Tfolakele.com - My View

Tuesday 6 January 2009

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The empowerment of the average Swazi through the creation of employment opportunities...there are many challenges we would need to overcome in Swaziland to achieve this including the poor level of customer service and the relatively inferior quality of products...

buy local and prosper...

a picture of the fruit stalls at the Mbabane Market I like reading. However, I am not talking about spending hours reading through a riveting novel. I am referring to newspaper, magazine and periodical articles, finding new and informative websites on the internet. I take interest in different areas of life; religion,money, politics, economy, finance, sports, technology, science, anthropology and so forth. I do this so that I keep up to date with what is happening around me; basically to stay informed.

I am an avid reader of the Financial Mail and I was reading through the December 5 2008 edition when I saw a letter from a reader titled "Buy Local and Prosper". The actual letter is very short. However, the title of this letter got me thinking; if we buy local product and acquire services provided by locals, the whole country or society benefits. This reminds me of the small towns in the UK where the butcher, bakers, locksmith and so on are run by local people and the products are made in that village or in Italy where almost all the products are made in Italy. These are societies committed to supporting the local producers or service providers.

There are two parts to "Buy Local and Prosper":

Buy local - this means we support products that are made locally. Instead of buying bread made in SA, we buy bread baked by LaNkhosi's bakery down the street. Instead of buying tomatoes from Van de Kruger's farm in the Western Province in SA, buy them from Gogo Mbuyisa the local vender who runs a local farm where tomatoes and other vegetables are grown. Of course, we cannot grow everything in Swaziland but at least lets grow all the produce that we can and sell it locally.

Then there are the service providers. It is important that we also support the local service providers. I must say I have been impressed with the promotion of local service providers through inviting them to tender for various jobs for the government and other institutions.

and Prosper - comes in many forms; employment, lowering of prices, rise in quality of service products, improved standards of living, increased GDP, potentially attrating favourable FDI, more taxable income for the government and so forth.

The benefits are countless but most important of all, the empowerment of the average Swazi through the creation of employment opportunities and making people believe that it is possible; if I wake up and work towards something I can dot it. However, lets not fool ourselves about this happening soon. Besides the political farces that happen here, there are many challenges we would need to overcome in Swaziland to achieve this including the poor level of customer service and the relatively inferior quality of products.

The customer service in most places in Swaziland is shocking! The sales people do not understand that customer is king. You will go into many shops where you almost have to beg the sales people in order to get a decent service. An example was today when I went into a small clothing shop and was there for almost a minute before the salesman slowly walked over with his newspaper in hand to ask me what I wanted not may I help you?

SWASA logo

There is also the need to improve the quality of products and service by setting appropriate standards that producers or service providers are supposed to adhere to in order for Swazi companies to produce high quality goods and services that can be sold locally and internationally. The recent establishment of SWASA is a great step in the right direction. Now it is up to the various industry sectors in Swaziland to come together and set benchmarks that companies should follow. I envisage a time when most products at the local Superspar or Pick n Pay will be made in Swaziland, a time when I will walk into Waitrose in Richmond, London and find cans of tinned fruit made in Swaziland, a time when the next big thing in ICT will have been designed and developed right here in SD.So if you share something similar to my view, buy local and prosper.

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People are in glass houses, and you are throwing stones!
just get me a bakkie...