Dave's Soapbox

Just some stuff if you're interested.

The cost of red tape. (6th June 2006)

It seems that when it comes to the cost of red tape, not all businesses are equal.

According to the SBP report, arguably the most comprehensive study of the cost of red tape in South Africa, the cost of regulatory compliance is far higher in the small business sector than in big enterprises. This is demonstrated in these highlights extracted from the report:

The full report can be downloaded here.

Small businesses are often accused of being weak on paperwork. No small wonder. The cost of keeping all the paperwork up to date is so disproportionate when compared to large companies - can we really be surprised.

And so much for a level playing field. One of the rally cries around so much industry wide interventions is to "level the playing field" - but look who's doing the crying. Most often the bigger role players in the industry.

To see comments on this issue, click here.

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Try not to argue against yourself. (23rd May 2006)

I've had "broadband" access for long enough now that I pretty well take it for granted. Don't really give it a second thought.

Then a couple of weeks ago I started noticing things. Suddenly pages I was used to just clicking and they'd be there like instantly seemed to be stuttering a little. Then *poof* it was over. No connection.

And so started a really interesting journey of discovery. For all the gory details click here.

The upshot of it all is that there is some pretty serious congestion on the information highway here in South Africa and it seems this has been building up for some time now.

My little theory that by using Telkom ISP I will not get the "pass the buck - it's the other guys fault" run around has been blown out of the water.

Even more fun, there have been a whole lot of people demanding more speed, no capping, no bandwidth shaping and lower charges. A bit like having your cake and eating it. I mean, pick one and go for it by all means. But asking for all in one breath is like arguing against yourself.

Sure. Miracles happen. You get what you ask for most of the time. But there is still no free lunch.

And trying to compare our infrastructure and rights to service to what is going on in Europe and the USA. C'mon. Reality check. This is Africa. We're a tad more developed than most other parts of the continent, but rather behind the more "advanced" countries of this world.

It's cool. If we keep our heads we'll catch up one day.

So right now I'm trying to work out just how much trouble we are in. Well, it seems I'm not going to get the answer from Telkom. So I've gone exploring and found some interesting new sites which I'd like to recommend:

My ADSL which has a free forum. A great place to discover that when it comes to not getting the broadband you are paying for, we are far from alone, and

The Forum SA. A really promising free-to-join site for business owners and folk interested in business related matters.

I'd love to stay and chat longer, but I really need to deal with my stuttering ADSL window to this wonderful internet world. 'Till next time.

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The problem with BEE is the B. (27 April 2006 - Freedom Day)

When South Africa made the transition into full democracy in 1994, it was accompanied by one of the best constitutions in the world. The strong foundation of this wonderful constitution was the concept of individual human rights.

One of the cornerstones of these individual rights is the concept of equality. Now this is not the type of equality we see at the beginning of a game of Monopoly where everyone starts with the same amount of money and from the same point. In fact, thinking about it, even then someone has to start first.

Equality is not about an equal start in life.

We all have an unequal start to life and I’m sure there are very few that would suggest there is an acceptable “Monopoly game start” solution in the game of life. Fortunately, history shows us that where we start is not what determines where we finish. What really makes the difference is what we do with our lives, and it is here we need to try to make sure that the willing and able can find their opportunity to move forward.

Of course we went into this new era of the rainbow nation fully aware that there were problems. Decades of apartheid had left their mark. Whole communities were starting from behind others and deserved a helping hand to catch up because the racism of apartheid had prejudiced their starting position in life.

What was needed (and still is) was to bring the opportunity to improve their lot in life to these communities in line with those enjoyed by the advantaged communities. It was never going to be an overnight job. The resources simply weren’t there. We are also talking about massive socio-economic change – it takes time.

Now it is easy to criticise whilst not putting forward solutions. So rather than just criticise the road we have taken, I would like to suggest an alternative.

I think we started well.

We focused on education. If we could only do one thing to improve people’s future, this is it. We tried to improve access to education for those whose parents simply did not have the means to send their children to “good schools”. We tried to improve access to education for adults who were willing to learn, but did not have the financial resources to access further education on their own.

We focused on housing – moving people from shacks to brick and mortar houses.

We focused on infrastructure – rolling out roads, water, electricity and telephones to communities that did not have.

We sought to restore land to those who had been dispossessed.

And then we got impatient.

Instead of waiting for the inevitable fruits of these programs to start weaving their magic, for the cream to start rising to the top, we tried to force downstream objectives that I suggest would have come anyway.

Instead of breaking down and eliminating racial prejudice, we started building a whole new set of rules for racial prejudice. Organisations were directed towards introducing racial criteria for staff selection. Instead of looking at people purely on an ability basis and disregarding their race (or gender), organisations were encouraged to prefer certain race groups over others as a priority over ability.

This posed a problem in terms of the constitution, and the right to equality had to be adulterated. Racial discrimination was once again alive and well in South Africa.

A note: I recognise that each paragraph, perhaps even each sentence of this could easily fill a chapter in a book. Each point is the result of considerable analysis, but if I included it here this would be a book, not a short(ish) comment on our society.

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The BEE submission (29 March 2006).

This submission was developed in association with the Business Warriors Forum as a response to the draft Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Codes of Good Practice for Qualifying Small Enterprises as published for comment by the DTI in November 2005.

All files are downloads in pdf format.

The main submission

Appendix A1 Full survey results

Appendix A2 Black survey results

Appendix B A small business is not a little big business - from the Harvard Business Review

Appendix C The Indonesian Case

Appendix D The Business Warriors Code Examination Threads

Appendix E Entrepreneur Profiles

For anyone that's interested in the best South African small business support site on the web, consider joining Business Warriors.

For a meagre R171.00 per month, you can get answers to all the questions you can think of as a small business owner - and discover a whole lot of questions and answers that you had not thought of, but probably should have.

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The SETA Grant Regulations submission (20 February 2005).

This submission was developed to put forward a small business perspective in response to the draft regulations for Sector Education and Training Authorities Grants in terms of Notice 151 of 2005 and the National Skills Development Act.

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