of Sunlight bars and sugar sachets. It’s not official. There’s no signage. No appointment book. But it’s where people go when they need answers the stock sheet can’t provide.

In Diepkloof, in parts of Tembisa, in dusty corners of Gqeberha and Katlehong, there’s often a place like this. A shop where you can buy bread and get your heart examined. Where the owner knows the last three people you dated and will tell you plainly who was a waste of time and who you let go too early. It’s not therapy, not in the way brochures at clinics describe it. But the impact? Unmistakable. Spaza counsellors are the quiet linchpins of emotional survival in neighbourhoods where formal services are too far, too expensive, or too ashamed to admit they’re needed.

People sit at Mma Lethabo’s table for many reasons. Some come to talk about cheating husbands. Others need advice on which cousin to lend money to, or how to say no without starting family war. One girl, seventeen, came last month just to sit in silence and drink Mageu while her mother shouted into a phone outside. Mma Lethabo didn’t press her. Just gave her a piece of dry wors, slid it across the table, and let the moment be whatever it needed to be. That’s the real gift here. Listening without a clipboard. Offering kindness without an invoice.

It didn’t start this way. Years ago, the table was used for sorting stock. Then, slowly, people began to stay after paying. They’d linger. A “How are you?” would become a ten-minute update on someone’s child who dropped out, a brother locked up, or a neighbour accused of witchcraft. The community, starved for safe spaces, built one out of convenience and habit. Over time, it became known,  if you want someone to listen without judgment, go to the back of Lethabo’s. Sit at the red table.

There are boundaries, unspoken but firm. You don’t record. You don’t gossip outside. And you bring something, maybe not money, but respect. Some people leave behind coins. Others bring vetkoek, or stories of small triumphs. A man once brought a used office chair he found on the side of the road. He said Mma deserved to sit on something softer. She still uses it. It squeaks when she leans back during hard conversations.

The advice given isn’t always gentle. “You’re being stupid, sisi,” she’s said before, when someone returned to a man who had put her in the hospital. “He doesn’t love you. He loves that you still believe he can change.” Other times, her words are so soft they land like prayers. “It wasn’t your fault, mfethu. And you don’t have to carry it forever.”

The people who sit there aren’t looking for perfection. They’re looking for someone who remembers. Someone who doesn’t need to be told the whole backstory every time. Someone who knows that advice given under fluorescent lights and government forms isn’t the same as the kind that comes while you’re eating a boiled egg and watching the sun stretch across the shack roofs.

Men come too. Not many. But enough. Some drop off money for wives or girlfriends and then stay, awkwardly, holding a cooldrink. Eventually, they talk. About jobs that don’t come back. About the pressure to always appear okay. About being scared of failing quietly. Mma listens. She doesn’t make them less afraid. But she doesn’t make them feel weak for admitting it.

These spaza counsellors exist all over. In different bodies. With different chairs. Some sit outside under umbrellas. Others invite you behind the counter when no one’s around. They don’t all call it advice. Some say it’s just “talking.” Some say it’s gossip with a purpose. But the effect is always the same, someone walks in heavy and walks out lighter. Even if just for a day.

They aren’t paid therapists. They don’t pretend to be. But in a country where therapy is often priced like luxury and healing is still whispered about, these spaces matter. They’re immediate. They’re familiar. And most importantly, they’re consistent. You don’t need to call. You don’t need a diagnosis. You just need R10 for a Coke and the courage to sit down.

The cost of being the one people turn to is real. Mma Lethabo sleeps with headaches some nights. Too many people, too many sorrows. Her own pain sometimes gets buried under other people’s. But she doesn’t complain. “It’s the job,” she says. Not the job of the shop. The job of being trusted.

Sometimes she closes early. Not because the fridge is empty or the shelves are bare. But because she’s tired of carrying secrets that don’t belong to her. She’ll hang a little sign, “Back at 4”, and walk to her niece’s house for tea. She laughs there, belly-deep. No advice. No wisdom. Just rest. Because even counsellors need to stop fixing people long enough to feel whole themselves.

No one gives out awards for this kind of work. There’s no government title. No NGO programme. But in the hearts of those who’ve sat at the red plastic table, there’s a quiet shrine. A memory. A moment when someone saw them. Heard them. Didn’t ask for anything but honesty and maybe R5 for bread.

And that’s the price of advice here. A soft chair. A few minutes of trust. Maybe a sweet. Maybe a sigh. But always, always, a sense that someone stayed long enough to care.