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Flustering a career diplomat takes some doing, but French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy got it right on her visit to South Africa earlier this year. Accompanying her prime minister husband on a brief visit, the model-turned-singer’s itinerary allowed her just five minutes for a photo-opportunity in Khayelitsha, the sprawling shantytown on Cape Town’s outskirts.
Forty minutes later, an increasingly desperate French ambassador to South Africa was still trying to coax her out of the cramped room from which a group of previously unemployed women have launched themselves at the fashion-accessory world.
When she finally left, it was with a brightly coloured handmade bag slung over an elegant shoulder and a pledge to lend her name to an initiative to create jobs on the Cape Flats.
Never far from Bruni-Sarkozy’s side during the visit (fighting for space with French and South African bodyguards) was petite Parisienne, Nicole-Marie Iresch.
Nicole-Marie was born in Algeria, but grew up in France. She obtained a degree in international trade before going to work at the European space agency. She left to join Air France which, in a roundabout way, led to her moving to South Africa.
“I was on the Air France flight that crashed in Brazil in 1985. A few days later, a South African woman who had been on the aircraft approached me and said I seemed to be coping well.
“I met her again two years later and she pressed me to come to South Africa. So I did.”
Nicole-Marie was blown away. “What a country! And Cape Town… I was like, WOW!” She laughs and waves her arms in a gesture that can only be described as Gallic. Her language is punctuated by exclamation marks.
“The people! All of them! They were so friendly!” It was vastly different, she says, from home.
“People say Parisians don’t like speaking English, but that’s not true: they don’t like you at all. They don’t like anybody!”
It was the first of many visits.
Friendliness apart, something else struck her over the years. “People would come up to me and, instead of asking for money, asked for work.”
The majority of pleas for employment came from women. “Women in the townships are incredibly courageous. They might look as if they don’t care what is happening, but that’s a face they put on to the world. They want to succeed and make things better; not only for themselves, but for those around them.”
This willingness for women in economically depressed circumstances to take control of their lives was confirmed during her first visit to Khayelitsha. Nicole-Marie asked a woman who’d approached her what it was she wanted to do. “Sew,” was the response.
“I told her I couldn’t promise anything, but that I would try…”
Her first step was creating a non-governmental organisation, Afrique du Sud Bidonville (South African Township), in 1997. Initial sponsors included Air France, automobile manufacturers Renault and the South African Department of Trade and Industry, “which bought the first sewing machines”.
“I knew nothing about social conditions here in Khayelitsha, let alone design or sewing. I told the women: if it works, it works”. She gives an expressive shrug.
An early focus on quality has proved its worth: most of the bags are sold to foreign corporates who, while appreciative of the benefits of the wonky South African exchange rate, are definitely not looking for cheap and nasty products.
Nicole-Marie’s business, Township Patterns, was formed as the “marketing arm” of Afrique du Sud Bidonville. A Fair Trade company, it negotiates deals and buys the bags manufactured by three autonomous Khayelitsha-based co-operatives – Sophumelela, Somila and Masikhule Makhosikazi – which work out of the Zenzele small business incubation centre as well as a fourth in Mitchell’s Plain. The women who formed the first co-operative knew she didn’t have much money and, she says, “told me they didn’t want to be paid a salary but, just as much, didn’t want to be sitting at home doing nothing. I said that was unacceptable, but that I could only offer them R50.00 a day.”
The business took an atypical approach to marketing. “Usually, an NGO or co-operative makes a small number of goods and sells these on craft markets. It ends up putting a lot of energy into making products and getting peanuts in return.
“I decided we would try to go big and sell the bags through major distributors.
“Pick n Pay was our first big client in 1999. Mrs Ackerman said she wasn’t going to offer us any money, but that she would put our bags on display. That was exactly what I wanted.”
Sales from Pick n Pay stores amounted to around R400 000.00 in 2007. It’s a turnover that seems likely to be matched this year. Retail stores, however, are not the company’s main target market. Most bags are ordered by the organisers of business-to-business conferences both locally and abroad.
Township Patterns doesn’t only negotiate the contracts and sell the finished product, it does the designs, purchases the materials and does the cutting. The women’s co-operatives are little more than assembly facilities.
Though the facilities are small and relatively crowded, she insists they’re not sweatshops.
“The women are completely in control. They set their own rules. I don’t tell them when to open or when to close.
“I am not their employer. I am their client,” Nicole-Marie says, adding that she has placed orders worth R1.7 million with the co-operatives since their creation.
Patricia Rwayimani is the “first among equals” of the Sophumelela (“We will succeed”) Sewing Co-operative. The group, she says, took a decision that working hours would be from eight till five, Monday to Friday.
But, on the Friday that I interview her, the women are making arrangements to come in the following morning. This past payday fell in the middle of the week and they all took a couple of days off to do their monthly shopping. This put them slightly behind schedule to complete an order for a conference in Europe and they’re coming in for a few hours on Saturday to catch up.
Patricia helped to form Sophumelela in 2005, having been unemployed since her arrival in Cape Town from the Transkei four years before. The co-operative has nine members – a tight-knit group, though they don’t mingle much when they shut up shop for the day. Working in close confines as they do, that’s understandable.
“I like being my own boss and working close to home,” says 29-year-old Patricia. The income derived from the bags is particularly welcome since her husband, a bricklayer, has been sitting at home through the extremely wet Western Cape winter.
“I can truly say that people in the community look up to us because we rule our own lives. It can get quite difficult, though, because people are always coming up to us and asking for work for themselves or members of their families.”
Patricia is personification of what Nicole-Marie calls the “generational change” that she’s witnessed among the women working for the co-operatives. “When we started, most of the women were in their 30s… very shy and insecure. You could say they were fragile. Now there are younger people working there. They make jokes. They challenge you and are much more demanding – but in a constructive way.
“What is most interesting about the younger women is that they want to prolong their independence and resist getting married and having children. This means that they have more disposable income… unlike the older women whose money goes largely towards feeding and clothing their dependants.”
On the way back to her office in Cape Town’s CBD (she drives a Renault Clio, what else?), Nicole-Marie muses on her interpretation of the concept “empowerment”.
“Empowerment for me is about co-development. It’s not a one-sided affair.”
An empowering relationship, she maintains, is one in which no-one is servile or subservient and in which independence is encouraged.
“Empowerment is not only about money. It’s much larger than that. It’s about not being afraid to share the knowledge and insights that one has gained.”
The story of Township Patterns cannot be told without reference to a leap of faith of equal magnitude to that taken by Nicole-Marie a decade ago; that of her husband, Christophe.
A senior manager for office technology company Xerox, Christophe met Nicole-Marie while he was still in the United States. “I was very happy in the corporate world, but always knew that one day I would do something different.”
Later, after the two were married and he’d been transferred to Paris, he decided the time was right. “It took me a year to quit because I’d made a commitment to Xerox to finish what I was doing. The company did everything it could to keep me.”
In 2002, he left a $6-billion business for one that offered him no remuneration at all.
“You can’t explain a leap of faith other than to say that there’s something inside you that tells you it’s the right thing to do,” he says. “It’s motivated by joy and love.
“I’m not saying it was easy.” He pauses and thinks about what he’s just said. “No. The decision was easy, but the transition was hard. For two years, I was lost.
“I was like someone who’d become used to flying business, if not first-class, and had to move to the back of the plane. I had to get used to being normal again.” ?
Jim Freeman
