RESURRECTING COLLECTIVE COLLABORATIONS
(author) Prince Mashingaidze
Introduction
Community based approach approach to problems is one of the most effective ways to eradicate community problems. Co-operatives are not a new thing in our communities, and many negative strides have ovewritten the possetives of collective burgaining. There is need for comunities to re-approach the collective methodology proffessionaly, legaly, informatively and with ethical standards that promote harmony and co-operate will. The pride of wanting to own an individual big enterprise can prolong into many days of poverty and later leads to demise.
Politicians have a way to reach out to people, including using lies and re-inventing different lies again and again. Many who are elected into office tend to forget what they would have promised people. In Africa, a majority of people in Africa consists of struggling communities which struggle to afford decent meals. Rich politicians take advantage of the struggling electorate to lure them into voting for them with little food parcels. We can also talk of intimidation politics, alledged election riggings and coups which are so much acustomed with the African continent. The scope of this article is not to dwelve much into the political aparatus but to highlight community struggles and suggest ideologies which communities can incoperate beyond politics to develop their communities and their lives.
The problem with communities depending on politicians or government policies is that, political initiated developments are only done and hyped to intitiate praise and vote from the electorate. Real development can only be initiated by locals to develop the locals directly. Depending on handouts has also never benefited Africans in a way of eradicating poverty. It is with local communitie people to take responsibility into their own hands and not rely on politicians. Recycling the same approach of relying on others, has only benefited those people rely on due to exploitation.
Flooding rivers with no bridges
Flooding rivers and human conflicts with water reptiles is a cause of concern in many communities, causing loss of life in many reported and unreported cases. It also converts into transport problems for the same communities. People can wait for decades for governments to build those bridges, which never happens. Instead of waiting in vain, whilst lives are being lost, it is expedient for communities to overide politics and do community based developments on their own.
It doesn't make sense when a communite of five thousand to ten thousand people suffer the risk of crossing flooded rivers infested with crocodiles every year. If you translate 5000 people into money needed to construct a bridge, it amounts to a little amount. After all it is not government people who are dying from the flooded river but community people including their children.
Water woes
Most communities, including urban communities, have water shortage problems. Using the community bases approach, an urban street with 200 houses can generate money to permanantly deal with water woes. I have always argued with the system of having boholes per each household as an engeneering mistake. Suppose it takes a budget of $5000-$10 000 to drill a community bohole and also connect pipes to 200 households. It can cost between $25-$50 per household to arrest water issues in that community. Offcourse we are going to find individuals who can afford to drill own boreholes and are not willing to co-operate with others, there is therefore need for community leaders to impose community by-laws to enforce such projects.
Unemployment
One of the greatest scurge in Africa is unemployement. Due to governments investment policies which may attract less investors, rises in unemployment can creat torrential problems for communities. Using a community based approach or a collective approach, a group of people with same mind and one ideology can eradicate the scurge of unemployment, desist from waiting for investors and invent co-operative methods to become investors.
Suppose they are 100 unemployed people who cannot find employement but can in one time manage to have $100 through small dealings. If 100 people contribute each $100 to $200 , it translate to between $10 000 to $20 000. With such an amount of money and proper registration of a company, trust or co-operative, suppose farming is the business the co-operative choose; with $20 000 they can properly manage 4 hactors of onions or potatoes. The $20 000 can grossly amount to between $120 000 to $160 000 in one growing season.
Not only farming can make that magic, other viable business ideas can be generators of different variations of income. In a matter of few years collective income earned can recreate individual businesses, eating a chunk of unemployement by providing local investors.
People may decide not to collectively do business together but they can collectively share resources, for example a group of ten farmers can effectively share a burden of collectively purchasing a tractor.
Suppose the tractor costs $25 000, ten farmers can each contribute $2 500 which lessons the burden of buying the tractor by 90%. Maybe its an area where small holder farmers struggle to find water, they can effectively collaborate in drilling a borehole together but at the same time mantaining their individual small businesses.
The list can go on to issues where farmers have no land and capital to rent larger tracts of land. 100 to 200 farmers can unite to collectively rent a 200 hactor farm for the purposes of managing small scale farming. Instead of renting 200 hactors with the capacity to farm 2hactors, the burden is shared among like minded farmers. Likeminded people who are intrested in running transport business can run collective transport clusters and later help each other own individual businesses.
Effective collective enterprising
In many instances issues to do with fraud becomes a barrier to collective burgaining, when individuals trusted with money abuse those funds or skip out of the country. Here i will suggest ways in which the porous portals which accomodate fraudsters can be sealed.
Suppose we want to drill a borehole and install pipes which run through individual households. Or we want to build a bridge for the community through collective funds. instead of keeping funds with a community individual, community leaders can approach companies (e.g borehole drilling company) and lay out they plan. The company can send its own representative to attend every community meeting, collect subscriptions for the company, so that the responsibility of money is not left to community individuals but trasfered into the company's responsibility to provide service.
Effective co-operatives or trustees can only work if proper and legal proceedures are followed. This means any agreement to co-operate should not be done based only on mutual agreement but legal fundermentals must be created to bring security to co-operate funds. It is expedient for the registration of a company to be initiated with a memorundum of understanding. Registered companies legaly provide any allyway for funds to be kept in a bank and for multiple signatories to initiate withdrawals. Registration makes the model of business more proffessional, disgnates responsibility and decision making authority.
The scope of every business can only work if the mind is trained to be business consious, what it means is that in order for co-operates to work, members of the co-perate need to go through training to equip them on how to operate a business. There is much responsibility in running a business than in going for employment. When you are an employee, your employer is responsible for you, for your salary, for your retirement package and for day to day upkeep of the business, which is a responsibility not acustomed to employee mentality people.
Effective burgaining requires a co-operate will, and a desire for unity. Unity can collaborate differnt talents e.g some are good at marketing, some are good at admistering and some are good at handling technical tasks. Arguements can create enemies, individuality can create self heros but collectively many problems can be eradicated because two are always better than one.
Conclusion
Though people abor collective burgaining due to its ills of fraudsters and other disadvantages, there is more to do things collectively than as an individuals. If 100 vendors can collectively sell together they can compete with big conglomates. The shape and direction of a collective business is more clear than small businesses scattered over the street. Collective enterprising means distributing a large burden into different individual efforts. It also means collectively putting little money together to be able to initiate a bigger value. If we can remove the blindfolds of the purpoted or historic disadvantages, we can make use of the promising advantages of the art of working together.
In Africa we work together to select a politician into power, to molest us with abuse later after elected. W gather as communities on funerals to bury our dead and nomatter the hardships we bury our dead properly as per custom. We collectively help each other to punish a thief, which makes some of our societs safe environments because thieves fear co-operate judgements. African are very acustomed to mikando , were they collectively gather money and do turns to give a lumbsome to one individual, this has worked and earned trust among locals and now its time to take the step further and do meaningful business. Now you see were we have collaborated and how effective it has been. Nothing can stop community dweller to bind together and face African problems head on.
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