People and organisations in Makana appear to help others far more than in most other urban centres. There are many charity and non-governmental organisations that channel their efforts and material goods into helping those who are less fortunate. They do a good job and we are indeed privileged to have them with us.
People and organisations in Makana appear to help others far more than in most other urban centres. There are many charity and non-governmental organisations that channel their efforts and material goods into helping those who are less fortunate. They do a good job and we are indeed privileged to have them with us.
There are also a number of large institutions that are not primarily dedicated to helping others yet make a considerable effort to assist those in need.
For example, our local Pick n Pay regularly makes donations to numerous charities and helps out wherever it can. The community is grateful for this support, but it also means that whenever there is some fundraiser, Pick n Pay is the first donor to be approached.
Rhodes University, with its various outreach programmes, also makes a considerable contribution to the well-being of our local community and there are several other businesses that make an effort to help their communities.
There are however, many large businesses – usually branches of national chains – that do a considerable amount of turnover in this town and yet rarely make a contribution to local suppliers or local community projects. It is very difficult to work out how much money national businesses extract from our area because of course they will not release the figures. However, let us guess that of the roughly 120 000 people who live in the Makana municipal area, 80 000 of them have cellphones. If each phone generates on average a profit of only two rand per day – a very conservative estimate – this means that together the cellphone companies are extracting R160 000 per day from our area. Transform this into annual figures and we see that the cellphone companies conceivably make more than R58 million in Makana every year and how often do we see them contributing to worthy causes in our area? Do they ever source their materials locally? Do they even advertise locally?
The above example examines how little cellphone companies contribute to our local community, but a similar analysis could be made for national clothing stores, petrol companies and a few other big businesses.
Perhaps we should only give our business to those who play a positive role in building up the Makana community.
