Informal Economy Develpment Forum

  Inasmuch   Inasmuch as this world rotates, This life we know shall flourish. Embracing thoughts that tempt our fate, As our minds we seek to nourish. Inasmuch as we deny our envy, Our egos we seek to cherish. And in embers of ash Our morals crash, In plumes of lies they perish. Inasmuch as our hearts doth beat To the rhythm of our souls, I ponder if life on the edge of a knife, Is full or filled with holes. Inasmuch as we ought not to tarnish An image our peers expect, We stoke the fire of self-desire, Knowing not that which comes next. Inasmuch as we claim to care, Our world in decay astounds us. Once pristine, unfettered and clean, Unlike that which now surrounds us. Inasmuch as we tend to believe That man controls his fate, His hold on life Is fraught with strife, With our Creator we cannot equate. Inasmuch as trouble and woe Do sometimes stunt our quest to grow, Into this life we’re thrust with dreams, And hopes of reaching stars that seem To move each time they glow. ...

View From The Stalls 10   Don’t want to scare you guys, but we, and I mean all of humanity, are living in very dangerous times. As if global warming and its affect upon climate change was not enough to make us sit up and say “hey! enough already”, the conflict in Ukraine has all the elements of escalating it into a global catastrophe. “This crap’s real my peeps”. I’m talking about the possibility of thermo-nuclear war, whereby temperature around the world would rise beyond 200,000 degrees, effectively ending all life on this God-given Earth. But, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves how we got to this juncture, and who the architects and proponents of our current situation are. “Surprise, surprise”, it’s the same people in both cases. I shan’t mention them by name, that I shall leave to you to figure out. But here’s a clue. They are the biggest economy in the world, unapologetically spewing out millions of tons of carbon gases into the atmosphere, and answerable to no-one. They...

  View From The Stalls 9   Spoke with an old ex-flea market buddy Vincent yesterday. Health issues have sadly not allowed him to continue trading, so he’s found another avenue of income…baking. Seriously? Gosh, Are we traders resilient or are we resilient? Anyway, he shared with me his story of survival. Every Sunday morning, he rises at 5am and gets to work baking and sugaring doughnuts which he sells at his local church after the morning service, as well as from his home. For a guy who previously couldn’t boil water without lumps in it, his foray into baking is quite something! And that’s not the only great news coming out of Bokmakkierie, an old, still very much impoverished suburb of Cape town. His eldest daughter Janine who used to trade with her father on the informal markets, has landed herself a very tidy job indeed in the film and entertainment industry. A self-taught make-up and hairdressing artiste, her talents were noticed by a visiting film executive at the Green ...

  View From The Stalls 7                                                                                  Prince of darkness, a.k.a. Eskom:   “What is going on my brethren?” Seems like the lights have just come on, and now they’re off again. And I still do not know the load shedding times for my area. Someone suggested I look up Eskom SePush to find out. I tried, but I’m still in the dark. I understand it’s pronounced a bit differently on the Cape Flats. But be that as it may, it’s all getting just a bit too frustrating. But hey, I’m a positive guy, and I keep telling myself there’s light at the end of the tunnel yet…provided it’s not powered by, you know who!  What baffles me though is: How did we get to this point! Why are so many pow...

  View From The Stalls 6    Proudly Home-made:   Had the occasion to visit a church bazaar the other day, a sort of Spring-inspired event that the congregation had planned and executed as a welcoming gesture for their new pastor. Now, I’m a sucker for bazaars of any kind, and the chance of home-made fudge being on offer was just too much to ignore. The church hall, by the way, is a mere 150 meters from my home. Lucky me!   Turns out I was in luck…very good luck! There were at least three aunties who made fudge and coconut ice. Now, with my sweet tooth, or shall I say sweet teeth, all resistance crumbled, my defenses just shut down. Folks, I was captured. And like some politicians did to our SOE’s, I literally cleaned them out.   But the thing that really peaked my interest was that everything on sale was home-made. From the sweets to the cakes and biscuits, from the embroidery to the toilet sets, from the wooden toys to the braai stands, every i...

View From The Stalls 8   A guy approached me in a mall the other day and the first thing he said to me was “you’re the jacket guy aren’t you, I bought jackets from you in Bloemfontein about 5 years ago, I never forget a face, where’ve you been man?” Wow, “firstly, yes I am the jacket guy”, I responded. “Secondly, it’s been almost 7 years since I last traded in Bloemfontein”.  Turns out he was on business in Cape Town and that he had bought jackets for his wife and young children from me at the Bloemfontein show, an event that I had participated at for 20 straight years…that was until 2016. Now the South African show circuit had always appealed to me, largely because of the potential of increased sales, and the excitement of travel and trading in new and different locations. There were never more than 3 or 4 traders from the mother city who ventured into the interior in the early 90’s, so I regarded myself as a sort of pioneer. The Rand Easter Show was my first back in 1993, an...