Democratic Capitalist

I have been watching with quite a lot of interest the scrap between trade union Saccawu, food retailer Pick ‘n Pay and its founder and chairman Raymond Ackerman.

The fight between the parties is quite interesting because it says a lot about the unions and where their real interests lie.

Nobody is exactly sure about what Saccawu is arguing about, and judging from their “open letter” on Moneyweb, I don’t think they are all that sure either.

As seems to be the case with negotiations and complaints in South Africa when all else fails you cry racism and you then refuse to give specific examples. It seems to be an airy fairy grievance around something the present CEO Nick Badminton said 10 years ago, but again there is no proof that he said it.

Saccawu of course then thought it was very clever to attack Raymond Ackerman and call him a racist … which has kind of backfired because if any high profile South African business leader has demonstrated his commitment to democracy and eradicating racism, it is probably Ackerman.

He fought really hard during the Apartheid era for the rights of black workers and educating black employees and let’s be honest he has created a business which now employs over 38000 people, many of whom are black.

Reading the Saccuwu ”open letter” - which was very poorly put together and demonstrates the lack of skills that the union representatives possess - the tone seemed to be very clear. They don’t argue that they have better skilled people in the employ of Pick ‘n Pay who should be promoted, they argue instead that statistically the split between white and black and male and female doesn’t suit them and therefore things must change.

Remember a little business called Eskom where they employed this type of thinking?

I’m sure this story is going to run for a while but I have a feeling that this protest is actually going to backfire badly on the union. Their leaders have been exposed as poorly skilled (the very thing they argue they have) and that they do not represent the interests of their members or appreciate history - they are fighting for something that many of them did not experience first hand.

The main thing I wanted to focus on was this issue of skills and the lack of education amongst the unions senior representatives and why it reflects badly on them:

• If your leaders cannot put together a coherent letter, how do you expect to communicate and resolve grievances? Strike? Damage property… it certainly won’t be through quality negotiations
• You can’t argue that you have the skills within the union to do a job, when quite clearly the most senior people in the union don’t have them (communication, English, negotiation, logical thought patterns, well backed up arguments)
• You can be as nasty as you like and throw out the word “racist” as often as you like - 1 million jobs have been lost this year - why have the unions failed to protect their members?
• One thing which hasn’t been considered is that as a result of these job losses a lot of these unions will be losing members who will migrate into the small business sector. That means fewer people paying their union fees as they are forced to actually stand on their own two feet…. how is THAT going to change the lie of the labour land in the coming years? 

Unions in Europe for instance are very highly educated and I think it is something our unions need to cotton on to very quickly if they want to be taken seriously. They have dedicated economics units and negotiators who are some of the best in their fields. They can make a structured argument and back it up with fact.

Locally the closest I think we have is Solidarity but the other unions also need to play catch-up. They need to up their skills and fast if they want to be taken seriously because they haven’t covered themselves in much glory.

It has been interesting today to watch the media fall-out today from the death of former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Of course without fail, the ANC Youth League has jumped on the band-wagon and hammered radio presenter Gareth Cliff for his “tweets” which many described as thoughtless / careless / inappropriate.

Appropriateness of the tweet? Who knows who cares?

Its amazing how when somebody dies all of her supporters suddenly can think of all the good things she did for society. The reality is that her policies around HIV / AIDs cost hundreds of thousands of lives and have been one of the largest post-apartheid social injustices perpetuated on South Africans.

She is not a hero and should not be treated as one. She was out of her depth from the time she was appointed health minister and her refusal to acknowledge her short-comings meant that many other people suffered.

For those jumping out to defend her, just clarify whether you are doing it as a way of taking advantage of some easy PR or whether you truly believed she offered a lot.

Its interesting to note that according to a poll on News24 - 93% of recipients believe she will be remembered for her failure to tackle HIV in South Africa.

A little bit of a shift away from politics for a bit and onto the contentious issue of Property Syndicates.

There are quite a lot of rumours swirling in media and blog circles that the Treoc property syndicate / offering is in trouble, leaving the big four banks with around R60bn in exposure. The only real reason I know Treoc is because one of my mates is invested with them - other than that I don’t know them from a bar of soap and I certainly have no way of knowing whether there is any substance to these rumours.

Having said that, it is hard to miss the fact that a number of high profile property syndicates have gone belly-up in the last year leaving thousands of investors out of pocket. I remember reading an article on Fin24 last year warning against something called King Financial Holdings and sure enough they seem to have sunk as the developers have run out of money.

The question I am trying to understand is:

A) Why are South Africans infatuated with property syndication as a means of owning property?

B) Why does there seem to be so little in the way of regulation and investor protection around syndicates?

While greed will always rule the roost in any financial market, we as a country cannot afford to be having issues like this Tannebaum Ponzi Scheme and major property syndication flops damaging our image as a reputable investment destination…

I must say it is quite interesting to log-on to The Times live website and do some catching up … especially when there is talk about fallout in the ANC / SACP alliance.

The economic climate has not made things easy for this alliance and suddenly you are finding an increasingly “powerful” labour union throwing its weight around and pitting young Julius Malema against the old-hands at the SACP.

I say “powerful” because while they have thrown their weight around, there has been little to show for the efforts including that poor Vodacom boycott / listing nonsense.

It is also interesting just to watch the press who are certainly looking for ways to play these two alliance members off against one another. Is this a further sign that the once mighty ANC alliance is disintegrating and just how much of this is as a result of the state of the global economy?