Benefits of growth stop far short of townships
November 25, 2009
 By Ann Crotty
Until two weeks ago De Doorns had limited fame as a small nondescript town at the edge of the spectacular Hex River Valley. The valley is the source of a large portion of the grapes that decorate European tables over the Christmas season.
Now De Doorns, probably built to house a population of just a few thousand, is the xenophobia capital of South Africa. On its way from long-term nondescript to its new status, De Doorns underwent amazing change. Within five years De Doorns became home, first to thousands of "immigrants" from the Eastern Cape and then to thousands more from Zimbabwe.
It's a familiar story; no resident of any of this country's cities or towns needs to drive two hours out of the city centre to see mushrooming informal townships. But De Doorns represents this familiar story in rather stark form. Apart from grape farms and the opportunity they provide for seasonal work during summer, De Doorns doesn't have a lot to offer - a few shops, lots of bottle stores and lots of churches.
That thousands reside on the outskirts of the town is a grim reflection of how desperate life is for a growing number of people. Their desperation, which predates the economic fallout from the downturn and has a depressingly permanent feel about it, must surely raise questions about whether our commitment to a free market model of capitalism is appropriate.
Tony Weaver told a fascinating story in last Friday's Cape Times about how seasonal workers in the Cape could in the past support a reasonable quality of life throughout the year by following the various harvests. "But now every small town has developed a mini-slum as the once seasonal workers stayed put because there are too many workers competing for too few jobs. Add 2 700 economic migrants from Zimbabwe, who, like economic migrants the world over are prepared to work longer and harder for less money, and the situation becomes explosive," he says. In this case "less money" is less than R60 a day.
Of course free market fundamentalists will point out that this is how supply and demand works and you interfere with it at your peril. Over the long term we will all be better off, they argue, we must just show resolve and at the very least there will be the trickle-down benefits.
The really disturbing thing is that across the country townships such as Stofland, on the edge of De Doorns, became home to millions of desperate people in one of the strongest economic growth periods in South Africa's history. The trickle-down benefits of that growth seem to have stopped short of Stofland, where tiny tin shacks perch precariously on hillsides.
The dominant role played by firms, whose only measurement is short-term profits, ensures an ever-increasing number of casualties. In Europe capitalism grew up at a predemocratic time when, and in regions where, persistent labour surpluses could be siphoned off through emigration. This eased the social pressures resulting from the steady advances in productivity that accompanied economic growth.
In 21st century South Africa we face a much different situation. Since the mid-1990s democratic South Africa has exported a huge portion of the traditional lower-skilled labour-intensive manufacturing requirements to China. Much of the rest of our growth involves little demand for the type of labour available in huge quantities.
As Peter Kratz of Men on the Side of the Road remarked, "there's a huge disconnect between what the market wants and what is supplied".
The new residents of De Doorns pay the price of that disconnect being ignored.
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