Kasinomics

African Informal Economies and the People Who Inhabit Them

GG Alcock

• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780620651653
• eBook ISBN: 9780620651660
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

Kasinomi is a book as eclectic, mysterious and colourful as the places and people it explores. eKasi, the lokasie, the South African township, once an apartheid ghetto, is today an amazingly transformed place. This township today is an eclectic mix of mansions, shacks, spaza shops, rocking taverns, hawkers, taxis and hot wheels. In this kasi there are vibrant businesses, energetic people, a tightly networked social community and abundant hope. That is not to say there isn't extreme poverty, suffering and dissatisfaction, particularly on the peripheries in the huge shack settlements, but to paint the place as a slum is a massive mistake. Kasinomi attempts to cast a light on the invisible matrix at the heart of South Africa's informal economies and the people who live in them. Living and doing business in African marketplaces requires an ethos uniquely suited to the informal, to the invisible, to the intangible. Kasinomi will take you down those rural pathways, weave between claustrophobic mazes of shacks, browse a muti market, visit a spirit returning ceremony and save money with gogo in a stokvel among many more people and places. After almost twenty years of focusing on marketing to the informal sector, GG Alcock, CEO of specialist marketing company Minanawe, showcases a number of groundbreaking and very successful case studies in this invisible informal world. His vivid anecdotes and life experiences and how they link to understanding and inspiration for business ideas will make you gasp, laugh and shake your head in wonder.

Contents

Barefoot Businessmen

 

PART 1

Unleashing the Invisible

Dusky Thighs in the Land of the Chicken Shade

Township Takeaways and Healing Herbs

Putu and Pyramids

Baboon to Baas

The Slaughter on my Stoep

Shaka Zulu Down Under

Hijacking Kulula Flight MN 120

 

PART 2

Amasiko, Kultcha

Coconuts

The Societies of Extraordinary Women

Life in Death

Kholwas, The Believers

KwaNdongaziyaduma – The Walls That Thunder

My Father’s House has Many Rooms

 

PART 3

Kasinomics

Ilingana Ikhukhu (fits your pocket)

Kerinomics

Dirt Street to High Street

The Curious Case of the Unknown Farmers

 

Isithunzi: Cast a Shadow

 

Glossary and Acronyms

Acknowledgements

 

 

 

 

 

BAREFOOT BUSINESSMEN

eKasi, the lokasie, the township, once a swear word, a place to be feared, an apartheid ghetto, and yet today an amazingly transformed place. It’s a vibrant eclectic mix of mansions, shacks, spaza shops, premium taverns, hawkers, taxis and hot wheels. To say I am a kasi boy or girl has a sense of urban cool, said with swagger; you’re a survivor, a trendsetter, one of the mass majority of Mzansi, South Africa with its majority urban and peri-urban populations. That is not to say there isn’t extreme poverty, suffering and dissatisfaction particularly on the peripheries, the huge shack settlements, but to paint the place as a slum, as a sad place, is a massive mistake. In this kasi there are vibrant businesses, energetic people, a tight networked social community, abundant hope and a glimpse of what our future is really like.

This is the kasi I want to share, to inspire hope and to celebrate the multitude of entrepreneurs, community leaders, responsible proactive citizens of both the kasi and the emalalini, the rural villages and peri-urban societies of our country.

Kasinomics attempts to cast a light on the invisible matrix at the heart of informal economies and the people who live in them in South Africa. This book is by no means a comprehensive overview of the informal sector nor of the informal consumers who inhabit it. It is, however, a deep dive into a world of marketplaces and people who are hidden from many, and it will reveal some extraordinary market segments and consumer cultures in a sector whose complexity is very much an invisible matrix of channels, relationships, communities, business interactions and social networks. After almost twenty years of focusing on this sector, in this book I will showcase a number of groundbreaking and very successful case studies in both the trade sector and in consumer marketing.

Kasinomics is not a ‘how to’ guide, but instead a book that will hopefully shift your way of thinking and looking at the low-income informal sector; it’s an invitation to think differently about the people and the way they do things.

Although very much placed in So...

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