Sunday Times 24 June 2001
PLEASE NOTE: Readers wanting to reproduce and reference this article should contact Sunday Times
As electrification pushes paraffin and candles aside and makes life easier, one of life's simplest helpers is on the retreat, writes Mawande Jubasi
SABELO Mnguni, a father of 12, struggles to hold back the tears as he explains that, in two weeks, he and about 300 colleagues will be out of work with the closure of the Lion Match plant in Durban.
Yet it is the changes in their own lifestyles that have dealt Mnguni and his colleagues this blow.
They are among the 1.7 million people whose homes have been electrified by Eskom since 1994, and who have gratefully put aside their candles, their paraffin - and their matches.
Lion Match's managing director, Terry Turner, conceded electrification was pushing his product into retreat.
He would not give figures on the company's decline since it would assist his competitors. "We cannot help our competitors kill us off," he said.
He said the company had begun exporting to other African countries, but "unrest" in many of them limited exports.
From next month, the Lion Match building on Durban's Umgeni Road will stand empty. Built in 1925, the building has stood out as one of Durban's grandest historic landmarks, with its carved lion in bold relief against white paint announcing to all the world that matches were being cut and packaged in their bright yellow boxes.
The building will now be sold and movable assets will be shipped to the firm's remaining plant in Rosslyn, Pretoria.
The decline of Lion Match signals the end of an era in South Africa. The brand has always been part of township culture, drawing a number of slang names. "Echi", "tots" or "govlight" , a smoker could be heard saying when asking for matches to light up.
And, during the anti-apartheid uprisings in the 1980s, the matches proved - more than likely against their manufacturers' wishes - to be a popular weapon of the township youth.
Prominent ANC leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela captured it all in 1986 when a box of Lion Matches cost about four cents. At the funeral of a youth killed by apartheid security forces, she shouted the blood-curdling slogan: "With our matches, with our necklaces and our tyres we shall liberate this country."
It is a refrain that will surely haunt her throughout her life, despite claims that she was quoted out of context.
For millions of black South African families, matches were once a household necessity: they lit candles to supply light, braziers which provided heat during the cold winter nights and cigarettes for those who smoked.
Thousands of young children passed their exams after studying by the yellow light of a candle. All that is rapidly changing.
Mnguni, whose family lives in Ndwedwe, a village on the outskirts of Durban, admits that even he does not use matches any more.
"Most of us here accept that matches have been overtaken by progress. All of our houses have been electrified so we don't need matches any more to light candles or stoves for fire. Most smokers use the cheap gas lighters to light their cigarettes," Mnguni says.
Colleague Bongani Mngadi agrees. He produces his own lighter and says that almost all his colleagues would rather use cheap lighters than keep a box of matches rattling in their pockets.
The company's closure could not have come at a worse time for the workers. Last year most of the company's unionised workforce was sacked after going on strike for better pay.
This left the remaining workers without union representation, and the retrenchment package they have been given is just a month's salary and one week's salary for every year worked.
Turner said the retrenchment complied with the requirements of the Labour Relations Act and said the package was "in excess of that required by law".
Rumours among the workers were that management had told them not to bother applying for jobs in Rosslyn as only Sotho- and Afrikaans-speakers would be accepted there. Turner denied this.
Mnguni is devastated by the closure and cannot even start planning how to feed and educate his children.
"I just don't know what I am going to do with myself now. My family of 12 children is now at home in Ndwedwe and every day they expect me to provide food. What right has one to call oneself a man when you can't even feed your family?" he asked wearily.
Musa Mzimela, KwaZulu-Natal chairman of the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood Allied Workers Union, accused the company of "playing dirty tricks".
Mzimela said that the union had just won a labour court case of unfair dismissal on behalf of 218 workers fired over a year ago.
The company was ordered to pay the workers for the past 12 months and he feels that it timed the closure announcement to deny the workers their victory and ensure that they do not come back to the factory.
Other workers said that the company's managers should have retained the Durban plant since the region's economy was in worse shape than that of Gauteng.
Mngadi, from KwaMashu, said: "Gauteng has everything. People there at least have more options for jobs because most of the country's industries are based there.
"To move from Durban is like kicking a man when he is already down."
Turner said the market for matches now lay in South Africa's rural northern provinces and countries north of the Limpopo, where electrification was slow.
The company will therefore be marketing aggressively in neighbouring countries.
"We have initiated an export drive which has resulted in sufficient export volumes being secured in East, West and Central Africa to offset the domestic sales decline," said Turner.