Debating the role of Fair Trade in the context of socio-economic transformation in South Africa

Abstract

The notion of Fair Trade is a unique idea conceptualised historically in Northern countries to advance equitable and just trading processes that could provide an alternative to the mainstream trading system in the world. Northern activists working with producers, labourers and other impoverished sectors of the Global South are using market-based strategies to mobilise consumer awareness in order to bolster incomes and empower Southern producers and workers (Murray & Raynolds, 2007, p. 4). Fair Trade as a system is seen as a progressive attempt to transform the global exchange of products in a way that ensures ethical and socially just methods of production. Barrientos, Conroy and Jones (2007, p. 54) point out that in the United States Fair Trade's dramatic growth has accentuated underlying differences in the movement and tensions between the movement-based Alternative Trade Organisations (ATO)-led Fair Trade, and certified Fair Trade in mainstream outlets. The limits of the project of Fair Trade are well documented and critiqued by scholars with an appreciation of its limitations. The South African context of Fair Trade needs to align to the social conditions within which agricultural production takes place and the politics of social justice, equity and empowerment. For a South African product to be considered ‘fair’ while the social formation of the country and practices in various sectors still resemble historical inequalities – reflective of South Africa's colonial and apartheid history – should be seen as contradictory. The Fair Trade system is not as yet well entrenched in South Africa's political and social culture. For it to be embraced by a wider section of constituencies it needs to go beyond a business-driven process to one that reaches out to civil society. In this article I illustrate what the missing questions are in the South African context of Fair Trade and issues that need serious consideration for Fair Trade to have a wider impact.