Born a Crime, Chapter 8

From the text, we can infer that Robert wasn't willing to fight the system.... to battle apartheid or the bureaucrats. His situation was impossible, but he did not concede.... he choosed to close.

The restaurant closed only because a few people in the neighborhood took it upon themselves to complain. They filed petitions, and the government started looking for ways to shut my dad down. At first the inspectors came and tried to get him on cleanliness and health-code violations. Clearly they had never heard of the Swiss. That failed dismally. Then they decided to go after him by imposing additional and arbitrary restrictions.

“Since you’ve got the license you can keep the restaurant open,” they said, “but you’ll need to have separate toilets for every racial category. You’ll need white toilets, black toilets, colored toilets, and Indian toilets.”

“But then it will be a whole restaurant of nothing but toilets.”

“Well, if you don’t want to do that, your other option is to make it a normal restaurant and only serve whites.”

He closed the restaurant.