Business Day
21 August 2026
The future, may lie off the beaten track. In market ‘forms’ different to the archetypical profit maximizing firm. Much is often said about how export co-operatives rule the roost in Brazilian poultry exports or that a considerably growing share of auto-component volumes globally, are associated with firms linked to the well-known Spanish co-operative movement, Mondragon. Co-operatives in South Africa, however, are much further off the boil relative to these examples; subject to considerably inequality in the extent of organization, market penetration and reach, notwithstanding the historical advances seen in the white co-operative movement in agriculture or the ‘tuisnywherheid’ of the tannies in the home industries.
The difficulties in making significant advances in the social economy, remains a sore point in the evolution of the post-Apartheid economy. This was on display in a recent trip to a historic coastal village on the Sunshine Coast of the Eastern Cape.
The turn leftward from the R72 that connects kuGompo (East London) and Port Alfred (set to be iQhoyi, or not, if the ratepayers of the scenic coastal town have a say in that) winds into a narrow, but recently tarred road. Speed regulating ‘humps’ aplenty, in the stretch that winds down to the coast. Signs directing one to the many historical marvels dot the side of the roadway – the old church in the village of Bell, and the nearby graves of the German Legion that fought for the British in the Crimean war, accompany this stretch that is disrupted further south, by roadworks. Improvements to the stretch of the road, shared with passing cows and goats, and a ‘stop and go’ (with little stopping on this day), but soon thereafter, the glimmer of the estuary fed by the Keiskamma river that runs into the sea.
Hamburg, the German mercenaries named this river mouth. The African communities of the area that would be known as Peddie called it the ‘place of the shellfish’ in their own language, long before the German legion shared it with them. It is a place of great art, rich cultural artefacts and warm people. It is a site as I uncovered in the research for my book, ‘New’ Settler or ‘Old’ Tenant? of longstanding contestations between grain and livestock farmers over labour supply requirements and the vexing matter of ‘tenancy’.
Perhaps, as I would shortly discover, it is also a place of great ‘striving’. Two co-operatives, with an overlapping membership illustrate this. The one co-operative, working with a technical partner, farms oysters on a micro-scale in the estuary as it flows into the sea, and a few kilometres around the winding hill, the sewing co-operative makes gender specific clothing for significant cultural events such as home-coming ceremonies, weddings and kaftans and dashiki. The sewing group operates from a space afforded them by a recently departed global NGO that was operating in the area, and much like other similar co-operatives are an embroidery machine or too away from a more predictable and voluminous order flow. The secretary of the Siyazama Oyster Co-operative, Thembakazi Faliso (also a member of the sewing co-operative) tells me that they’ve been working at the estuary since 2012. She has seen through many visitors (Ministers, portfolio committees and other ‘cognoscenti’ of the oceans economy) and numerous plans (least of all during the Operation Phakisa era). Over a decade on, they are a group of 25 committed community members (mostly women), who have learnt a lot about aquaculture (and the clothing sector).
Cawe is Chief Commissioner at the International Trade Administration He writes in his personal capacity.