From the reactions on social media to the latest enforcement drive to clean up the spaza shop sector, it seems many feel there is something inorganic about it.

Both the media, and politicians from both major ruling coalition parties have gone all out in their condemnation of the informal sector, which has previously been touted as a vital source of income and development for the lower economic strata. Today, a Soweto councillor has even demanded the shutting down of all spaza shops entirely.

But the media have been loathe to cover these stories for many years now, treating stories of food poisoning as odd little human interest stories barely worth the column inches usually dedicated to local community curiosities.

After all, the PutSAFirst crowd (i.e., black anti-immigrant economic nationalists) have been complaining about foreigners in the sector for ages - particularly the massive fake foods industry - but have been attacked for being xenophobic.

Why the about-turn? As the old Marxist revolutionaries used to ask, qui bono? Who, whom? Personally, I believe it has to do with three things - global political reforms, retail cartels, and revenue collection.

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Solving a fake problem to end a real solution

The informal sector is largely governed by cash businesses, and none of its members pay taxes. The taxi industry are notorious for avoiding tax too, but they are lower down on the priority list because they are part of the ANC’s patronage network and a source of violent enforcement.

I am going to quote the leading expert on this sector, GG Alcock, at length here;

[T]here is no evidence that the poisoning is a result of unfit, outdated or even counterfeit foodstuffs, all the evidence points to the deaths being related to the above pesticides and insecticides […] used in homes and spaza shops, and according to the prez and to the minister of health are the primary cause of deaths and extreme illnesses.  […W]hy are we not focussing first on getting these deadly chemicals off the streets and homes?  […O]nce all the spazas are closed the pesticides are still there!! [primarily because of rat infestations [because municipalities don’t clear garbage and sewage].

But now instead of prioritising the removal of  [hazardous chemicals and implementation of public hygiene], authorities and health inspectors are racing around looking for unfit or old foodstuffs in spazas and forcing registration of or closing primarily foreign spazas.  A missed opportunity to address the real issue, and one which will return even if you close every single spaza shop, foreign or not.

Okay, so registration of spaza shops won’t solve the issue. But what problem does it solve? Registration.

As Edward Kieswetter explained recently, his top priority in this new political cycle is closing the noose on the informal economy. Now, while everyone would agree it's good for all to pay their fair share, and a good number of middle-class folks are tired of being relied upon to carry a profligate state economy, the formalisation and regularisation of the economy is coming during a major wave of international tax and financial reforms which will have a strong impact on them too.

The big one of these is eliminating cash in the economy. While going cashless in the developed world is easy, it is much harder in Africa, where most people still use cash as their primary means of exchange. Our reserve bank has consequently been buying up mobile payment platforms in an effort to centralise control of the systems of financial exchange which they hope will replace cash as a means of lower-income economic exchange.

The spaza shops are the other side of the pinch - shutting down unregistered and cash-based businesses. What is remarkable, is just how much this goes against the grain of progressive instincts - suspecting the informal sector of being a vector for crime was considered a vile and prejudiced view until just five seconds ago. Now, it is progress itself.

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The policy above the policies

Since Leon Schreiber has come to office, he and Edward Kieswetter of SARS have been driving for a digital identity system and a cashless economy, closing down loopholes for wealth offshoring, bitcoin trading, and cash businesses alike. This would help enormously in revenue collection, but it would also help establish a system of state control over economic exchange which has long been in the cards, and now seems almost too late to stop.

This would be the concept of Central Bank Digital Currency. Under this scheme, all currencies would be placed on centrally-governed blockchain technology, in which inflation and spending habits can be controlled centrally.

Part of the benefit of CBDCs is that they can make pre-programmed payments that may only be paid to select vendors and can expire in a set amount of time. The policy is explained rather simply here, by financial consultancy BSR.

This idea would be tied to a universal basic income, so that as the value of your money is liquidated through taxation and money printing, your use of the money, which affects inflation too, can be controlled.

