cinema-theater movie chain in 
Safrica basically went bankrupt in most South African cities and malls.
Earlier this year I learned from my sister that a mall which we would frequent in our halfway point, towards visiting her and/or our parents from the long distance we live apart, so we could burn time and wait for the other family members to arrive by going to the arcade and playing ten-pin-bowling - had closed down its Cinemas! It was called the Kollonade Mall in Sinoville Suburb in Pretoia, which i had in my younger years thought to be a gigantic mall prior to having stepped foot in actually really big places like Cape Town
I thought this shocking at the time, because for Safrica it was definitively on the bigger tiers of malls and cinema theaters, with a good central location, amongst a relatively wealthy upper class district for both black and white residents, so a diverse appeal, and STILL the fricking place just went bankrupt and closed down. If such a well placed place couldn't make it, then many many smaller cinemas must have been truly brutalized by the Post-Covid world in RSA.
SA CINEMAS IN DURESS:
After casual research it has come to my attention that post 2020 Lockdowns, that Safrica cinemas have in reality been on a perpetual death spiral, and has basically been doing nothing but hemorrhaging money for 3 fricking years. This surprised me as, a turbo neurodivergent dramatard, I had not exactly gone to cinemas post-Covid at all in like 4 years, except for the famous Tom Cruise Top Gun sequel movie with my sister and parents - as apparently had many other extended family members and acquaintances; to the extent that I learned , that literally no one I knew by name had literally fricking gone even once to the cinemas for a movie other than the Top Gun movie since 2020 even once, yikes 
But as I had discussed with family members, whom tend to be more normie than me, and many actually having gone to cinemas, or knew friend groups who go to cinemas (cuz i pirate literally everything i watch with zero shame 
) I began to gather together why the cinemas had actually struggled so badly.
COVID LOCKDOWN'S EFFECT ON SA:
1st, many city goers, from children to adults had learned to become "lazy", in the sense of going out, in the 12-18 months of lockdown we had in south africa, a large amount of people had learned to bypass their usual services or recreational activities or outings. Things like gym, a lot of fitness freaks would buy homemade gym equipment or those standing exercise-cycles or playmats to sweat on at home as the lockdowns dragged into months. So they weren't lazy in the sense physical exercise, but the will to even exit their homes, and go about and do cityslicker things like outings and restaurants and bars ect
Additionally many restaurants, as I can imagine was the pattern globally, went fricking bankrupt, thus depriving many peeps of their favorite places, and especially niche restaurants like turkish bars, or sushi places, or kraut restaurants, and only large chains remained or those who were lucky or could venture into other money making schemes. It should be noted that these were not rich white people paces where only the upper 1% of turbo priviledged Huwhitoids frequented. Since democratization, RSA has held a large black middle class, which also added a market for restaurants, so many blacks would frequent these middle-class "once a month" restaurants as they were sometimes referred to, as they were certainly way more expensive than even steers, KFC, or any fast food slop, but not so, that city people could not afford the self-indulgence of high style food every now and then. It should also be noted that food is much cheaper than places like Burgerland, which is in stark contrast to all other things, as burgers has immense buying power with their meagre wages, even adjusted for global spending power.
So i want to impress upon dramatards, that these various ethnic and niche restaurants closing down being a tragedy, isn't just a bunch a bunch of turbo neurodivergent mega fancy upper class rich people 
because they dont have rich mayos coming to feast anymore while poor black peeps starve - they were genuinely by the standards of south africa, not outside the reach or patronage of half of south africans before the pandemic - thus the closure of much of these ethnic food specialist restaurants, INCLUDING traditional african shabine food places, which catered with traditional Xhosa, Zulu, pedi and sotho foods, also took hard hits by the r*ped south african economy. It truly was a tragedy for South Africans, in terms of a vast closure of many of their spectacular food diversity, at least in big cities like Cape Town, Pretoria, Joburg, Durban ect.
