Tag: private sector

South Africans have been slowly marching towards serfdom, and unless something drastic changes, this march will continue. With this year’s budget speech on the horizon, in an election year, the country and the world will get a glimpse as to how bad things could be in the short to medium term.

“Supporting an unemployed person with a public works job far outweighs its cost” according to ex-deputy director-general of National Treasury, Andrew Donaldson. Experts with a deep understanding of economics, our country and its policy history, from Andrew Donaldson to Kate Philip, the lead on the Presidential Employment Stimulus, are calling for an expansion of socially and economically productive public works programmes.

As you know, the threshold has increased by 7.6%. Upon investigation, it seems that the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) was used to increase the threshold. More significantly, the National Minimum Wage has gone up by 9.6% as well.

As South Africans continue to suffer from numerous government failures, there is a small ray of hope emerging. The private sector is stepping up to do the job where they are allowed to do so. This is exemplified in three stories that came out in the first two weeks of June.

The private sector in South Africa is seen as an evil that must be heavily restricted if not expressly prohibited. For a country wherein government service delivery is poor to say the least, one would expect that private enterprise, which keeps us safe through the various security firms and healthy through the various hospitals, would be celebrated.

Both private and public sector corruption, whether moral or criminal, is a result of perverted incentives. These incentives are in turn a result of a political philosophy that regards it as at best appropriate, and at worst imperative, that policy (and political) considerations play a central role in commercial and economic decision-making. South Africa would do better to shift its focus to enterprise and away from politics.

The almost simultaneous implosion of socialist and communist systems throughout the world is arguably the single most significant political event of the twentieth century. The year 1989 is particularly poignant because in that year the Berlin Wall was dismantled.  This event signalled the beginning of the end of socialism in Europe and hastened an already growing worldwide disillusionment with socialist ideology.

Painting classrooms and box ticking charitable endeavours are fast becoming a thing of the past. Instead, it’s time for corporate social investment (CSI) to take its place in the boardroom and for companies to see it as an integral part of their future business plans.

The recent ransomware attack suffered by the City of Johannesburg sounds a clarion call for boards to revisit their technology governance strategies and take a more holistic view of technology and the risk it poses.

Eskom has one and SAA is looking for one. And as South African State Owned Enterprises (SEOs) and private sector companies continue to suffer from an ailing economy, there is no doubt that the role of Chief Restructuring Officer (CRO) is catching on.