Not only that, but because they can select which items and vendors you are allowed to purchase from, the entire economy can be centrally planned, in such a way that ensures a permanent advantage for established cartels and monopolies.

Plus, they can prevent you from eating products they wish to phase out of the market, like meat, or certain crops. This allows the centralisation of the food industry and the elimination of independent activity across the entire economy.

It also allows for carbon credit markets to be controlled from the central banks, who can set consumption targets in collaboration with local treasury and environment departments. Note, just for extra detail, that Dion George has been handed control of these instruments under the Climate Change Act, which also allows him plenary power over the manufacturing targets and business standards of any and all businesses, whether on a national, provincial, local, or even individual level.

This is being pushed by the Bank of International Settlements, the institution which controls all the central banks in the world, a system which excludes only three countries - Russia, Cuba, and North Korea.

But none of this can be implemented until you can shut off the exit points to the digital finance economy, namely cash. And to sell the end of all these freedoms, all the different policies which make up the new system have to be sold to various political factions that would otherwise be able to consolidate an objection.

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Siloed sales pitches

Selling this policy is hard work, because it looks like a massive cage with one tiny set of committees holding the keys.

There are sales pitches for several political factions here. For the conservatives, digital ID and capital controls are being sold a means of controlling the black market, terrorism and illegal immigration.

For the greens, it plugs into the enforcement mechanisms for carbon credit schemes.

For the left, they are sold infinite free money in the form of universal basic income, and alongside it, a policy the libertarian free-marketeers also like - “financial inclusion”. Financial inclusion is about pushing people off of cash and into mobile digital banking (yay, everyone can be part of the banking system and get microloans!)

Among academics, pundits and government officials, people actually care about policy, so the debate shifts to the enforcement of border controls and the maintenance of monetary controls.

All of these have been major points pushed by international powerbrokers like Tony Blair, Bill Gates, etc.

Constant increases in UBI (and you can’t really get away with cutting UBI) threaten inflation, and so part of the accompanying theory comes from a post-Keynesian school of economics called Modern Monetary Theory, in which it is postulated that the state should never have to worry about debt, inflation or taxation, and should just print money to pay for everything, and when inflation gets too high, you can just confiscate people’s earnings straight from their bank accounts, and reduce inflation by deleting money from the economy.

It is no coincidence that the proponents of this idea come from the world of high finance - financial institutions are the only sector of the economy that always benefit from that particular combination of state borrowing and money printing, because of something called the Cantillon effect - the first recipient of the money receives it at the market value at time of printing, and inflation kicks in only once it enters broader circulation. And financial institutions are the first recipients of such money.

Long horizon

Part of the reason this is all so difficult to talk about is that it is just so large-scale, so grand in scope, that it seems irresistible. The scale of the global policy harmonisation also tends to look like a grand conspiracy, and so invariably you will be shut down for “conspiracy theory”.

But the architecture is relatively out in the open here. Because the West is relatively decentralised, policies cannot be entirely made in dark smokey rooms (though I am sure a few of those exist). Instead, the most influentil bodies must achieve consensus, and communicate their ideas in public to lower and lower elements of the institutional architecture to create legitimacy and align policy.

So this stuff is really out in the open, and a cursory glance at any global body will reveal that the entire set of reforms is totally assented to.

And because opposing the various support beams of the policy of global financial central planning invariably piss someone off (usually the left), most people will try to shut down that line of thinking one way or another.

The end of the line here is the abolition of property rights. And so much of the push in public relations, and sponsored articles in the major Western media outlets has been for encouraging people to see living without property as a chic new dynamic futuristic lifestyle - rent everything, own nothing, be happy.

But down here in South Africa, we cannot afford to live without property. Property is how we keep the wolves from the door.

We can clearly see how those in our society without property are forced to live, and seeing the end of a world where holding onto your own financial decisions is still possible, is a frightening one.

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