CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT BUILDING IN THE EASTERN CAPE

Challenges faced by co-operatives

• 
  Lack of understanding of the concept “co-operatives” as empowering communities to be at the Centre of local economic development by Co-operatives, Provincial and local governments .
  
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  Need for training and education in order to be competitive and produce quality products and services.
  
• 
  Lack of access to markets for co-operatives due to poor quality.
  
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  To create platforms whereby co-operatives become receiver of the initiatives rather than the key partners of each and every development government is doing for co-operatives.
  

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  Building a vibrant co-operative movement by supporting primary co-operatives.
  
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  Create a platform on more engagement of co-operatives that will build sectorial growth on provincial and district level, through Co-operative Development Centres.
  
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  Working towards a bottom to top approach on co-operative movement establishment.
  
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  Start a democratic process to set up legitimate structures that represent co-ops.
  

EASTERN CAPE EXPERIENCE

Mr Aaron Ranayeke
Mr Ranayeke reported on observations he made in his travels around five of the districts in the Eastern Cape. In his travels he raised issues pertaining to the rebuilding of the movement in the Eastern Cape as Funda Education and Training Primary Co-operative. He raised a concern on the observation that co-operators seemed not to have an understanding of where they come from which raises a danger of where they are heading to.

In his presentation Mr Ranayeke pointed out that it should be appreciated that co-operators have got a history and it can be traced back to 3000 BC in the form of burial societies in Babylon. So there is a history around co-operatives, it is not something new but very old. One thing that should be understood even in the countries where it is said that co-operatives are doing very well, is that those co-operative movements always believed in the three-legged approach which is:

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  Co-operatives
  
• 
  Social movement
  
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  Trade unions
  

Mr Ranayeke observed that this relationship is always there and could be seen even from the international co-operative alliance. There is still that relationship at an international level where representatives discuss and influence each other around positions more especially for co-operatives and what role the labour movements can play in order to advance the agenda of the broader co-operatives movement.

It was pointed out that the character and the form of the movement will not be concluded in the present gathering but that participants will go out and rebuild or build the sectors of particular co-operative movements. And those sectors will determine the character and the nature of the actual movement.

The other aspect raised was that there is a lack of consciousness and a lack of an audit in underpinning and understanding what perspective should drive the co-operatives movement. The need for this to be done was raised and the Institute was identified to possibly play that particular role. Mr Ranayeke underlined his suggestion for a sector education in the Institute For Co-operative Development’s training programmes so that people from a particular sector can understand the orientation, the nature and the form of the sector. In his concluding remarks Ranayeke stressed the need for co-operative movement to grow organically through a number of processes so that mistakes made in the past may not be repeated.

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