I bought computer memory for an Apple Mac last year from a company based in the US, because I could not find anywhere in South Africa at a reasonable price, let alone in Grahamstown.
I bought computer memory for an Apple Mac last year from a company based in the US, because I could not find anywhere in South Africa at a reasonable price, let alone in Grahamstown.
I paid with my credit card, remembering how not so long ago, exchange controls would have stymied me entirely.
In this rural city we rely increasingly on the Internet to buy everything from coffee to iPhones, because the shops cannot stock everything we want.
Many of those goods come from global businesses such as Amazon.
The growth of Internet shopping threatens local businesses, who, because they are patronised by fewer local shoppers, can even less afford to stock all the items needed to entice shoppers, making it a vicious circle.
Enter the demon, “globalisation,” once the darling word of the rich and powerful who gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum this past week.
Should we be concerned that huge global businesses like Walmart and Amazon encourage a “race to the bottom” in labour relations, and increase inequality globally and locally?
Amazon, which has been described as Walmart without stores, has successfully fended off any attempts to introduce unions in the US and the UK, for example.
Walmart, which has acquired our own Massmart here in South Africa, is well known in the US for its anti-union policies and low pay.
In the 1990s at Davos, globalisation was supposed to herald a better, more prosperous and peaceful world.
The fear now is that the growth of multinationals overrides national needs, robbing countries of their ability to govern in the interests of their own citizens, particularly the poor.
Even forum founder Klaus Schwab expresses doubts,
It is true that combined with the digital revolution, globalisation threatens to destroy jobs and lead to lower wages.
The example of Internet shopping is, again, pertinent.
That there is still a store in Grahamstown selling CDs is testimony to the low broadband Internet penetration in the country.
The spread of digital music, both through piracy and online sales through global online music stores such as iTunes means that fewer people are buying physical CDs.
Expect DVDs, which are harder to pirate or buy because of poor Internet access and speed, to follow.
Since we cannot put the digital genie back into the bottle and probably don’t want to go back to even the partial isolation of the apartheid years, we have to adapt.
In economic terms globalisation is defined as an unfettered flow of goods, money and people across national borders.
None of these flows are always completely free, particularly the flow of people, and particularly compared to earlier periods.
Many white people call South Africa home because our ancestors could without hindrance land on these shores.
For globalisation itself is not new.
The existence of Grahamstown is due to the forces of globalisation in the 19th Century, in the form of colonialism.
What is new is the astonishing surge in the speed and volume of information flow, and the accompanying ability of capital to flow in and out of countries almost instantly.
The idea of globalisation has unfortunately, since the decline of communism, been used as a club to beat back legitimate democratic desires for an economy that is responsive to citizens.
There was an idea that governments and central banks were powerless in the face of huge capital flows, controlled by faceless foreign fund managers.
Let’s discard the idea that globalisation means governments can’t govern. They can and do.
If South Africa wants to tax inflows of capital, we can.
And we could reintroduce strict exchange controls and even ban Amazon from selling goods here.
Whether we as a country want to do these things is another issue.
Limiting imports in a punitive way would mean we would lose the protection being a member of the World Trade Organisation affords our own exports.
Similarly, keeping multinational Walmart out of South Africa while allowing our own Shoprite-Checkers, among other South African multinationals, to expand across the continent seems contradictory.
But that doesn’t mean we should abandon protection for workers in stores on our own soil or rule out taking measures to protect local industry.
Moreover, global competition is not irresistible, although it can be a wake-up call for geographical monopolies.
Even though I buy computer equipment online, it is a more pleasant experience for me to buy from one of the local suppliers in Grahamstown, and I know I can more easily return non-functioning goods.
It’s also not always cheaper to buy online, taking into account shipping costs and tax.
Reflecting on my recent internet purchase, I realise I took a big risk in using a US supplier of whom I knew nothing.
Even in an age of globalisation, local businesses can have an edge.
