Molepo Traditional Dance Cooperative Limited

Strategizing for success: voices from emerging cooperatives in the Knowledge Economy of South
Africa
Mahlaga Molepo
Email: mahlaga@molepotraditionaldance.com
Website: www.molepotraditionaldance.com
Article information
To cite this documentation
Mahlaga Molepo, (2015), Strategizing for success: voices from emerging cooperatives in the
Knowledge Economy of South Africa, Molepo Traditional Dance, The Chairman's Blog Vol 1 Issue
1., pp 1-5
This article will be published as a Blog Entry during the 2 nd Annual Molepo Dinaka/Kiba Festival,
Cooperative's Professional Development Programme, 26th June to 05 September 2015
Proudly supported by the Arts and Culture Trust and NEDBANK
References: contains references to 8 other documents

Strategizing for success: voices from emerging cooperatives in the Knowledge Economy of South
Africa
Mahlaga Molepo, (2015), Strategizing for success: voices from emerging cooperatives in the
Knowledge Economy of South Africa, Molepo Traditional Dance, The Chairman's Blog Vol 1 Issue
1.,pp 1-5
Abstract
This year the festival is titled: 2nd Annual Molepo Dinaka/Kiba Festival, since for the second time,
Dinaka/Kiba groups and cultural practitioners in Ga Molepo - a rural town on the outskirts of
Polokwane, will be afforded an organized platform to showcase their talents while engaging in
programmes aimed at enhancing their cultural development. In 2014, the inaugural festival was
conceived to create an organised platform from where practitioners can showcase their talents in groups
while they get paid for doing so.This possible re-engineering of Dinaka/Kiba Music and Dance has a
potential to create localTourism and Heritage Industries to supplement local economies through job
creation and acontribution to the macro-economy thereby making South Africa and Limpopo province
in particular, the number one tourism destination of choice.

