THE PEOPLE'S ECONOMY — ARTICLE 1 OF 8
Who Owns and Controls the Economy?
The Case for Co-operative Power
Every morning, millions of South Africans wake up, buy food from a shop, pay rent to
a landlord, buy airtime, use transport, and move money through systems owned by
people they will never meet. By the end of the day, wealth has moved. It has moved
from households into retail chains, from workers into landlords, from villages into
distant suppliers, from townships into banks that decide the future of communities
they have never visited.
This is not an accident. It is not bad luck. It is an arrangement, designed by people
and serving certain interests. And arrangements can be changed.
The economy is not a natural phenomenon like rain or gravity. It is made up of rules,
ownership patterns, institutions, supply chains, and decisions about whose interests
come first. The question is therefore not only whether the economy is growing. The
deeper question is: who owns and controls it?
The ownership question
We are often taught to experience the economy as if it is neutral. Prices rise. Jobs
disappear. Communities decline. We are told this is simply the market at work. But
the market is not neutral. It reflects who owns land, controls finance, dominates
retail, and has authority over what is produced, where, and for whose benefit.
In South Africa, this has a clear history. The economy was structured under
colonialism and apartheid to serve a minority. Land was dispossessed. African labour
was made cheap. Cheap for the bosses. Communities were deliberately
underdeveloped. The formal structures of apartheid have been dismantled, but the
ownership patterns have proved far more durable.
This is why freedom, while historic and indispensable, has not automatically
produced economic freedom. A person may have the right to vote and still have no
control over land, credit, food systems, or the local economy. Ownership without
control is not transformation.
Every day, working people produce the wealth of society. Yet
when profits are counted and investment decisions made, the
majority are spectators. They work in the economy. They do not
own it.
The township and village economy
Nowhere is the ownership question clearer than in townships and villages. Millions
of people live in communities where money circulates every day: spent on food,
electricity, transport, airtime, school uniforms, and household goods. But most of
this spending leaves the community almost immediately. Retail chains, banks, and
external suppliers capture the value.
The township and village economy is not empty. There is money. There is demand.
There is labour. There are skills and social networks. But these are not organised into
collective economic power. Communities remain markets for others rather than
owners and controllers of their own economic systems.
A community-owned store is not just a shop. It becomes a platform for local
procurement, women's economic participation, and democratic governance of
resources. A village agricultural co-operative is not just a farming project. It links
household production to collective storage, processing, and market access. A
financial co-operative is not just a service. It is a community-controlled instrument
for savings, affordable credit, and protection from predatory lending.
When a community owns its own store, its own farm, its own buying club, its own
financial institution, surplus does not simply leave. It circulates. It builds assets. It
strengthens collective organisation.
What is co-operative power?
A co-operative is an enterprise owned and controlled by the people who use it, work
in it, or depend on it. Its members are its owners. Its decisions are made
democratically. Its surplus serves members and the community, not distant
shareholders.
Co-operative power means the organised economic strength of people who come
together to meet their common needs through jointly owned, democratically
governed enterprises. It is ownership with control. It is control with accountability.
A co-operative is not charity. It is not a government grant that disappears when
priorities change. It is not a tender vehicle for a few individuals. It is not a
registration certificate kept in a file while members remain uninformed, inactive, and
unaware of what they have supposedly joined.
It is a group of people saying: we will not wait for someone to fix the economy for us.
We will organise ourselves. We will pool resources. We will build institutions we
own, govern them democratically, and use them to meet our needs.
To build a co-operative is to take a clear position on who controls
resources, who benefits from labour, and who decides what
happens in an economy. It is not only a technical exercise. It is an
expression of power.
Not the whole answer. But an essential part of it
Co-operatives alone are not the full answer. A society can have co-operatives and still
remain dominated by concentrated private ownership of finance, land, and major
industry. Co-operatives must operate within hostile markets and face competitors
who do not play by democratic rules.
But co-operatives are one of the most practical instruments for changing the
ownership and control structure of the economy from below. They show that
ordinary people can run enterprises, govern resources, produce and trade
collectively, and build institutions that are not based on exploitation. The state has a
real responsibility to support this: through finance, procurement, infrastructure,
training, and land access. But state support must never replace member ownership
and control.
Co-operatives must also not remain scattered islands. Primary co-operatives must
link to secondary structures. Secondary co-operatives must provide shared services:
bulk buying, processing, finance, logistics, training. Together they become not
isolated projects but an organised economic movement.
Who owns and controls the future?
Will our communities remain dependent markets for corporations? Will young
people be told only to search for jobs in an economy that excludes them? Will rural
villages continue to export labour and import food? Will township households
continue to spend billions without building collective assets?
Or will we build a different path?
The case for co-operative power is the case for communities becoming producers,
owners, traders, savers, and controllers of their own economic destiny. It is the case
for turning need into organisation, organisation into ownership, ownership into
control, and control into power.
When we ask "Who owns and controls the economy?" we are not asking a theoretical
question. We are asking whether democracy will stop at the ballot box, or enter the
workplace, the farm, the store, the bank, and the village.
We are asking whether the wealth produced by the many will continue to enrich the
few, or whether the many will organise to own, control, govern, and benefit from it.
That is the case for co-operative power. And that is why the struggle for
co-operatives is not a small struggle.
What would your community do if it owned the store, the farm, a co-op bank? This
series will show you how to find out.
— DTCA / The People's Economy Series
Next: Article 2 — What Is a Co-operative, Really? Beyond the Myth of Shared Labour