Returning to Zamu Centre in Umlazi

I would have liked to post earlier but the "load shedding" (Eskom's euphemism for the allegedly scheduled but still unpredictable rolling blackouts) kept my power out for much of the evening.  I took a nap because there wasn't anything else to do and then, when I couldn't sleep any longer, sat in the dark eating bananas and the other food I had in my apartment that didn't require electricity to prepare it.  Today I returned to Umlazi and visited Mrs. Gambushe at Zamukuziphilisa Community Centre to work with her on developing materials for a proposal to Tradepoint:  South Africa Durban, a transnational governmental and non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist "SMMMEs [small, medium, micro-enterprises] to Access Global Markets."  The Tradepoint located here reaches out to SMMMEs in the area to market and produce items from KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) to be sold elsewhere (usually where other Tradepoints exist).  They also attempt to place items from other Tradepoint-serviced areas within the KZN region.  Currently they are looking for KZN products to promote and sell on Reunion Island.  I worked with Mrs. G to gather information so I can draft a "letter of motivation" that includes her company details, production descriptions for the particular range of items she wants Tradepoint to consider, and to cost and create pricing information and tagging for the three items she has selected for consideration.

When we talked about costing the items, Mrs. Gambushe pulled out a ledger that marked her expenses for the three products that noted the labor time each item took as well as the cost of materials.  She figured a 68% of materials cost profit amount above labor, overhead, and materials cost.  Considering how to price labor amazed me the most.  She suggested a day of handicraft (in this case, some sewing and a predominance of beading) labor here in the Durban metropolitan area should be compensated by R40.  With the current exchange rate, that is a little over $5 US per day.  Inflation here has increased (to give a sense of average costs - a public taxi in town one way is R3, a loaf of bread can range from R3.50 - R7.00, and 1 liter of milk can range from R4-8 depending on the container it is sold in).  I don't know if R40/day is a "living wage" for this area, even with the average costs I have provided.  Defining something like a "living wage" is more complicated and locally dependent than many universal human rights and international labor organizations often concede. 

Even with what seemed to be an appallingly low wage to me, she and I both had concerns the products may end up being too costly for the "tourist/souvenir" market which they will likely be intended for in Reunion Island.  Referencing an assertion I made yesterday, handwork/handicrafts takes time - it can be an incredibly time-intensive low technology - and its value on average don't seem to match the amount of labor that it requires.  So why do "developing" areas and nongovernmental organizations repeatedly turn to small craft production as a way to generate income?  There are a lot of ways to start answering this question, but I suppose the question I have been considering tonight, will the predominance of handwork from "developing" areas continue to compensate so little for labor?

Comments

[Mark]

i don't know what the specific situation is there in SA, but i know that the standard wage for "day labor" type jobs in PNG was much lower than that. one of the primary differences, though, was the fact that the money people made at those jobs was purely supplemental - all of their essential needs were covered by subsistence farming. everyone had a small patch of land to grow veges (sweet potato and various greens being the staples), and villages usually had a larger area of land on which to grow communal crops, like coffee, that would be sold (with profits divided out amongst the members of the village.

not that i'm trying to justify the situation - there were overseas based companies that could have afforded to pay more for the labor, but the local economy would have been hard pressed to support what we consider a "living wage."

[mar]

Your example is actually really helpful Mark. It's not as though we can set a basic monetary threshold and say everyone, everywhere on earth deserves to make that amount per hour or per day for a "living wage" because it ignores local situations. Your example wasn't justifying - it showed a local situation where the economic system is just different from what people in the U.S. might recognize (particularly because farming to us usually means giant, government subsidized, monoculture, cash-crop farming).

There is a really great edited collection by Hesford and Kozol called _Just Advocacy?_ where they argue how problematic it is to make arguments for universal human rights that are too culturally specific or tied up with problematic economic system valuations.

Instead critics have started creating different universal thresholds, like a human right should be everyone has access to a healthful amount of nutrition needed to support their activities. In Umlazi there is some subsistence farming and small animal tending (chickens and goats) that people rely on, but not everyone can get the property/space to do that, so there are still a lot of people slipping through the cracks. Also, I'm still horrified at how the most affordable diet choices here have often been refined so much they're absolutely horrible for your body (like chemically bleached and synthetically enriched white bread).

[Mark]

Actually, I should clarify one thing from my previous post: I said "everyone," but I forgot to mention that this really only applies to people living in the rural villages. Wages are a pretty big issue for people living in the cities, as there is less land available on which they can farm. It's one of the issues that has arisen as a direct result of the haphazard introduction of western-style education, economics, and government by Australia. The cities tend to be the places where western and tribal culture come into direct conflict and cause a lot of problems for the people. The rural areas are a little better off, although the younger generations are less inclined to want to stay in the tribes due to the fact that they feel too educated (there's "mandatory" commonwealth-style education up to the 8th grade). This has led to the development of a lot of slum areas around the cities and a steep rise in urban crime.