Abstract
This study examines the extent to which members of post-apartheid co-operatives applied the values and principles prescribed in policy and law as the basis by which co-operatives in the country should organise and operate in order to meet members’ economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations. Having identified these values and principles as Eurocentric through a review of the literature, the study adopted a decolonial epistemic perspective and co-operative inquiry, a research paradigm in which two or more people research a topic together through their experiences of it. The findings show that post-apartheid co-operatives operationalise the prescribed principles they can given resource and other constraints and also adapt them to suit their needs and realities amid market and policy-driven pressures to abandon them in pursuit of financial success. Findings also suggest that the non-application of these values and principles reported in previous studies, and noted as a key source of post-apartheid co-operative failure, could have been a superficial reading. This study shows that these prescribed values and principles are often self-evident amid a ubiquity of co-operative knowledge sets and forms rooted to the local epistemic context but othered and invisibilised by Eurocentrism. The study further argues that the state has a role to play in supporting co-operatives, but, to be effective, further work is required to recognise and visibilise othered co-operative knowledge and forms and to understand the full extent of adaptations of the prescribed principles and pressures to abandon them faced by co-operatives. However, ultimately, the study argues that in the absence of a perspective and methodology for meaningful engagement with all co-operatives regardless of legal status or form, state actions will reproduce misrecognition and invisibilisation and thwart the stated policy goal of an autonomous, independent, self-sustaining co-operatives movement capable of realising the needs and hopes of members.