--published by the Ministry in the Office of the President (Nelson R. Mandela) as a discussion document for public comment.
Found for Openair-Market Net by Lorig Charkoudian <lorigc@jhu.edu>
Also see Promoting Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises, Promoting Small Scale Agriculture, and Promotion of Tourism and Ecotourism.
South Africa's most expensive legacy is the inefficiency of its spatial arrangements. Not only were people separated geographically, pushing the poor to the edge of working systems, they were also separated in administrative, economic, social, service, information and cultural ways. Effective and quick ways to reintegrate on all fronts are needed. Periodic markets, set up in weekly rings of markets, can act to correct underlying structural imbalances. Every person knows where and on what day there will be a market. On market day the full range of urban functions can be taken to a marginalised community for a few hours a week, and communities are able to join the regional and national trading systems on good terms. Traders, marketers and service providers follow the ring of markets, gaining a full week's work. The markets, by adding a rhythm, a calendar, to the landscape, congregate people, allowing for economies of scale, lower unit costs, and a greater diversity of goods and services.
Until now agencies of all kinds have promoted production, and people have tried to make a living through vegetable gardens, small trade and manufactures. The failure rate has been so high that in many areas over 80 per cent of families have no value added activity. Such areas spend remittances and pensions largely in established white towns. The main reason for the regular failure of small initiatives is that there is little cash circulation. Markets tackle these fundamental flaws. Markets call forth production, and the quickest way of creating jobs is through investment in production. One way to achieve this is by raising the circulation of cash in marginalised communities. At present the local circulation of cash in most of South Africa is poor, and the majority of South Africans live in cash deserts without the means to conduct transactions amongst themselves.
By correcting the centralisation of the past, where, for example, 720 town markets in 1910 became 15 national vegetable and fruit markets in the 1950s, cash circulation can be rapidly increased. That would unlock the productive skills and resources of millions of families, raising the return to direct public and private investment. Periodic markets order a shift from knits regions into economic and cultural entities. By traveling out to markets and seeing many people in one visit, agents, service providers and traders can also cut the costs of official public and private travel considerably while raising their effectiveness.
Provincial and local government departments can promote their own efficiency and the success of a market strategy by taking services to markets on a weekly basis. Pension pay-outs are an obvious example. In addition, the Department of Health can be assured of goods attendance at clinics, and mobile post offices will be given and obvious route to follow. All of these serve to 'take the town to the countryside'. Many other services are possible, and should be encouraged by the provincial authorities.
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