A few days ago, former trade and industry minister Rob Davies expressed his shock at the fact that cars imported from India and China now represent up to 64% of all new cars sold in South Africa.
While some will be quick to level accusations of jealousy, envy, or even bitterness against Davies, we have to remember the context here: South Africa is a major car manufacturer with a number of top brands choosing the country for its top quality car-building expertise: BMW, Ford, Isuzu, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen.
If everybody is buying Chinese and Indian cars, what happens to the more than 115,000 people employed in the automotive and allied services sector? The South African Automotive Master Plan 2035 is looking to increase the number of workers in the sector to 234,000, so there must be some very worried faces poring over the concerning data right now.
However, to my larger point: in the highly competitive context that we currently find ourselves in, you have to innovate and adapt quickly or die.
Secondly, what is happening in the automotive sector is also playing out in other fields, and so we need a complete rethink of the entire South African political economy, and why not envision a country that requires fewer cars? I will circle back to that later.
Dinosaurs struggling to adapt
To the first point, China and India cannot be punished for their success in making quality products that people want and need. They have spent many years learning from others, training their workforce, churning out heuristic iterations of different things at breakneck speed and improving over time.
Importantly too, they have a large population that is stuck in the tight income bracket into which capitalism has forced a large part of the world’s middle class, and so they know how to make products for that tranche.
Chinese and Indian Mahindra, Jaecoo, Haval and Chery SUVs ranges are currently selling for R400,000 or slightly more. Brands like BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are not adapted to making products for that kind of buyer. Although Volkswagen has since improved its offerings and has overtaken Tesla in Europe, Germany is not shifting as many units as it would like to.
In 2013, then Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said: “We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow we lost.” This was an official throwing in of the towel to Android. Blackberry did the same thing shortly after. Failure to imagine the future cost Nokia its position of number one manufacturer of mobile phones on the planet.
For many years, people have been laughing off the decarbonisation of the global political economy as a hoax. China, which is still one of the biggest emitters of CO₂ in the world, adopted a more cynical approach: they would control the rare earths value chain and make all the things that we require to transition, like solar panels, and BYD, Zeekr and Yangwang electric cars.
Even here in South Africa, some of us used to find it very hard to convince people that solar energy had a big future. After the unprecedented 332 days of load shedding in 2023, what used to be considered pedantic fear-mongering suddenly became matter-of-fact solutions.
The urgency — and benefits — of a socioecological transformation
So what are the ways to get more South Africans to buy the cars that they produce? I want to pitch a broader idea here: How do we make more people support local businesses and live better? Taking on the Asian tech titans requires careful, long-term planning and collective effort.
Firstly, it takes specialised skills and high-quality education to do what China and India are currently doing. South Africa has to produce skills on a similar level to compete with that. This is why the dysfunction in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges has been very sad to watch. TVET colleges and universities are the backbone of any industrial manufacturing resurgence that South Africa needs to have, and so these colleges need to be made fit for purpose.
Secondly, it will take South African car manufacturers, the national government, academic institutions and trade unions working together to interest more people in “Made in South Africa” cars and other products. People need better salaries and better options. The government and automakers need to find the right incentives and products to make more people more interested in supporting local value chains.
Thirdly, South African improvement does not necessarily need to come from auto manufacturing alone. With the right skills, many opportunities can be had through the socioecological transformation of the economy.
In other words, transformation of the local political economy through (among many others) the following, for example:
- Manufacturing more trains to make people less dependent on cars and constructing railway lines to transport people and goods across the sub-region.
- Providing large-scale solar solutions to local communities.
- Accelerating land reform to give more people the possibility to own and cultivate their own property (il faut cultivar notre jardin!).
- Employing assistants to support teachers.
- Hiring wardens to help in offices and rush-hour traffic.
- Supporting auto manufacturers to produce walk-behind, hand-held tractors.
- Supporting businesses that want to make more electric motorbikes or bicycles.
- Improving IT skills so that people can develop applications that respond to the needs of their local communities.
- Building more integrated walkable communities where short distances (work, retail, health services) allow for stronger human connections.
- Taking better care of wetlands, hydrological systems, indigenous flora and fauna, etc.
As you can see from these examples, there are practical ways to improve things quickly. Carefully planned solutions can give thousands of people, especially young people, hope very quickly. Many of these socioecological changes can be done without delay.
Finally, an example from Kenya
There are more than two million motorcycle taxis or boda boda in Kenya. Most of them run on petrol. A tech company known as Ecobodaa entered the boda boda market in late 2020 with the ambition of getting as many petrol motorcycle owners as possible to switch to electric ones.
They knew that the business would tank if bike owners constantly interrupted work to twiddle thumbs and scroll on social media while they waited for batteries to charge, and so they set up 200 charging and replacement stations in Nairobi alone.
This way, Ecobodaa riders only needed a quick stop at any charging station to replace an empty battery for a fully charged one. Two minutes, done! Three years later, Uber followed in Ecobodaa’s footsteps and launched Electric Boda with 3,000 bikes. You can do the maths to see how local manufacturing, producing affordable solutions, can radically transform society.
Other innovations are popping up. Physics teacher Paul Waweru has developed a method to use refurbished laptop batteries to power electric motorcycles.
So it is not just about Chinese cars after all. Driving past the ubiquitous Chinese cars on our roads requires us to innovate and invent the future. We can do that without breaking the bank. DM