Supposedly
President Trump is a very bad thing for America and the world. Also supposedly
the share prices of companies in a nation will go up only when the companies
are making money and growing their businesses in a favourable economic climate.
US share prices are at all time highs. At least one of these statements must
therefore be wrong. Unless of course investors are ignoring politics which is a
good idea anywhere. Recently our own President, who continues to disappoint those
who hoped he knew a thing or two about the real world, berated the private sector
for failing to transform. This is a code word for making skin colour the sole
criteria for employment and promotion. A technique which has stunningly failed
the public sector, although when it was called apartheid it did manage to keep
the lights on.
A commercially
clueless cadre has proposed that the idea of shopping malls signing up “anchor
tenants” is probably a bad thing and leads to unjustifiable profits at the
expense of the poor. The practice of a
mall owner signing a discounted lease with a branch of a large retail business boasting
a loyal customer base in return for refusing space to that store’s competitors
does indeed appear to show little concern for shoppers. In fact, the mall owner
can probably squeeze rents up for all the other tenants citing the drawcard of
the big store. But these are merely the consequences of market forces being the
primary driver of the industry. And South Africa claims to be a global leader
in many measures of shopping mall design, operation and customer acceptance. On
their own the “shut out” stores are already leaning on mall owners about this practice.
But still the regulators are worried that small and start up shop keepers are
excluded from the becoming mall tenants. They therefore want to interfere,
instead of just going shopping.
Years ago the
in-group joke amongst scientists was that the growth in number and pages of research
journals was such that they were accelerating along the library shelf space, approaching
the speed of light. Today it’s Books about Crooks in South Africa that are
swamping us. They are appearing faster than we can even grasp who it is that
has been exposed and how widespread and bad the thievery, corruption and
influence peddling has become. Soon we’ll need genealogical type wall charts.
The woes in
the dead tree media sector continue. The glory days of owning a newspaper are
over Even the slightest of taps on the wainscoting at Independent Newspapers sends
the vermin scuttling. But nevertheless, in the proud tradition of proprietors
world-wide, Dr Iqbal Surve, the head honcho down there, continues to use his
titles to put his own (increasingly crumbling) case. Meanwhile Business Day is
behaving like a chain store and trying to entice subscribers with Black Friday
specials. We all know about loss leaders in retail but it’s quite different in
a newspaper one would think.
Presumably there
are many SAA employees who having just been paid only half their November salaries
are requesting to meet with their Union Leaders. These are the chaps who
emerged beaming from pay negotiations just weeks ago and announced satisfactory
increases all round. Not a word was said then about the fact that there simply
was no money in the SAA bank account. It is desperately sad that leaders from
the president down are rarely called to explain and account for the obvious
untruths they use to buy adulation and support from their followers. Many years
ago in the Dilbert cartoon one of the characters who had been promoted to
management was required to undergo “surgery” to disconnect her “moral compass”
before assuming high office. A clever meme.
It seems
rather sacrilegious to be discussing Rassie’s replacement already. There’s
surely no need to emulate the boardroom at Cricket SA where the volume for a
game of musical chars has been turned way up to drown the sounds of the backstabbing
and buck passing. And on the topic of fast publishing, Eddie Jones’ autobiography
is now ready for us to buy our English friends for Christmas.
James Greener
Friday 29th
November 2019
