Before I launch into my latest rant, here’s a confession: I am a borderline auction addict. I am so keen that I think I’ve been to about 100 of these things over the last 10 years—in Grahamstown alone!
Before I launch into my latest rant, here’s a confession: I am a borderline auction addict. I am so keen that I think I’ve been to about 100 of these things over the last 10 years—in Grahamstown alone!
My folly has not gone unnoticed either, with the Director General of Home Affairs (who also happens to be our Pravin Gordhan), often wondering loudly — and often in exasperation—when “you, Sim, are going to, for once, take some of your crap for auction!”
I haven’t; and have survived, perhaps because I am loved… and pitied in equal measure.
There is however, no love or pity from moi to Black Friday.
All I heard seven days ago, was that the queue at Pick ‘n Pay was 10-strong – and that was before the store opened at 6.30am, and I could not buy two litres of milk until 3pm!
WhatsApp images from the big cities showed entire villages appearing to have descended on shopping malls. Even online retailers like Loot and TakeAlot, were so busy that their websites crashed for a while.
In the US, the global capital of shopping appears to be Seattle, Washington, the HQ of Amazon.com. The online retailer apparently takes one in every two US dollars that are spent online, and as American consumers (who are responsible for two thirds of their $18 trillion economy), migrated from the mall to the computer, Amazon has made thier spending easier than making toast.
And what happened two days after Black Friday? Well, a not-so-publicised in South Africa Cyber Monday, during which American shoppers spent around $4.5billion buying computers, iPads and other electronic gizmos.
My gripe is not really with the Americans. They elected Trump, so what do they know about anything?
I am pissed off with fellow citizens and residents, who have voluntarilly chosen to embrace a material culture that is not in keeping with traditional African culture, Boer frugality and industry, or the tight-fisted ways of the Anglo-Saxons who subdued and settled the Cape, before becoming ancestors of our English-speaking brothers and sisters.
What exactly is driving this madness of queue at stores in the middle of the night just so you can get a Hi-Fi at half price?
Moreover, when you never really see the best stuff at half price.
I am sure Pam Golding did not mark down Westhill properties to one-third of the usual R2-3million asking price. Neither did I see any queues in front of BMW or Mercedes Benz dealerships.
Apple, which manufactures by far the coolest gadgets (have you seen the Apple Watch, or a prototype of its wireless earphones?), did not even bother to advertise. They’re basically telling those in pyjamas and clutching coffee mugs in front of Checkers, that “if you are in a queue to buy rice at half price, you probably can’t afford an Apple product anyway!”
My biggest concern is that retailers are taking people for a Jamaican bus ride. If they can afford to cut item prices in half for the one day, it means they are probaly able to cut prices every day.
But do they?
Moreover, they play on our propensity for greed.
You see a flat-screen LED screen beaming a picture of George Clooney or Beyoncé, and marked down from R10 000 to R5 000, and you think it’s a bargain that you MUST have. So you throw down your MasterCard or Visa and take the said item on credit. Meanwhile you're probably going to lose all your so-called discount in the interest you will be charged over the course of this little debt.
But the most annoying thing is that Black Friday is a creation of the same Western liberals who invented globalisation. It's enriching others, and basically impoverishing us.
The Chinese will make money from SA's Black Friday because they manufacture most of the durable stuff we buy. Banks make a killing because all transactions happen via their clearing houses. And the credit card companies will make money long after the toy you bought has broken.
There is very little on Black Friday or Cyber Monday that was made in South Africa by South Africans, and whose purchase is currently benefiting South Africans. And if it’s there, it’s still enriching a few shareholders of the big stores and shopping malls; the radio stations advertising these “deals” and the petrol stations fuelling the drives to the Malls.
Ask yourself how much real South African work has gone into these latest shopping bonanza days and the ones that are imminent later this month. Ironically, we’re buying cheaper and whiter shirts, when our textile industry, which used to employ thousands of South Africans, has been decimated to near extinction. We’re buying more and pricier manufactured TV sets, when our manufacturing sector is on the equivalent of Stage 4 Aids deatbed.
And we embrace all this because it’s what is done in America. Should we then be surprised that Americans who are as angry as SA’s poor who smear pupu on municipal buildings, voted for The Donald?
These men and women have decided that Free Trade is code for being screwed over by financial institutions and their political enablers.
Well, with Trump, we’ve all seen how angry a hungry man can be. As for me, at least my auction “disease” saves a few choice (and second-hand) items from the skip.
•Sim believes in the smarmy dictum of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
