South African company forsakes development ideals for dollars
CAPE TOWN, Feb.18 (AFP)-A South African company which employs disabled
workers to make wind-up radios for rural Africans is moving to China to cut
costs and mass produce the aid tool as leisure for Americans.
Freeplay, set up in 1996 with a model employment policy endorsed by ex-
president Nelson Mandela and US Vice-President Al Gore, will fire half its
400-strong staff and shift the bulk of its production to China, director
Rob Packham told AFP Friday.
Economic factors had force Freeplay to focus on the US as the radios were
too pricey for its original market—rural Africans and refugees with no
access to batteries or electricity to power radios, he said.
Only 10 percent of all production went to Africa.
“Ironically we were aimed at Africa originally, but now we are far better
placed to sell in America,” he said.
The company will have to retrench 196 workers, 29 of whom are disabled,
Packham said.
About 120 workers demonstrated against the move at the Cape Town factory
Thursday, many despairing that they would find other work in south Africa,
where unemployment is estimated as high as 30 percent.
Production in South Africa had become prohibitively expensive and the
radios, which retail at around 300 rand (50 dollars), could be produced at
40 rand (about 6.5 dollars) cheaper apiece in China, Packham said.
“We would have gone out of business if we kept producing solely in South
Africa,” he told AFP.
“The American market can only buy us in big quantities if we make the
product cheaper. We have become victim of our own success there.”
The Cape Town factory will in future pioneer new products and will still
make 360,000 units a year.
Freeplay was started by two South Africans who bought the patent for a
wind-up radio from a British inventor with the aim of producing the radios
as a means of cheap communication for Africans in isolated or disaster-
struck areas.
Aid organisations took to the idea and the radios have been distributed to
refugee, including in Kosovo, and to rural dwellers who use them to tune in
to education and training programmes.
The radios are popular with outdoor campers in the United States and
people living in areas where power failures are frequent, Packham said.
END
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