Craft has finally come of age in South Africa. Not only is it creating jobs with huge turnovers, but the world’s trendies are clamouring to get their hands on it.
Legs stretched out, heads bent. That’s how you’ll find South Africa’s new entrepreneurs, on city pavements, in back yards and in rural areas where only drought and harsh sun are regular visitors. Here they sit, patiently stringing tiny glass beads on nylon strands or stitching scraps of fabric into colourful bed linen and curtains.
There are others who dig in rubbish dumps and find oil filters, tubes and bits of bent wire that stretch their imagination. From these discards they fashion funky handbags, elegant lamps, even chairs, crafting waste products into objects of desire.
The romance and idiosyncracy of the handcrafted object has finally won the hearts of homemakers and the fashion-conscious. Some of the finest talents, who for years have been working behind the scenes for a pittance, have emerged as a proud new entrepreneurial force. The number of craftspeople who have turned their talent into a source of income is growing.
In many cases, this was achieved by the intervention of “fairy godmothers” — people like Mary Rose, Bev Heenan, Kim Kieser and Pierre Koen — who are willing to tackle the seemingly insurmountable task of empowering people in near hopeless circumstances.
The plot for most of these success stories winds its way from the humble beginnings of a one-off product, through traditional pieces made for specific ritual purposes, to a sustainable income-producing industry. Where craft is successfully creating small communities with regular incomes, one has only to look sideways and there they are: the closely knit unit fusing creative talent with business acumen.
Poverty eradication through sustainable development of this kind of collaboration has become a sort of refrain. Today the craft industry in South Africa employs 1,3-million people and has a turnover of R1,8-billion. It has become a major player in the drive to uplift the poor — not by “employing” jobless people, but by creating an infrastructure through which individuals and groups can set up their own businesses and help themselves.
The popularity of objects with a unique Southern African stamp is much more than a craze. But this is the bright side. There is also an awareness that the industry still lags behind its potential, and what has been achieved in other countries.
In referring to “craft”, we’re not merely talking curios — that endless stream of wooden spoons, traditional beaded necklaces and wireworks that fill pavement markets in most South African cities. Rather, we’re talking elegant decor pieces — objects designed along traditional ethnic lines but married to current decor styles. We’re talking lamps fashioned from discarded oil filters, linen laced with Nguni beadwork and lampshades woven with wire according to ancient techniques. We’re talking sophisticated beading, weaving and carving skills that have grabbed the imagination of the rich and famous from London to New York.
Craft arrived, so to speak, when the government held its first national craft trade show, the Craft Imbizo, in Johannesburg in 2001. Some 140 top crafters from all over the country showed their wares. Orders were established and invitations to overseas exhibitions followed.
The prime focus of these trade shows is to advance crafters to grow a sustainable business. That means duplicating products of high technical and aesthetic standards into a production line. It also means overcoming some or all of the following common obstacles:
– The gap between highly developed artistic skill and understanding of ordinary business requirements, such as regular production of high-quality products. Production is sporadic.
– An unrealistic approach to costing that fails to consider all aspects of production: time, material and delivery.
– Illiteracy, which leads to the exploitation of crafters.
– Problems in adapting to international demands without losing ethnic appeal.
– An inability to sustain production of high-quality designs on a mass-market scale.
– Reluctance among South Africans — except for a small, upmarket clientele — to buy homegrown products.
– Exploitation of crafters’ lack of business skills by those who con them into selling their work at way below market value.
– Flooding of the South African market with popular designs from East and West Africa.
– Unsustainable gathering of raw materials without a long-term replacement strategy.