I must say that the ANC NEC meeting in December produced the result that most business people and most city dwellers were hoping for.  The more rural people still supported their usual candidate, in this case Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife, and that was to be expected.  It is sad that the result was actually so close because between the two candidates I think one stood out by a mile and it is unfortunate that he won so narrowly, but it is still fantastic that he won.  We saw an immediate bounce back in the Rand from around R14 in early December to constant strengthening the second it was suggested that Cyril Ramaphosa might be the likely favourite and more improvement after he did indeed win, even though the Rand was about R13,30 by the time of the conference because once words started leaking that he had more delegates, the Rand started improving there and then. 

People forget how this flows into so many things and I am not saying that the Rand will remain strong – I think that over time it will start weakening again and it is going to depend on what the ANC does going forward – but in one quick move after 2 ½ years of slide in our currency putting us back to where we were in about mid-2015.  Again, this illustrates the importance of making the correct choices, the importance of people taking part in marches, parades, speaking out and of course turning up to vote when it counts.  

Some people might say, well, what difference will it make to me?  The first difference you will see is a drop in the petrol price because the Rand is stronger.  You will pay less money to travel somewhere (until the Government again raises fuel levies) and the cost of things imported from overseas will cost a little bit less.  The companies that are transporting the groceries and vegetables to stores where you buy from will charge a little bit less for those things, so it either will not go up as much as was anticipated or otherwise in some cases they may come down.  The benefits of living in a healthy economy are immense and there is a long, long way to go, but we must not underestimate the importance of a good result like this.  It is time we grab South Africa back for South Africans and not for one family from India and another family from KwaZulu-Natal.

What is your favourite season?  I tend to try to find something in most seasons that I love and in Gauteng I would probably say I like the period around March/April the best.  One starts to see the beautiful colours of autumn, and you still have the warmth of summer.  It is a wonderful time to play golf, although sometimes there are so many leaves on the ground that it is hard to find your ball underneath them, even though you have not necessarily hit it in a bad place.  Winter has its own beauty and summer of course is magnificent.  I just don’t think that nature looks as beautiful in summer, when everything is the same bright green, and certainly if, for example, you love a place like the Kruger National Park or other nature reserves, then summer really is not the best season for that.  The bush gets much thicker, the vegetation grows more and you cannot see as many animals as you can in winter when a lot of the plants have shed their leaves, etc. 

I think one of the tremendous problems that many people have is jealousy.  It particularly manifests itself when one of their friends starts becoming more successful in some way.  I use that term loosely because we can all have arguments about how you measure success – whether it is about money, achievements, who your partner is, etc, etc.  When one does not have money one certainly does not believe money is a way of measuring success and each person defines their own terms.  

For myself, I have never been jealous of people.  I try to think about what they are doing better than me that I can learn from and copy.  In other words, I have always been of the view that I am better than some of the people I know at certain things and they are better than me at other things.  I want to prove those things of mine which are not as good as theirs.  Whether you want to call it assimilating or copying, I do believe that there is something I can learn from each person.  The best example that people give in this regard is the former boxer, Mike Tyson, whose life has turned out to be much of a disaster.  I don’t for one second think that Mike Tyson is more intelligent than me, I don’t think he is even intelligent, but I cannot deny that the part of his brain which operates his reflexes functions far better than my brain.  I am not sure that that is something that I could copy, but what I am saying is even if I don’t regard him as being intelligent, I certainly accept that there are certain parts of his brain that function far better than mine, bearing in mind that all body movements are of course controlled ultimately by the brain.  

In any event, I am rambling now, and as my wife says, keep it simple stupid or KISS.  The reality though is that jealousy is a cancer that will rot you from within, which I have sadly seen it in quite a few of my friends in recent years.  What is far better is to look at yourself and consider what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are.  We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of your friends?  What are the strengths of successful people that you know, see or observe or your friends?  Have a look at those and see what you can use and learn from.  There is no need to be jealous – you don’t after all want to be surrounded only by unsuccessful people or people who lurch from one disaster to another that you can sympathise with all day.  It is far more beneficial and fun to be surrounded by successful people and to take inspiration from them.  So change your mindset, change the way you are viewing things and see where you can improve, where can you make yourself better and how you can learn from those around you. 

