January 27, 2005

E-newsletter # 12

Dear Friends,

Last time we were in Cleveland, one of the things on our to-do list was the purchase of an outfit for a newborn baby in South Africa. We searched every store at Richmond Town Square but could not find one single baby item made in the United States! Places like Honduras and China, Guatemala and Thailand, India and Mexico were listed on the labels, but not the United States. We finally settled for a little red and blue denim outfit, which looked very American, but was made in China. Why is it so hard to “buy American”? The standard answer is that wages in the United States are too high to produce clothes at a price that pleases our wallets.

We have been away from home long enough to need to replace some of our clothes. We searched high and low at Vincent Park Mall in East London but could not find any t-shirts made in South Africa. Finally, we found a specialized camping store that carried some. We have since become two of their more frequent customers. Why is it so hard to “buy South African”? The recommended minimum wage here is in the range of only $130 a month (or $.77 an hour for a 40 hour week). And unemployment figures have shot past 40 percent. Not far from East London, in the town of Dimbaza, a clothing factory closed in November 2003. Two thousand five hundred jobs were lost. Part of the production was shifted to the nearby country of Lesotho, where wages are even lower. This week 1500 sewing machines were auctioned off to local and international bidders to be used somewhere else on the globe. This repeated transfer of production to the place of lowest labor cost and softest labor and environmental laws has been termed “the race to the bottom. According to Jeremy Brecher (in Globalization from Below), the race to the bottom “brings with it the dubious blessings of impoverishment, growing inequality, economic volatility, the degradation of democracy, and the destruction of the environment.” So much for the myth that buying goods from developing countries helps the poor people there!

As consumers we are told that we benefit from the process by having access to inexpensive goods. This might be true in regard to the price rung up at the cash register. It is certainly a false statement when we consider the indirect costs we pay now or later. The airplane that carries sneakers from Indonesia to the United States lands at an airport built with tax money. The pollution it leaves behind reduces the quality of our air. The kerosene that fuels its engines adds to the demand for, and thus the price of crude oil. With shoes and baby outfits, we might not have a choice but to purchase things manufactured far away.

With other daily necessities, choices might be easier. While we live in South Africa, we avoid Kraft, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and their likes in the aisles of the grocery store, and we don’t eat mangos when they are out of season and flown in from Israel.

The Joining Hands Against Hunger philosophy insists that people of faith care about economic forces and their consequences. The same demand was expressed in very blunt language in a letter we received from Mike Kgang, an educated but never employed 28-year-old, who lives with his ailing mother and teenaged sister in a household with no income. His new year’s wish for us reads: “ May God bless you both and provide you with the wisdom and strength to reform the minds and attitudes of the capitalists through advocacy and lobbying.” A tall assignment! Get ready for some more newsletters on economic issues in 2005!

If you have read so far in this newsletter, you must be one of our more interested supporters. If you happen to live in the Cleveland area, you might want to know that we will be visiting the Presbytery of the Western Reserve from February 19 through March 6, 2005. The details of our itinerary are still under construction. We will send out an e-mail with the dates and locations of our presentations as soon as they have been determined. We are looking forward to seeing some of you in person.

Ken and Susanne

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 339

To support our ministry financially

Contributions from individuals may be sent to: PC(USA) Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Please write “JHAH South Africa” and Designated Account # H000109“ on the check and on the cover letter. Send a copy of the cover letter to: Presbyterian Hunger Program, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, KY 40202-1396. Or click on the "give" button below to contribute online.

Sessions may help the denomination to support us in the field by designating a portion of their annual GA mission giving to account # D506580.

Financial support for the educational and advocacy work of the JHAH Mission Group in the Presbytery of the Western Reserve may be sent to PWR, 2800 Euclid, Cleveland, OH 44115.