The Economic Ecosystem

I’m sure I’d be safe in saying that after high school more than 99.9% of the Bruinou.com subscriber base has never needed to know their Golgi apparatus from their mitochondria or their saprophytes from their ermm-non-saprophytes. Biology was just one of those subjects you simply had to do because some influential, tree-hugging nyump (moegoe) over at that powerless institution once known as the department of Coloured Affairs made it a compulsory, necessary evil. For the life of me, I cannot fathom the logic that drove such inspired lunacy (making biology a compulsory high school subject) to become policy. The biological sector was never a big employer and career options in the biological sector were not known to be well paying jobs. By the time I reached matric (1995), I was yet to see a marine biologist or any other biologist for that matter, rolling through my gully (district) in a shiny new drop-top BMW (still pretty much the only way to get a bruin laaitie’s attention), which meant that a career in biological sciences made for a very tough sell in my district. Regardless though, all the Bruinous from my area were forced to do Biology in high school, whether they liked it or not.

One of the first concepts which I vividly remember trying to familiarize myself with in high school biology was that of an ecosystem. An ecosystem according to Wikipedia and for the benefit of those who did not study biology in high school can best be described as: a collection of components and processes that comprise and govern the interactions of biological entities. An example of an ecosystem as borrowed from the simplistic definition in the classic movie by Disney, The Lion King, would best be described as an antelope which eats grass. The lion eats the antelope and when the lion dies, its body decomposes and the nutrients get eaten by the grass. Disney called it the circle of life, some people call it the food chain, but just because we’re big people now, we’ll use the correct term, ecosystem. For a more thorough, graphical depiction of the hierarchical nature of an ecosystem, I encourage you to checkout that Dreamworks animation, Shark Tale in which the lovable protagonist Oscar has his insignificance clearly shown to him “there’s plankton, there’s single cell organisms, there’s whale poo and then there’s you”. Eish!

Have you ever heard people say they wish they were higher up in the food chain? Well, using our example above, a lion would be at the top of the food chain, the antelope below it and the grass below the antelope. Being high up in the “food chain” is therefore akin to having power, influence, subordinates and authority. In the wild, the basis for biological entities to interact is in most cases driven solely by survival instinct. Lions don’t hunt antelope because it’s a great sport that keeps them fit, but because they’d die of starvation if they didn’t. While human society is far more complex and interactions occur for a number of reasons, it’s apparent that our interactions are increasingly centered around one thing and one thing only, money. Our society can therefore be referred to as an economic ecosystem.

At its highest level, economic ecosystems exist between countries, continents and regions. Within countries, economic ecosystems exist within and between communities and social groupings. Zooming in to the granular details of these economic ecosystems, one can see many similarities between our human interactions and the interactions which happen amongst animals in the wild. There’s predation (e.g. George Bush and the Iraqi people), parasitism (e.g. ouens in the gully sponging off their old ladies), mutualism (e.g. the private sector palming high ranking government officials in exchange for lucrative contracts and tenders), and competition (there’s a lot of people out there trying to make money). It stands to reason then that properly understanding and being able to position oneself in the economic ecosystem is essential if one is to change their status from being economic prey to being a “big fish”.

The biggest difference between ecosystems in the wild and the economic ecosystems of human society are that in the wild, animals are biologically, inextricably bound to occupying a particular stratum within their ecosystem; they cannot change from being prey the one day to being the predator the next day. If this were the case, the balance that exists in nature would be disrupted and chaos would ensue. Not so for the economic ecosystems of mankind. Money determines our position in the economic ecosystem, to change your status within this ecosystem, one needs to understand the basic rules governing this system.