I just wonder how many people use the Libraries in South Africa?  I think most of them are under-funded and positioned in places very far away from where people stay.  In that regard, I would be particularly interested if you even know where your local Library is?  If you have been into it and have taken out a book in the last 10 years, let me know about the experience and what you thought.  I have seen some very impressive Libraries in some countries overseas and I think it is just one of those areas where South Africa is lacking and I understand that we need to get basics like water, electricity, etc to more of our people, but without education people will not be able to take the country forward.  Most people cannot afford books, especially not at the prices they cost once they have been imported into South Africa and their only hope is the Library.  Let me know about your experiences.

I have written about this book previously and I do believe, from my perspective, it would be my book of the year.  The year is not finished so that is why I say I do believe, but it is probably the most interesting business and marketing book I have read for the year. 

It will be interesting, when everyone’s non-fiction book of the year list comes out, to see how many of them refer to this particular book.  I suspect books like Homo Deus are going to get more references, which is all about how robots are going to take over from man and follows on the author’s equally impressive Homo Sapiens.  I love business, I am obviously somewhat of a specialist in marketing and the book is not just about Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple.  Those are the big four, but in explaining their dominance a lot of business principles are explained.  For example, the reason that Apple dominates, the author argues, is because Apple decided to position its shops in up-market shopping centres and only target the more up-market or upwardly mobile people.  In other words, they have left the less profitable middle-class market alone to other competitors and those other competitors are forced to sell similar phones at far reduced prices to win over that market whereas Apple goes out of its way to continually increase the prices on its products as well as their profit margins.  The book is scathing on just about all of the companies – for example, noting that Jeff Bezos of Amazon said that he believes that once robots and computers start taking over much more, and a lot of Amazon’s delivery fulfilment is already done by robots, that people should be given a social security net – an amount that they are given each month.  The book says he really needs to come up with something better when his company spends all its time trying to work out how to pay less tax – after all, who is going to pay for this social security net if one of the biggest companies in the world is not paying its fair share of tax. 

Rhinoceros Success is a book by Scot Alexander – a book that should have been written by a South African, but is written by an American.  It has sold more than 3 million copies around the world and it is a very short and fun motivational book.  He basically says try to be a rhinoceros and not be a cow.  He says cows run away from bad news, bad markets and problems and rhinoceroses don’t.  I am not sure that we all need to be a rhinoceros charging over everybody else, although it does work for some people, but the one part I do like is he says you need to imagine that you have the skin of a rhinoceros - in other words, a thick skin.  You have to understand that of course people will criticise you, or as he says you will have torpedoes aimed at you.  He says you must imagine your skin is so thick that you hardly feel them.  Sure, they will knock the breath out now and then, but you will be right back on your feet and ready to keep running.  

It is important for us, because one has to develop a thick skin and I can assure you that the more successful you are, the more you stand out from the crowd, the more you will be criticised.  You have to embrace and understand it and although at times I do find it is hurtful, I try to remember this.  The book says, “The more successful a rhino you become, the bigger the torpedoes.  That’s OK.  You are a thick-skinned, mad, charging rhinoceros and the torpedoes will run out before you would ever go back to being a lazy old cow in the pasture.” 

I have received a lot of e-mails from LinkedIn recently asking me to add all sorts of connections and to reconnect with people.  LinkedIn is not really a website that I use.  In fact, I very rarely go onto it and I made the unfortunate mistake of ticking the box to add connections.  From a numbers point of view I went from about 150 connections to 830+ in 2 or 3 days, but only then did I start discovering the extent of the problem.

LinkedIn had basically sent an invite to anybody who had ever written to me at my company email address.  That includes people with potential cases whose cases we have declined or people who wanted to complain about something or other, or offer us a photostatting service, phone lines, advertising services, etc.  

Within days I received a steady stream of messages from people who said I have asked to add them as a contact and they would like me to reconsider taking on their personal injury case which we had previously declined as not being a good case.  I received a number of messages from people who wanted to supply all sorts of equipment to my offices and even former staff members, currently at their second or third firm after leaving us, asking me to point them in the direction of a firm that may wish to hire them.  

That is also a reminder to all of us, the next time one of your Apps asks you to add your contacts, to be very careful about clicking that button, and if you do click it, to deselect those people you do not wish to send an e-mail to, as otherwise your e-mail box is going to be flooded and you will have to spend a lot of time having to explain to people that you inadvertently asked to add them. 