Introduction
Despite the lack of agreement on a common definition of knowledge management among companies,
government, institutions and organizations, these entities are demonstrating an increasing interest in the
topic (Mashile, 2001: 3). The interest spans from the realization that the economic model is rapidly
shifting from industrial to one based on knowledge. Molepo Traditional Dance is a primary cooperative
that specializes in the production, documentation, packaging, marketing and selling of Indigenous
Music and Dance or Mmino wa Seto also known as Dinaka/Kiba by rural communities in Limpopo
province. In an attempt to define its organizational culture, the executive looks at its objectives,
identifies its human capital and develops a comprehensive Knowledge Management strategy in order to
ensure the organization takes advantage of the opportunities presented by the realignment of the South
African economy into a knowledge economy. The following sections will discuss cooperative
organizational culture, the identification of clear objectives, documentation, converting complex
information into understandable forms, the use of Information and Communication Technologies as
part of the organizations possible knowledge sharing strategies.
Cooperative organizational culture
As the name suggests, a cooperative as a legal form of business was identified by the South African
government to deal with the economic challenges faced by previously disadvantaged communities,
especially the Black African majority (adapted from Department of Trade and Industry, 2005). By
nature, cooperatives require members to work together towards the achievement of goals, hence the
need to put the human element at the forefront of every activity. A cooperative must be people centered
and that is why numbers in membership matter. Since organizational culture also consists of visible
elements such as dcor and buildings or other unarticulated elements (King, Kruger and Pretorious,
2007: 286) such as the organizations logo and letterhead; Molepo Traditional Dance could agree
amongst its membership to use natural colors such as green (which symbolizes money) and black on
the logo and letterhead. This should be undertaken as part of the organization vision to ensure that its
members benefit economically from their inborn capabilities. Having agreed on the logo and colors of
the cooperative, the members of Molepo Traditional Dance would then mend their individual in line
with the management style of the leadership of the organization to form a cooperative organizational
culture based on core values of critical thinking, togetherness and cooperative entrepreneurship. Call
(2005: 26) advices that for knowledge management to flourish within an organization, the managers
must establish a culture that allows its policies and norms to be questioned by everyone and they
should be willing to change these policies and established guidelines in response to the inquiries.
Knowledge sharing would really thrive since the cooperative is made up of mostly Blacks with an
African culture orientation although the issues of level of education amongst members, age and social
background could become barriers towards effective knowledge sharing.
Identification of clear objectives
Knowledge management, and its processes really works only with specific objectives, says Carla
ODell (in Gubbins, 2003: 18), president of the American Productivity and Quality Centre. In keeping
up with the organizations mission which is to undertake the production, documentation, packaging,
marketing and selling of Indigenous African Music and Dance; Molepo Traditional Dance should
objectify to be a learning organization in a five year strategic plan that prioritizes the signing up of
members(with a projected target of 2000 members by the year 2020) , the acquisition of land and the
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development of such land into buildings and facilities where members can meet on a regular basis
through annual conferences for the election of new board members, practice sessions for choreographic
purposes, workshops and open cubicle workspaces to share operational experiences. This year, the
Rutang Bana Ditaola Workshops will ha[ppen alongside the festival as a Professional Development
Programme for practitioners. Traditionally, Indigenous African societies had varied ways of recording
knowledge. According to Motsi(2004: 63) Africa has a wide range of documentary material.
Documentary materials range from clay tablets, stone carvings, stone drawings, leather, parchment and
vellum, paper, straw, cloth and tree bark and even leaves(Motsi, 2004: 63), even beads. Although
Motsi(2004) cautions against the notion that Afriica is a continent of song and dance, we also agree
such a distortion should be revisited and corrected albeit with a lot of pride which calls on Indigenous
African Music and Dance to offer their subjective meaning to such disinformation. Practitioners of
Dinaka/Kiba Music and Dance are in their own right, distinctive 'record managers' of note. The
workshops are an attempt to preserve in simple ways, African heritage. We do everything, from the
perspective of baleti(practitioners).
Documentation
In a fast rapidly changing economy, Mellor (2011: 6) reiterates that the competitive advantage of an
organization will be determined by its flexible adaptive structures in an organization that can rapidly reorganize and self-reorganize in response to external stimuli. The challenge with Molepo Traditional
Dance lies in the fact that its core membership is Black Africans who are more implicit in their
manner of communication in which oral communication is preferred. For knowledge to be shared
effectively, the organization could document knowledge found in elderly members through physical
records so that the knowledge remains behind when they leave, retire or die. This approach would
require support from management. King, Kruger and Pretorius (2007: 287) highlight the fact that due to
separate development during apartheid, most South African businesses strongly resent a Eurocentric
way(seen as exclusivist), and is still very much the dominant approach. In order to counter this, Molepo
Traditional Dance could adopt the Ubuntu approach which according to King, Kruger and Pretorius
(2007) is characterized by a strong sense of community and belonging, supportiveness, solidarity,
approachability of management and freely available information.
Converting complex information into understandable forms
As highlighted above, the South African business landscape is still very much dominated by a
Eurocentric culture that manifests itself into its subset, also known as corporate culture; which
according to Finestone and Snyman(2005: 128); is seen as the great equalizer of cultural
exchange.where Western and African cultures must merge to create a South African culture, not just
co-exist. The problem with multi-racialism is that it tends to create the impression that all cultures are
equal while in reality the opposite is true. As it stands, English is the dominant language of business
and monoculture organizations such as Molepo Traditional Dance must learn to adapt to the external
environment. On the flipside of the coin, the reality is most members do not have the necessary
educational background to fluently converse and do business in English. Language is a barrier to
knowledge sharing in the South African context (King, Kruger and Pretorius, 2007: 287). As a solution,
organization records should be translated into the language of the members (Northern Sotho) for better
understanding. Mapaya( as adapted 2014: 2007) cautions against the dominant paradigm in Ethno
musicological studies; especially in academe, is the one that encourages scholars to study African
Musicology as an object, far away from the subjective interpretation of the practitioners and cultural
expertsthat the approach muzzles the voice of practitioners and is one of the reasons for the
stagnation of Indigenous Music Arts Systems. Directly involving the practitioners in the daily running
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of the cooperative would be a paradigm shift from traditional ethno musicology approaches. Moreover,
the organization could do with the translation of complex information into video clips, cartoons and
graphs for better understanding.
Information and Communication Technologies
Taking from the above section on the identification of clear objectives, Molepo Traditional Dance
should strategically make use technology to support its knowledge sharing activities. This should be
done cautiously considering the current debate that merely purchasing technological tools does not
guarantee positive knowledge sharing results. Call (2005: 21) asserts that knowledge management is
less of a technical problem and more of a cultural problem. Imagine a situation where Molepo
Traditional Dance; with its current educational (i.e. information and computer literacy) and socioeconomic (i.e. affordability) challenges; was to have financial resources to acquire available knowledge
management sophisticated software such as TRADOC Knowledge Network in the market. Who is
going to use these sophisticated technological tools? How many members can afford to buy a computer
and to those who can, not many know how to use computer technology? According to Call (2005: 21)
technology can assist a well-established knowledge management initiative, but knowledge
management will not succeed based solely on technology. It would therefore be wise to allow members
of Molepo Traditional Dance to uphold the core value of lifelong learning before a decision to purchase
technological apparatus can be taken. Since the younger membership of the organization is in school
(i.e. primary and secondary) and have been introduced to the concept of technology though the public
school curricula, the strategy could be to introduce focus groups where the organization becomes a
platform where basic technological knowledge acquired in school, such as the use of the internet and
social media platforms like Facebook(with its popularity) amongst the members; is shared and
discussed on how best it can advance the organizations mission. Young people will be crucial for
keeping up the sharing of this knowledge across the organizations gender and age boundaries going
forward. An ideal knowledge sharing technological tool for a star-up cooperative like Molepo
Traditional Dance would be for example, the Mondosoft produced software that can identify user habits
to create searches that are ore aligned to business objectives(Gubbins, 2003: 18).
Conclusion
Strategies that Molepo Traditional Dance can use for effective knowledge sharing need to be aligned
with a cooperative organizational culture and clear objectives supported by management with an
Ubuntu type of leadership. The company should guard against the loss of organizational memory by
documenting knowledge in easily retrievable record formats from elderly people with expert
knowledge before they leave, retire or die. Complex information could be converted into easily
understandable formats such as cartoons, graphs and video clips. The use of technological tools in
knowledge sharing should be done cautiously to avoid a situation where users feel overwhelmed
thereby resulting in the underutilization of knowledge management tools and consequently, ineffective
knowledge sharing activities.

References:
Call, D. 2005. Knowledge management- not rocket science. Journal of Knowledge Management
(10)1, pp. 81-93
Finestone, N and Snyman, R. 2005. Corporate South Africa: making multicultural knowledgesharing
work. Journal of Knowledge Management (9) 3, pp. 128-141
Gubbins, M. 2003. Knowledge management no longer a dirty word. Business Day, pp. 81. SA
Media: The University of the Free State
Mapaya, G. 2014. The Study of Indigenous African Music and Lessons from Ordinary Language
Philosophy. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences (5) 20, pp. 2007-2014
Mashile, M. 2001.Knowledge management needs a fresh definition. City Press, pp. 3. SA
Media: The University of the Free State
Mellor, R. 2011. Knowledge management and information systems: strategies for growing
Organizations. Pelgrave Macmillan: United Kingdom
Motsi, A.2004. The nature of documentary materials in Africa and challenges to preserving them.
ESARBICA Journal 23., pp 62-67