Calling all Foxes. Clem Sunter
on to the last British colony in Africa, Simon’s Town, where the hero is a dog called Just Nuisance, all the hotels and pubs have something to do with Nelson and Trafalgar and the best fish-and-chip shop in the whole of the continent called the Salty Sea Dog resides on the quay.
On to Miller’s Point past the braying penguins where you can stop for lunch at the Black Marlin. And then, of course, that beautiful road to Cape Point with all its shipwrecks and walks. The colourful pottery we used to buy at Redhill alongside those magnificent animal statues; and then across to Scarborough where the residents are in a constant struggle with baboons.
Misty Cliffs, which are always misty, followed by the Outer Kom, the greatest surfing experience bar none. Kommetjie Lighthouse, the car park bristling with the surfing cult and then the walk across Noordhoek Beach with all the beautiful young ladies on their horses looking at you down their nostrils as though you were a crab.
The last stop is Noordhoek with all its oaks and English fields and a wonderful resort called Monkey Valley. Then you climb up the road around Chapman’s Peak and the Deep South is gone. It is appropriate that the toll gate to the commuterland of Hout Bay is on the other side, where the prices of real estate ascend into space as you approach Bantry Bay.
Dear Ebrahim, meet Mosa
I will continue to showcase individuals of outstanding entrepreneurial talent like Mosa when I come across them. The media is at last beginning to realise that they represent the future of South Africa.
Quitters never win and winners never quit. So says Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. I haven’t won yet but neither am I quitting. The only way the New Growth Path recommended by Economic Development Minister, Ebrahim Patel, is going to lead to the Promised Land is to replicate Mosa Moeketsi a million times.
She is an entrepreneur of note – or as I would say – a pocket of excellence. According to an article in The Star by Lana Jacobson, she holds the record as the youngest woman to own a construction company in South Africa. Her enterprise now employs 16 people to construct roads, dig manholes, build low-cost housing and supply plumbing systems.
She won the Alexandra Business Leader of the Year award in 2007 but was disqualified from possibly winning the prize for Influential Women in Business and Government because she was too young. Hats off to Lana for bringing this young lady to our attention.
My point, Ebrahim, is this. It is all very well setting targets for the numbers of new engineers and artisans required to get South Africa on a growth footing, but they are the workers. You need the businesses to employ them and who creates the businesses – the Mosas of this world. It would have been far more inspirational (and revolutionary) to set as a target the creation of a supportive environment in which one million new small businesses will be established by 2020, rather than five million new jobs. Guess what: if the goal of one million new small businesses was achieved and they were like Mosa’s one, that would be 16 million extra jobs. Many will fail prematurely, but many will grow beyond 16 employees.
One of the problems is that you as Minister never get to talk to the real entrepreneurs (who don’t make money through connections or exploiting one or other system of entitlement). I am talking about the people who have nothing but drive and a dream to begin with and turn them into a fortune. There are plenty of these stars in South Africa, like Mosa and Raymond Ackerman.
Nor do the business people with whom you rub shoulders on august bodies – like the National Planning Commission – have any clue of what it takes to be an entrepreneur, assuming all the risks, personally solving individual employee problems and collecting the money. Most business representatives on these bodies have spent their entire careers in big corporations where everything is sorted out by specialist staff, it is shareholders’ money – not their own – on the line and they never have to worry about next month’s salary cheque.
I know about the two worlds because I spent about 42 years at Anglo American and now I run my own consultancy business. It is as different as chalk and cheese. Nothing prepares one for being an entrepreneur other than going through the experience oneself.
So do yourself a favour, Ebrahim. Set up a meeting with Mosa and ask her what she needs to grow her business and get it listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. After all, you as government are her principal service provider. South Africa will only take a new growth path if you back the winners like Mosa so that they improve their talent for wealth creation.
For it is an indisputable fact that wealth creation and job creation go hand in hand; but it is the first that leads to the second – not the other way round. She is paying for your salary (through taxes): you are not paying for hers.
Freedom fighters fought the war to give champions like Mosa the freedom and opportunity to become world class. Others will follow in her footsteps. Thus our hideous unemployment rate will become a thing of the past. A luta continua.
The greasy pole of dehumanisation
This article serves notice that we must use our utmost endeavours to avoid the kind of racial polarisation and stereotyping which could make this act of unspeakable evil a more common occurrence.
I have seldom – if ever – read something which has left me so disheartened. I am referring to the news article posted on News24 last week (December 2010) about the brutal murder of the Potgieter family in the Lindley district of the Free State. My deepest condolences go to the relatives and friends. At least some suspects have been arrested. Good for the police!
How can anyone shoot a three-year-old girl in the back of the head at point blank range and then leave a note: “We have killed them. We are coming back.“ It requires a level of depravity and sickness of mind which is unthinkable. However, it has happened before. You only have to go back to the Second World War when the most scientifically advanced nation on Earth – I am talking about Germany – was bewitched by Adolf Hitler. He convinced them that Jews were not people, the consequence being that young concentration camp guards with no twinge of conscience whatsoever calmly escorted whole families into the gas chambers, locked the doors and turned on the jets.
We have seen it since in Cambodia, Russia and Rwanda. It happened under Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao. Sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers were perceived as the enemy – cockroaches that had to be stamped out. They were killed after being photographed; machine-gunned into trenches that they themselves had dug, or sent into the Siberian waste to freeze to death. Time and again mankind goes through these moments of madness and all that is left is a mountainous pile of skulls. There is no upside to payback time, not even for the perpetrators.
I am sure some of you reading this article will ask: how can I raise the spectre of dehumanisation because of an isolated death? The answer is that dehumanisation is a greasy pole, and once you are on it you can slide down into the pit of mass murder very quickly.
I have a nasty feeling that the rhetoric in certain quarters is heading in this direction, the farmers in this country are at considerable risk and it only requires some spark somewhere for the fires to start raging. Hence, I am not over-reacting.
It is therefore absolutely imperative that the government here bans the use of any genocide-laden terminology from any quarter, and that anybody found guilty of using such language is sent to prison for a long time without any chance of appeal or parole. It should be considered one of the deadliest crimes that any citizen can commit. There should be no mercy shown to the culprits, just as they would show no mercy if they were in a position to carry out their vile rhetoric. Punishment must be quick and harsh to serve as a big deterrent.
Why am I so sure? Because South Africa does not need its moment of madness. Nelson Mandela put reconciliation at the top of his list. Don’t betray his glorious legacy. Stop the incipient tendency towards dehumanisation right now. All problems have to be resolved peacefully and sensitively. Otherwise hell beckons – for everybody. Go to Rwanda and see for yourself what the consequences are of demonising a section of the human race.
Will American treasuries become junk bonds?
America still has done nothing about its budget deficit, so this remains a valid question. Markets up till now have shrugged