It does not seem that the South African National Roads Agency is having much luck with its e-toll debts.  In its financial year it has just written off R3,6 billion relating to older debts.  In other words, on their own books they have given up on collecting that money, although they say they are going to try and collect it through the courts.  

Apparently, estimates are that 80% of people in Gauteng do not pay their e-tolls and it is something I have written about before.  My firm pays its bills on all of the cars we drive, but this is beginning to look like a disastrous project.  Apparently, the toll operating loss for the year to March 2017 was R4,58 billion and they only collected R1,85 billion during the year which is much less than was initially estimated.  Of course, the other side of the story is that the government is chipping in to SANRAL with grants, which means if you are not paying the tax on the actual road you are paying it in increased taxes anyway.  Apparently, the government is now looking at a fuel levy instead of the e-tolls as one of its considerations with the Minister of Transport saying this in June.

 was disappointed to see the Institute of Race Relations’ latest report on the South African labour market.  Apparently, our unemployment, which was 6,6 million in 2001 increased to 9,3 million by 2017 of whom 6 million are under the age of 35.  8,3 Million of those people are black and the unemployment rate for black people is between 4 to 5 times higher than white people.  That is not exactly a recipe for a happy country and happy people because it is a sign of tremendous inequality.  

Of those who have a tertiary education 75,6% managed to find a job while of those with just a Matric only 50,3% of them find a job.  Those without skills are in the worst position because there are no longer many jobs at all for those without the more formal skills you need to compete in the formal sector.  In other words, there are not that many jobs now for manual, unskilled labourers and so those people in particular are really struggling to find jobs.

There is new leadership in Zimbabwe now, as we all know, and I think we are all happy about that.  We are hoping for new leadership in South Africa and by that I mean leaders from a different family, a leader who does not have a house in the Nkandla Compound.  Hopefully Zimbabwe is a good sign for that, although one hears of potential disruptions of the NEC Conference in December with disputes about delegates, bribes and all sorts of things going on.  

For now though I wanted to just ponder a little bit on Zimbabwe.  It is sad that Zimbabwe has fallen so far in 37 years that everybody now rejoices at a new leader who is hardly a shining star.  The new President was after all the Vice-President of Zimbabwe.  He was Mugabe’s right hand man during the time when up to 20,000 of Mugabe’s opponents were apparently killed in the mid-80s.  He is known to be a fearless enforcer and of course he has come to power, however we want to discuss it, in a military coup.  When he came to power did he promise elections?  No, in fact, the exact opposite – he said that Zanu PF will remain in power and warned anybody who thought otherwise!  

In other words, we are all tremendously excited that we have finally seen the end of Mugabe, but what everyone is excited about is somebody who basically announced that the country will remain a one party state, that its power cannot be challenged, has a very dubious track record and came to power via a military coup.  It is sad that things were so bad that we now even consider that, and it probably is, to be better than the previous situation.  

I know a lot of PDF versions of this book are floating about.  I do think it is the wrong way to read the book or to “support” any author. Authors and publishers don’t make money out of illegal copies of a PDF and quite frankly, with the book not having being banned, there is no reason to circulate the book at this point.  It does not look like it is going to be banned either, although there will probably be criminal charges against the journalist Jacques Pauw.  

The book has become the fastest selling book in South Africa since they started collecting data in 2004 and I discourage anybody from reading the PDF version when the book is available on the shelves.  It is certainly a book worth reading, I have finished reading it after having bought it on my Kindle, and I can only say it is just one revelation after another and if only 20% of it is true, and of course there is reason to believe a lot more of it is true, then South Africa is not in a good place at the moment in terms of Government bureaucracies, the weakening of the police force, the loss of talent and capacity in the South African Revenue Services, etc.  

There are so many allegations and they are not just all about President Zuma – including the fact that for example it is alleged that even after he became President he continued to receive money from a well-known horserace owner, Roy Moodley, of R1 million a month for another 4 months after becoming the President, etc, but there are just revelations as to all sorts of breakdowns in the police, agendas, etc and I hope everybody involved in politics in particular is reading it and trying to work out where the problems are and what needs to be done about them.