The food industry is recovering, and much of these food specialist places are reopening as the economy slowly recovers post Lockdown-r*pe, sort off. Point being, a lot of City-Slickers have become further "lazy" in going out, as their choices for recreational activities, like restaurant diversity, especially the good ones, took a massive hit; fewer people like to go out to fricking Spur or Steers, than traditional african cuisine. Spur might be nice for sending your kid to birthday without having to worry at cleaning up the mess afterwards with the little rugrats, but it's hardly the most romantic restaurant, especially for those who can afford better.
Additionally, at least for South Africans (i do not know if other nation's people behave at all similarly), many peeps here like combine outings with a food-somehting, and an entertanment-thing - in other words, to go watch a movie and then to the restaurant of choice, or go eat a meal at a fancy place, then see something at the State theatre, and so on. Cuz usually it is the pull of both these events which make a recreational night "whole" at least for many people i knew, both at Pretoria amongst mayos, and the coloureds I knew at Cape Town during my studies. And while I cannot offer anything but my anecdotal experience, I swear I saw the same behaviour manifesting among black peeps who had become middle class copying whites, in that they would combine their weekend excursions with both a food- and recreational-thing; a restaurant and movie to complete the evening; ESPECIALLY for black families and white families.
COURIERS:
With the loss of so many worthwhile restaurants, it is almost like half of the pull of cultural or recreational stuff pulling city people out of their homes during vacation or weekends out of their homes, had disappeared. And fewer than before 2020 went out as regularly, additionally something else happened in 2020 lockdowns - the discovery delivery shuttles and package delivery companies like Takealot (South Africa's Amazon).
People began to learn the habit of delivering not just obscure things which were hard/impossible to get during lockdowns without a permit, but would deliver entire week's worth of groceries and even daily fricking meals holy smokes.
https://gadget.co.za/delivery-sa/
========(from article)
A brand's delivery experience is among key reasons why consumers would shop from them again. Delivery value is critical to their repeat purchase and as important as the customer journey, the price, the quality of the item and the after-sales support.
The delivery landscape has changed dramatically, and courier companies are scrambling to improve their services that aim to meet the demands of the market and their customers. Standard delivery is a thing of the past; if companies are not offering cutting edge delivery services, through own- or third-party suppliers, they will get left behind.
Widely reported, the rise of a quick commerce service has changed the playing field, and many retailers are rushing to catch up by offering an on-demand delivery service that meets their customers' needs, fast.
Amazon's entrance into the local market in early 2023 is another reason why all brands – not just grocery retailers – need to up their delivery ante, as the retail behemoth is globally known for its super-fast delivery that is often free.
The local ecommerce delivery marketplace is set for a giant shake-up once Amazon opens its doors on our shores. Customers very quickly get used to one brand's service, and immediately expect it from another. Same-day and instant delivery are now the norm. This puts local retailers in a tight spot if they are to retain their customer base, they need a solid fast go to market strategy and make delivery affordable to the customer.
SUPERMARKET COURIER SERVICES BEGIN:
It became so extreme that many big SA supermarket-chains like Checkers/Spar/Game and others have launched the service of delivering via these motorcycle couriers, the weekly groceries for people ranging from the elderly (to whom this service is a godsend), to the plain middle aged (whom are actual lazy lardbuckets). This service is of course not at all economical, and adds up heavily over time, but the sheer convenience for many peeps has had them transformed into a group of people who basically never ever leaves their homes, outside of for work. It's astonishing how much of south african peeps, black, white, & coloured has become shut ins.
My parents claim on both sides of their neighbours that they have never seen them leave their homes since the 2021 lockdowns ended, in the sense, that there are constant courier deliviries for both daily meals and other obscure shit like chairs and other things which normal people would just fricking go and shop for in presence like functional members of society 
My mother, who is a teacher for 35 years in safrica, claims that there has been drastic loss of participation in sports, in music groups, in choirs, any extracurricular activities, and that she can see through the behaviour both parents and children had learned a laziness of never exiting their homes, and doing anything outside of obligations like school or work, even if they can easily afford to do so - she claims this is not at all poverty related like transport costs for children, but a behaviour change.
