ANDILE KHUMALO: Buy South African, but trade has to be a two-way affair
In his bestseller, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack calls "common sense" the most important personal asset in business. He proceeds to say that "if you don't have it, you probably never will", and there's nothing he can say in the book that's going to change that. I was reminded of this part of one of my favourite books as I listened to the various speakers at this year's instalment of the Buy Local Summit hosted by government agency Proudly South African, which was established to promote local production and influence consumers to buy local while stimulating job creation. Common sense should dictate that all South Africans would want to buy locally manufactured goods, as it serves them directly to do so. Well, there is another problem with common sense that McCormack didn't touch on. It is not always common. For many years since the adoption of localisation policies, the government has been promoting the procurement of locally manufactured goods ...
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