(I wrote this article for Port Elizabeth's daily newspaper, The Herald, it first appeared there on 20 June 2011)
The other day I went to watch our local rugby team play at our local stadium. Some local friends and I have taken a suite at the stadium to support the local economy. So, there I was, drinking some local beer and having a good time. At half time we were brought a meal to help soak up some of the alcohol. After complimenting the waitress on the meal, I was horrified as she explained that the Thai Chicken dinner had in fact been pre-cooked in Cape Town and brought in by truck up the N2 that morning. Come On! Could this be?
This meal was creating employment for someone in a Cape Town factory kitchen? What are we thinking? No, I am not picking on the stadium management. I am sure they are doing a great job. I am picking on us, all of us who live here and who need to develop an awareness that we need to support and grow our local economy. This is where jobs and poverty reduction will come from. It is unfashionable to say this I know, but we must come to see that it is more urgent for us to take action against poverty than against global warming. We must come to see that is more urgent for us to address the local economy than to address Rhino poaching. If we allow this poverty time bomb to explode, it will take out every Rhino, every Elephant, every forest and everything that this country has built up over the centuries. It’s urgent!
I had forgotten about my Cape Town cooked rugby meal by the time the May 18 local government elections came around. But, as I listened to the campaigning, I was struck by how few ideas at all were put forward about issues impacting on the local economy. All I got was a lot of hype about killing Boers, media bias, open toilets and police brutality.
I heard no-one, contesting these elections, articulate any understanding of the challenges facing the local economy. This is odd, because local government can and should play a pivotal role in leading us out of poverty and joblessness. We must, of course, be informed by policy developed at a national or provincial level, but our strategy and tactics need to be made completely relevant to the local economy. It is not clear to me from anything I have heard from local government, what our strategy and tactics are. It seems though, that we have developed the idea that we need “outside investment” or an “export programme” to get our local economy to work. We seem to believe that we need GM to get deals that see’s it export more Hummers to Kazakhstan, or that we need to build an IDZ so we can export Aluminium to Argentinean cooldrink can fabricators! We have come to think that we will be rescued by big investment from “outside”. We believe that somehow these actions will make the poor less poor. I am sorry to say, our thinking is mistaken. In order for us to reduce poverty and create jobs, we desperately need to focus on not only on getting new money to come in, but also on how we ensure that he money that is generated here remains for as long as possible. We must work to ensure that money circulates locally as many times as possible before it vanishes to the coffers of transnational corporations in Johannesburg, Hong Kong or London. This is the challenge that our small city is facing. It is not the same as the challenges that Cape Town, Durban or Dubai are faced with. It is our own challenge. It is a distinctly local challenge and in desperate need of local thinking and local leadership.
Each of you reading this will know how in your homes and in your jobs illogical purchasing decisions are being made all the time. As transnational corporations work harder and harder to expand their global reach, we find ourselves making more and more stupid decisions. We buy Irish butter , we get our takeaway from an American hamburger chain, our cars, even those made in the metro, are in some way part of a scheme to enrich a German or Japanese corporation. We watch foreign TV. We listen to American music. Every time we purchase from these transnational corporations we are taking away from the local economy, we take away from local culture, we damage the environment through waist, emissions and packaging. But what can we do?
Perhaps the first step we must all take is to help each other understand that “localisation” (not Globalisation) of the economy is: Good for the environment, Good for job creation, Good for quality, Good for well-being. Maybe the second step could be to build consciousness through our purchasing decisions. We could buy milk from a local dairy. We could support local restaurants (avoid the chains) We could switch off the TV, watch Bay United or the EP Kings at our local stadiums. We could catch a show at the Opera House. We could buy our food at a farmer’s market. We could start a farmers market! We could grow our own food. We could sell our own food. ….I don’t know. There must be a million things we can do to localise our economy. Let’s choose one, and do it today. It’s Urgent.