THE PROLIFERATION OF FIBER AND STREAMING-SERVICES IN SA DURING COVID-LOCKDOWNS:
Lastly one other thing which Safrican have learned from the Lockdowns, which has had a direct effect upon the cinema-going behaviour of RSA peeps. That's streaming services like Netflix and HBO, and Disney+ and other shit. A lot of people were stuck with obvious boredom, and a lot of development of the 1st fibre-internet lines had coincided with the period of 2018-2020, where fiber companies were joked to be the BIGGEST winners of lockdown, as people clamoured to sign up to fast internet in the long enduring lockdown months
Basically most fiber companies had expected to take 5-10 years to make their infrastructure placement money back, as it would, by historical standards, make many years for safricans not using fiber internet to give a darn and see need for fast internet at home - with lockdowns, an acceleration never predicted, made the fiber internet companies fricking gangbusters, as entire neighbourhoods clammoured to get internet access for whatever reason, many of that for streaming-services like Netflix, to alleviate their excruciating boredom.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52376022
The consequences of these online video shit is that many many boomers, old people, and the tech illiterate, which had previously been daunted in interacting with something as seemingly ethereal as viewing movies or series online instead of on cable TV, were now aided by their kids also stuck at home, or their more tech-savvy neighbours, to take the plunge into a new and alien world of entertainment previously unheard or even unthought of.
Where previously it was an exclusively teenager and student thing to watch Netflix or HBO on streaming on the internet, a large influx of old people now also became customers, as the alternative for entertainment tended to be the monopoly of DSTV cable television, whose quality had heavily degraded from its heyday since 2000-2010 (in South Africa), and many people were additionally motivated by the prospect of being able to watch what they wanted, when they wanted, and how much ever they wanted continiously instead of waiting for the next week to pass, to check the next episode - which during normal working times was easily berable, but during the extended boredom of lockdown, made even waiting a single day for the next series' episode completely unbearable.
Combined with increasing group pressure, and social fads highlighted in WhatsAppp groupd, and word-of-mouth transfer between old lady gossip groups, virtually every white and black boomer capable of affording it, would be subscribed to some time of online streaming service, like Netflix, or Disnetyx or whatever was their specific fancy.
Many boomers would also buy new and better TVs during this period, as the market crashing all around RSA, mad electronic appliances much cheaper than ever before. Many even poor peeps would be able to afford an ultra wide LCD screen, and replace their old projector screen, I wonder how many zoomers are able to even recall these old projector screens, and why we call a Screensaver, an actual screensaver.
In 2020-2021, SO MANY BOOMERS would replace their literal 10-20 year old TVS with modern widescreen LCD 22041490 inch TVs, as many people live in behavioral comfort and repetition of their daily lives, and become use to their devices even if they are outmoded and junk. So so so many boomers upgraded their TVs simply because these old analogue things could not even accept stuff like USBs and other more modern connectors to connect a cable with laptops, or the LAN cable for internet or whatever, so that the image from a laptop or Desktop could be broadcasted onto their new Plasma Screen LED LCD Tvs 
CINEMA EXPERIENCES STARTED TO SUCK ANYWAY:
Anyways point being, that many boomers and old people, those most with disposable income would become use to the convenience of home theater movies in their own homes, streamed at their leisure in their favorite couch and being able to pause the series or show at any time to watch tomorrow and so on.
For a lot of people the rowdiness of lunchtime rowdies in cinemas had already become a problem even pre-2020 pandemic lockdowns, and the convenience which this audience found away from cinemas, would cut deeply into Ster-Kinor's margins.
Additionally, there had become widespread belief that post 2019-2020, that movies were becoming weaker and more generic, especially from the big brands like Disney and Marvel. Marvel had finished their magnum opus in End Game, and many marvel strags would basically exit the fandom, having had their fun to its conclusion, and didn't care much for the shitty "Phase 4" (i think thats it? I half remember from my friend) which would exhibit mediocre obscure characters which no one knew, or at least no normies which held the income power for cinemas, knew about.