In his book “Capitalist Nigger”, Chika A. Onyeani goes into great detail explaining how he admired the “killer-instinct” of the Whites; how he marveled at the entrenched self-supporting nature of the Indian and eastern communities and how they created success through simply supporting each other. These traits he believed were crucial for the Black societies of this world to replicate in order to emulate those successes. The knock-on effect or multiplier effect of keeping a single Rand circulating within a community was essential for Africa to break its shackles of colonialism and dependency and to become self-sustaining. On a national level, citizens that actively bought local products over imported overseas products were fuelling the local manufacturing industry, creating demand and therefore jobs for South African workers. On a more micro-scale for example, Sheldon, a young call-center agent from Eldorado Park is having car trouble. If he makes the conscious decision of getting his vehicle repaired by a Bruin-owned repair center, he would have taken the first crucial step in “keeping the money in the community”. The onus would then be on the repair shop owner to keep as many people in his supply chain from within his community and so keeping that money circulating within the community and effectively raising everybody’s net worth. The minute money leaves the economic ecosystem of our community and “crosses over” (economically speaking); it has been lost for good as it will have entered into an economic ecosystem where its recipients are a lot more adept and seasoned at rigorously applying and enforcing the simple principles of “keeping money in the community”. The very principles of government’s BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) are based on the principles of “keeping money in the community” by forcing the corporate world to divert funds to the Black community in order that its net worth can be raised.

A fundamental component of a successful economic ecosystem is the existence of good information networks. From the South African Chamber of Business (SACoB – White interests) to Nafcoc (Black interests), The Black Management Forum, The Jewish Board of Deputies and the Portuguese Club, it really does seem as if all groups within South Africa are positioned for the effective dissemination and consumption of commercially viable information. Like ants in a colony, social groups within South Africa have for a very long time rallied behind their own kind, ensuring first, their community’s success. Not so for the Coloured community. We silently suffer the burden of being the blue-collar fodder that turns the wheels of industry, blithely accepting the status quo. Also, as a society that has absolutely no access to its own media structures and has no national organisations to represent its interests, is it then any surprise that the Coloured community is to a very large extent the economic prey of our national economic ecosystem? By not understanding or applying the basic economic principles of “keeping money in the community” and eschewing the culture of supporting each other, we have willfully relegated our entire community to the bottom rung of South Africa’s economic ladder. Our manic, uncoordinated and misdirected economic actions continue to keep our communities in subjection and further entrench our position in the economic ecosystem as nothing more than economic amoeba on which the other, more cohesive groups feed.

Because of its mass-market nature and its ability to reach and influence many millions of people, access to media is the cornerstone of any successful economic ecosystem. Through media, one is able to reach a vast number of people and thus influence their collective actions and behaviours. Media (radio, TV, newspapers) is the one tool necessary to create the economic churn required to fuel and give impetus to a community’s economic ecosystem. In the absence of media, a community is unable to economically mobilize itself and it thus becomes victims to the machinations of the region in which it finds itself. Afrikaner musicians don’t sell so many records because they are so supremely talented (not in my books at least), but because the Afrikaner community vehemently supports its own kind. This and the fact that Afrikaner musicians are punted heavily on the plethora of media options available to their community (SABC2; Radio Sonder Grense; Jacaranda FM; 2 channels on DSTV and a host of national newspapers). Is it any surprise that Coloured musicians struggle in the music industry? Coloured musicians in most cases struggle not because they don’t have the talent or their product is not good enough, but because they’re forced to battle the twin evils of an indifferent community that is reluctant to support them as well as battle for space on media platforms that couldn’t care less about the Coloured community’s plight. Unless the Coloured community is given equal access to state funded media as every other group in South Africa, we will always be the economic carcasses, dead in the water.

In the end though, we ultimately have ourselves to blame and ourselves to rely on for an end to this madness. For years now, the older generation appears to have adopted an attitude of rather admiring the chains that bind us instead of trying to break them. The worst thing which we’ve inherited from the older generation is our self-destructive complacency. This communal incapacity has been the enduring theme that has resonated through our communities for too long now. I say, the buck stops here, with you and I. Let us start by being the change that we wish to see in the world and not waiting on somebody else to remedy what is essentially OUR problem. Let us start by striving to find a common, national consensus so that we may speak with one voice. From Wenties, to Eldos, to Manenberg; our dialect and lifestyles might be slightly different, but what does it matter, when we are bound by the same chains? This is not a Durban thing or a Joburg thing or even a Cape Town thing; this is a Coloured thing, a money thing and in essence, a quality of life thing! In adhering to the principles of “keeping money in the community”, let us not forget that the order of priorities should be family; community and then country. We cannot contribute anything of real value to this country if our family lives and our communities are in disarray.

An ant on its own is a pretty insignificant creature, but once in a colony of millions of other single-minded ants, it becomes unstoppable. We can learn from ants. No wonder they say, “It’s a jungle out there”.

By Charles Ash
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charles@Bruinou.com