This weekend has been relatively quiet - unlike the ocean, crocodiles, and giant Ridgeback puppies I got to frolic in, near, and with last weekend, I did a lot of reading and writing this weekend. For the first part of the day today I composed the documents for Mrs. Gambushe that I mentioned on Thursday in preparation for her submission of sample products to Tradepoint Durban. That put me in the role of a public relations writer where I drew on a lot of the conventions for writing about handicraft items and their producers that I have critiqued in the past. I have attached a pdf of the complete "letter of motivation describing business and products" that Tradepoint Durban requires, but in a nutshell I retold the selective history of how Mrs. Gambushe started the community centre in 1995 and its role for providing skills development in the Umlazi township area. After this retelling and providing basic information about the company, I went on to describe the objects she is offering for their consideration as a "fusion of three values that are central to the co-operative: pride in the new South Africa, pride in Zulu tradition, and pride in the possibilities for women in South Africa today." I spoke with Mrs. Gambushe about the particular products she was offering for consideration and listened to her describe them and their meaning in order to create this particular document. I have reached a point where instead of merely criticizing appeals to tradition and women's economic empowerment when it comes to promoting handicrafts, I understand these appeals function and exist as strategic rhetorical commonplaces to situate the products for audiences of retailers and consumers.
I had to do additional research to address Zamukuziphilisa Sewing and Crafts' "Black Economic Empowerment Status." The government introduced a "broad-based" plan of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) to redress the previous economic exclusion of Black populations under apartheid. The official documents are difficult for a layperson like myself to negotiate (at least over the course of a few hours) and I have noticed that there are several online services that offer fee-based assistance to help companies - from micro-enterprises to large corporations - assess their BEE status. It's somewhat like a point system, where an enterprise receives a higher BEE rating for the number and level of Black (this includes Black, Coloured, and Indian) people and women that own, run, or are employed by the company. I purchased an edited collection, Visions of Black Economic Empowerment, with commentary and critique of the system and its development that I look forward to reading. For now, I don't know enough about it, how its intricacies work, or how its implementation/enforcement is effected to take a position on it. I'm interested to know more about it.
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