There is a spectre stalking South Africa. It is the spectre that rewards loyalty over ability; craven sycophancy over talent and innovation. The result is lost opportunities and a diminished economy.
The most important thing that every person has by birth is their capacity for work and the expression of their talent. Not every person has the capacity to lead, but every person enjoys the opportunities created by talented leaders.
Leadership is a knotty task. It is not merely about seeing further and implementing brave, often contrarian, ideas. It is also about inviting and supporting the best minds to complement that leadership. A good leader knows how to delegate and listen to views that may be entirely at odds with her own.
Talent follows the opportunity to express itself. Where talent cannot be expressed then the most able individuals move to places where they feel that their abilities will be rewarded.
Imagine that government decides that coastal property prices are sky-high and that the reason is that Jo'burgers are driving up prices.
It seems logical. Jo'burgers earn greater salaries than the rest of us and there are rather a lot of them. They visit Cape Town during their holidays, like the place so much and decide to buy a second home down here so they can visit whenever they like. However, since they are so much wealthier than the locals, they pay more and drive up prices.
We should prevent any non-Capetonians from purchasing property in our exclusive province.
South African businesses have become one of the largest investment blocks in Africa. Many African countries regularly fret that they are losing their local business ownership to their cousins down South. Every sector of South African business is represented in this new scramble to invest; from mining to telecommunications to retail.
What makes this investment more remarkable is the tacit belief, emotionally expressed by members of the audience at a recent Graduate School of Business (GSB) Distinguished Speakers Program, that, “Without legislated BEE South African companies would never invest in black people.”
Vuyo Jack, CEO of Empowerdex, speaking at the event, did his best to make the fog of the BEE Codes of Good Practice clear. Most business owners left the engagement bewildered and confused.
Business people depend on research data to make decisions about if, when, where and how much to invest. Without meaningful and reliable information poor investments can be made.
In 2001 South Africa was suffering from weak economic growth. High interest rates (broaching 25%) were causing business and home-owners sleepless nights.
It didn't help that Stats SA at the time had miscalculated some important numbers. They got inflation wrong. They got the rate of job creation wrong. They got production numbers wrong. And it wasn't until others pointed out inconsistencies that the methodology was reviewed and corrected.
South Africa currently has two large Cinderella projects: the Gautrain and the 2010 World Cup.
Both projects are astonishingly expensive. When the Gautrain was announced in February 2006 it was to cost R 14 billion. Now it is suggested that it may cost R 24 billion. The same has happened with the World Cup. It was R 2 billion in the original bid and is now rapidly shooting over R 9 billion.
Nassim Taleb, a specialist financial analyst, has a phrase for unexpected events that have an extreme impact and that are made to seem predictable with explanations concocted afterwards. He calls these "black swans".
aloft: the whythawk blog 