All of these factors would combine together to really lower the amount of feet entering Ster-Kinor cinemas in a post 2020 world. Even more factors like the expensive food of cinemas worked against them. As the lower audience numbers caused lower revenue for Ster-Kinor cut into their margins, they were forced to make money elsewhere, like raising the prices of their food, which traditionally where a lot of cinemas already made their money - a lot of peeps already grumbles about expensive cinema-food, and now Ster-Kinor were making these crowds even LESS reluctant to attend cinemas, when they could just as easily view high quality movies in the comfort of their own home couches, and having cooked their own favorite food and snacks for a fraction of the costs.
And so the death-spiral continued its downwards trend 
FINAL DEATH KNELL FOR STERK-KINOR: SOUTH AFRICAN LOADSHEDDING 
But the final nail in the coffin, was loadshedding. There was the occasional loadshedding in RSA prior to 2020, but it was only in 2021-2022 where it began to increase, and finally in 2022-2023 where loadshedding became so frequent and so disruptingly devastating that the government had to create a timetable for every district, suburb and neighbourhood, which they could plan their time and workhours around, as sos many infrastructure associated with the leectricity grid of SA, which ESKOM had mismanaged for 25 years no came to the logical conclusion of breaking down on a national scale.
Places like butcheries and supermarkets which had to freeze or cool their meat and fruits in the hot african sun, even indoors, were especially hard hit, and the sight and sound of diesel generators running in the streets of the CBD of every town and city of RSA during midday working hours became commonplace, as these poor places had a work environment where they simply could not just shut-down for 2-4 hours at a time, and due to the nature of their produce. contuining with the examples of butcheries, they had to buy special automated generators which kicked into action if they detected the main ESKOM power supply to have shut down. Let's just say the generator and solar-panel business would thrive in this period 
But one of the businesses which I personally had not realized was hard hit by the Loadshedding was cinemas, like Ster-Kinor. Loadshedding was always supposed to occur during prescribed times, given by each municipal timetable. However frickups continued to occur, as many coalstations would collapse as they were under the pressure of covering the heavier burden left by their sister stations, thus increasing the rate of wear and tear. The scenario as follows would occur often during 2022: of 1 of 5 stations per municipal mega-district, would break down. Then the load of having to provide for the same amount of people as all 5 stations, the remaining 4 would be at a higher pressure of work than they were ever designed for, because of corruption and ANC stupidity, when FINALLy competent engineers and technicians (usually whites) would be allowed to arrive and fix shit, another fricking station or generator would have exploded from the excess burden. Thus a continious spiral of fixing the broken stations would occur in an r-slured whack a mole fahsion. 
Thus even OUTSIDE the prescribed loadshedding timetables, blackouts from destroyed stations or generations would continiously occur before rerouting electricity could be dome by electrical engineers or r-slur technicians who were responsible for flipping a switch they did not know how it worked.
This meant disaster for cinemas when interrupted, few places could afford the mega-generators to supply power for a half dozen theaters, and the lights, and the cashier stations and all of the fricking power needed to run such an obscene amount of power.
https://www.facebook.com/sterkinekortheatres/photos/a.408652506649/10152528347396650/
Even way back as 2015, Ster-Kinor had the policy of refunding movie-tickets, or allowing the rebooking for another time slot. It was this policy which had helped them become the most popular cinema chain in the country to begin with. When Loadshedding occurred in their catastrophic degree in 2022, Ster-Kinor would continue the policy of just outright refunding their customers or rebooking, which unfortunately was a financial disaster for the comany. 
