He was born to immigrant Chinese parents in Wynberg, about 12km from his restaurant.

His parents came to South Africa from a small town in Canton province, now Guangdong, in 1928 “to escape communism”.

The Communists assumed power in China in 1949, years after Lee’s parents left. But Lee insisted: “My parents left China to escape communism. My current allegiance, in terms of a ‘Chinese homeland’, is Taiwan.”

South Africa’s Chinese community – about 10,000 strong today – are not descended from convicts, slaves or indentured workers.

They are distant relatives of independent migrants who began arriving in small numbers from Guangdong as early as the 1870s and continued through the mid-20th century, with many more arrivals in the last 25 years settling in major cities like Cape Town, Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.

Lee doesn’t think too much about politics. He mostly focuses on minding his own business, which has been operating successfully for 19 years.

“I haven’t personally been affected too badly by political problems, crime or xenophobia. I have three sons here who have families – with three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. None are thinking of leaving or going back to China or Taiwan,” he said.

Asked about racism in South Africa, Lee said: “Yes, when you hear people talk. But I haven’t been affected by that”.

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“I grew up in the apartheid era. In that time Japanese people were reclassified as ‘honorary whites’, but we (Chinese) weren’t. People couldn’t tell us apart, though so we (Chinese) ‘got away’ with a lot,” Lee said.

However, Lee recalled one incident in South Africa’s apartheid era which did affect him.

He and his brother had gone out for some drinks with white friends. They had been at a bar when the police arrived and arrested Lee and his brother – but none of the white people they were socialising with.

Lee was charged with breaking an apartheid law against multiracial socialising, and had to pay a fine.

Lee acknowledged that the incident had offended his “dignity as a human being”, but added that social conditions had improved since the dawn of non-racial democracy in 1994.

“I still believe in the country, but the element of crime is worrying. The government is corrupt.”

Asked if he thought South Africa’s current President Cyril Ramaphosa might be able to get the country back on track, Lee’s response was: “anybody other than Zuma”.

Ramaphosa has acknowledged that xenophobia is hampering efforts to unify South Africans.

“The spectre of racism, sexism, tribalism, xenophobia, homophobia and other forms of intolerance has on occasion taken root in our society and has blindsided us as we strive towards our national objective of creating a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and tolerant society,” he said in an address to the nation this week after the country’s Rugby World Cup triumph in Japan.

Some people, like Taiwan-born Yao-Heng Michael Sun, say the country needed new leadership.

“We need new people to take over,” said Sun, in a reference to the African National Congress (ANC) government, which inherited problems from the apartheid regime 25 years ago, and has created its own since.

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised economy, is struggling under a 29 per cent unemployment rate.

“We cannot continue with poor governance. We need to pull together; we need to make our own destiny together,” Sun said.

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“I will never forget my own culture, but South Africa is my home and will remain so.”

A member of Johannesburg’s mayoral committee for public safety, Sun has lived in South Africa since the age of 12, when his parents moved here.

He is also a senior member of the opposition Democratic Alliance, which is the lead party in a coalition that runs Africa’s most important commercial hub.

“If the country is properly on track, we can manage the problems facing us,” Sun said.

“We need appropriate measures to deal with the economy, crime and the issue of land. While I am optimistic about South Africa, we must also be realistic.”

Solutions would be hard to find if the country continued to be driven by those who had brought it so many problems, he added.

While Sun and Lee were willing to offer their perspectives on the state of South Africa, others were not so keen.

In the China Town shopping centre in Ottery, a suburb on Cape Town’s eastern flanks close to Phillipi East where there is a murder rate of over 200 per 100,000 of population, only one shop owner was prepared to speak to the Post, but requested his name not be published.

Trade unionists and local garment manufacturers have long bristled at the widespread availability of cheap Chinese clothing in South Africa.

The shop owner, whose business sells mainly Chinese-made clothing, spoke through two Malawian employees, because he knows little English.

One employee, 19-year-old Lameck Salangika, a recent immigrant to South Africa, also spoke no English but said he spent a year in China learning Mandarin.

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His colleague, Shafie Masonda, 27, has been in South Africa for three years and has good command of English, but spoke no Mandarin.

Through translations provided by his Malawian employees, the shop owner said he had no problems in the three years he had been operating in South Africa.

He liked the country and has lived here most of the time. His low-cost clothing has substantial appeal to lower income earners, as evidenced by his busy enterprise.

He said he had not had issues with non-Chinese traders nor experienced any sort of racial discrimination.

There had been some problems in the neighbouring suburb of Grassy Park a couple years ago, but nothing since then, he said in an apparent reference to violence involving local gangsters.

Over the last decade and a half there have been several rounds of violent xenophobic attacks on foreigners, some fatal, especially on those from Somalia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Malawi, with numerous homes and businesses torched.

Many of the people attacked live in semi-secluded communities, primarily for mutual protection, and most are asylum seekers or in South Africa officially as refugees.

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South Africa is home to more than 260,000 refugees and asylum seekers, according to government statistics, and they mainly come from poorer, neighbouring African countries.

Late last month, police in Cape Town arrested and later released around 100 African foreign nationals who had camped for weeks at the offices of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) there, demanding it help them leave South Africa because they feared for their safety.

While “black against black” xenophobia is part of modern South Africa’s social fabric, the Chinese diaspora has not entirely been spared from racist abuse, at least online.

Twelve respondents were alleged to have posted “humiliating and intimidating” comments online, according to The Chinese Association (TCA), a non-political, non-profit organisation that represents the interests of Chinese people in South Africa.

Online comments referred to Chinese people as “scum of the Earth” who were “vile, barbaric people”.

“One can’t feel optimistic in situations where there have been xenophobic attacks, including on Chinese people and businessmen, with comments against the Chinese on social media,” said Francis Hong, TCA’s vice-president.

“But businesspeople from China have no choice in many cases and must carry on in the hopes that the new administration can do something to make improvements in the economy especially, and in creating more jobs – because without that, crime will not diminish.

“There’s a feeling among some that we have reached the bottom of the barrel and things can only improve. But it’s going to take a long time.”