After some thought and discussion, Gary and I have come up with a tentative agreement to trial the set-up of the solar powered street lights in townships. We have now identified two possible sites; Orange Farm and nDwaleni.

I have worked out that there are 25 street lights in the 1 km strentch of road in which I live. That's 1 street light every 40 meters.

Now we need a strong social development programme to support the installation and development of the street lights and to use this process to inspire further energy efficient lifestyle changes in these communities. This is wehere the Tala Club comes into the planning:

The Tala ClubEvery Customer must become the centre of an ongoing lifestyle improvement programme of activities designed to educate, inform and encourage the customer to save energy and promote the environment.
Every person who buys an energy-efficient product from a Sunstyle collaborator will automatically gain membership of the Tala Club. Tala is the siPedi word for Green.
· Members of the Tala Club will receive a monthly newsletter providing recipes for use on energy-efficient cookers, tips on energy savings, competitions, and promotional give-aways from suppliers of food products and information on new energy-efficient products.
· Tala Clubs will have a local organization in each neighbourhood structured on a standard constitution. Each local branch will have an elected chair, secretary and treasurer. Tala Club members will be able to work towards certain defined competencies within the local club. These competencies will allow the participants to undertake defined roles within the local club: These roles will include among others: “Lungisa” (repairer), Savings and Loan officer, Learning Facilitator, Burial Club officer, Reporter, Researcher and so on.
· The Tala Club members will also be the first to test new energy-efficient products and will receive discounts of product upgrades. Market research agencies will have direct access (for a fee) to a diverse set of focus groups that know the products and have empirical experience in their domestic daily use.
· The use of Nedbank’s administrative and technological resources through its bank account and card system linked to a points system that pays the user for using the card and then offers users to pay for energy-efficient products supplied by Sunstyle with points accrued.
Principles for intervention
The structure of local township economies and particularly the way in which business is set-up in township[s such as Orange Farm and nDwaleni may be characterized as “dormitory-town economics”. This is a system in which residents act as pools of cheap, surplus labour to the needs of Johannesburg and Nelspruit. Services are mostly run out of Johannesburg and Nelspruit and are delivered to Orange Farm and nDwaleni. Those goods (including social goods) that are produced in Orange Farm and nDwaleni are not consumed locally to any appreciable degree.
Thus any value that Orange Farm and nDwaleni residents generate is seldom kept locally but tends to move rapidly out of these townships. The situation with owners of RDP homes, people in traditional villages and those assisted by welfare programmes is no different. In the overwhelming majority of cases the money and value generated is spent and leaves places like Orange Farm and nDwaleni without circulating through the neighbourhood first. This simply reinforces the likes of Orange Farm and nDwaleni’s continued structural status as dormitory-towns for Johannesburg and Nelspruit.

¨ If areas such as Orange Farm and nDwaleni are to develop then locally generated value and income must be retained within the local economy for as much and for as long as possible.
¨ Locally generated value must also be used to develop the skills and capacity of local residents and organizations to provide for the needs of the residents residents living in areas such as Orange Farm and nDwaleni.
¨ Services and goods on offer must be appropriate to the needs and aspirations of the residents of areas such as Orange Farm and nDwaleni.

These three principles of retaining value locally, using value for local development and ensuring appropriate technology are the basis upon which the after-sales programme for energy-efficient products is founded and will serve to consolidate the gains made in selling energy efficient products. These values are oriented towards the restructuring of the manner in which value flows into, around and out-of the local Orange Farm and nDwaleni economies. We see Orange Farm and nDwaleni as systems that need to develop a greater integrity and not remain merely part of the greater Johannesburg or Nelspruit economy. If value courses around the local Orange Farm and nDwaleni economies then the residents will have more resources to meet their needs and aspirations.

If one rand of value generated by a Tala Club member is then spent locally on a taxi ride which is then spent locally at a mechanic which is then spent locally at a spaza shop which is then spent to buy locally manufactured sweets which is then spent to pay for the wages of a local resident. This one rand of value has passed through 5 local businesses and has been put to good use to develop the local economy. However, as is now the case most of the value generated in Orange Farm and nDwaleni leaves the area after one local transaction only. We need a system that keeps value within the local economy if Orange Farm and nDwaleni are to develop and break free from its current bondage to Johannesburg or Nelspruit.
This retention of value within the neighbourhood would be assisted by the administrative and technological support of Nedbank’s bank card linked to redeemable points.
If Orange Farm and nDwaleni is able to generate and retain much of the value it creates then we will have achieved the foundation of a stable, self sustaining local economy which can contribute to the wider economy without being subject to the vagaries of an increasingly globalized system.
Recapitulation
An After-Sales Programme in Sunstyle using Nedbank’s points-based bank card will seek to Improve the lifestyles of its members by retaining value locally, using value for local development and ensuring appropriate technology.
These principles will be applied in the development of the Tala Club with its local branches, the publishing of a newsletter with local reporters, the use of local branch members in focus groups for market research and the development of members of each branch to repair products, report events, chair meetings and run the various income-generating projects within the Tala Club.
After-sales service will create pools of local skills within the participating townships and secure the continued custom of members.