The company would go to great degree to try and continue regular movie schedules, to at least air their catalogue of movies in periods in the day not affected by loadshedding, but even if our r-slurred government actually kept to the fricking timetables, this STILL meant often less than half the timeframe for places like Ster-Kinor where they were able to air their movies, thus cutting their maximum amount of capable "working hours" in which they could generate business by between a 3rd to half, depending on the stage of loadshedding. Sometimes in places like pretoria, it was 2 hours of laodshedding every 6 hours, and sometimes it was so bad to be 4 hours of power followed by 4 hours of loadshedding consecutively.
As you guys can imagine these would be unbearable working conditions for many companies completely reliant on outside power sources.
SOME ARTICLES:
All of this especially tragic as back in the post Lockdown period, for a short time in 2021, it actually appeared that the company of Ster-Kinor was recovering from the strict procedures which restricted large gatherings of people.
=====(from reuters article)
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 11 (Reuters) - South African cinema group Ster-Kinekor has exited a local form of bankruptcy protection called "business rescue" after nearly two years, its administrator said on Friday.
Ster-Kinekor was placed under administration in January 2021, citing losses and financial distress due to COVID-19 and related restrictions forcing closures and prohibiting large gatherings in public spaces.
Meanwhile studios either postponed blockbusters or released them directly on home streaming platforms, denting box office earnings.
Its business rescue practitioner, Stefan Smyth, said in a statement the rescue process, which returns the company to solvency, involved raising capital of 250 million rand ($14.50 million) from UK based asset manager, Blantyre Capital and from South African asset manager Greenpoint Capital.
Ster-Kinekor, which operates 52 commercial cinema complexes in South Africa, also renegotiated lease agreements with landlords, which were a material condition for the conclusion of the transaction.
"Not only does this investment give the business a solid foundation on which to build its future, it has also meant that some 800 jobs have been retained and a dividend has been paid to creditors as proposed in the accepted plan," Smyth said.
Smyth noted that cinema attendance is picking up since the "stellar" performance of "Top Gun: Maverick" and the attendance is expected to continue to improve further into the holiday season with eagerly awaited additional films being released like "Avatar: The way of water" and "Black Panther 2".
====(end)
There was even a financial bailout in 2022!!
========(from news24 article)
UK- and Cape Town-based asset managers have thrown a lifeline to South Africa's biggest cinema group, Ster-Kinekor, pumping in R250 million to help the company get out of business rescue and keep entertaining cinephiles for longer.
"Ster-Kinekor's business rescue practitioner, Stefan Smyth, has successfully concluded the business rescue process. The transaction … returns the company to solvency," read the business rescue practitioner's (BRP) statement issued on Friday.
Ster-Kinekor, which has about 65% of market share in SA, entered voluntary business rescue in January 2021 after Covid-19 lockdowns forced it to halt operations temporarily, and people didn't return in droves when the government started lifting restrictions.
"We are very pleased that we were able to raise the necessary capital to rescue Ster-Kinekor. Not only does this investment give the business a solid foundation on which to build its future, it has also meant that some 800 jobs have been retained, and a dividend has been paid to creditors as proposed in the accepted plan. Trade creditors will further benefit from ongoing trading with the company," said Smyth.
However, Smyth noted that the cinema landscape in SA was still challenging and made worse by elevated load shedding. He still hoped that cinema attendance would improve in the coming months with the release of The Woman King and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and remained of the firm view that there are reasonable prospects of rescuing the cinema group.
And as he predicted then, Smyth said the group had started seeing a pick-up and expects further improvement into the festive season. Movies like Top Gun: Maverick, Thor, Beast, and DC League of Superpets proved popular with cinema-goers.
"We thank all the Ster-Kinekor employees, creditors and relevant stakeholders and new shareholders whose efforts assisted us in exiting business rescue and creating a foundation for its future. Our thanks also go to our loyal customer following, and we look forward to entertaining you with new formats and great new content in the future," added Smyth.
======(end quote)
And soon many branches of Ster-Kinekor would close down one after the other. 
And the tragic story goes on and on
https://x.com/sterkinekor/status/770683966282166272
And uhhh that's all I got. 
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