{"id":206,"date":"2017-04-28T21:47:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T21:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/?p=206"},"modified":"2017-04-28T21:47:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T21:47:03","slug":"it-is-now-time-we-walkthetalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"– It is now time we #WalkTheTalk"},"content":{"rendered":"

As if our political and social problems insufficiently kept us sick and depressed for days, Standard & Poor\u2019s and Fitch added to our woes, relegating our country\u2019s bonds to sub-investment grade. Moody\u2019s, bless their souls Lord, decided to play the wait-and-see game, placing us on notice for now. Our new finance minister\u2019s recent trip to New York to assure international investors seems to have hit a brick wall<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Our country seems fiercely divided on many issues, at least as seen through the social and mainstream media lenses. Differences include those about the approach for overcoming problems facing us. The \u201cMadiba magic\u201d is no more. Cry our beloved country<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But not all is lost. We somehow agree on our predicament and need to find a way out. How then do we get there when we disagree on so many issues and cannot even get traction on what we agree on? By Nimroth Gwetsa, 28 April 2017.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the economy, stupid<\/em>\u201d paraphrasing the expression attributed to James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist in his successful 1992 presidential campaign against the then sitting president, George H. W. Bush.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Economic hardship exacerbates squabbles among people. It makes sense then that we lay bulk of the blame for our differences and strife on the slump in our economy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I often hear people saying our economy needs more entrepreneurs so new jobs can be created. But I seldom hear about how such entrepreneurs would come about as if others are responsible for bringing them forth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0No doubt we need more entrepreneurs and funding for start-ups and small businesses. But we also don\u2019t necessarily need more of that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Having seen and encountered many struggling businesses, many of which do not need funding to stabilise, I realised such businesses need an opportunity to \u201cserve\u201d larger corporations. By serving, I am alluding to small companies lacking experience to fulfil requirements of higher corporations. Their inexperience is akin to inexperienced and unemployed undergraduates begging for internship and any other opportunities to help them gain experience to increase their employability.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Not many large corporations would be on a \u201crecruitment\u201d drive searching for small businesses to nurture and hopefully partner with for future opportunities. As in unemployment, how many times have we seen jobs advertised looking for candidates with minimum of three years-experience? Likewise, many opportunities promoted by large businesses readily look for small businesses with a minimum of three years of active business operations and supply experience as a prerequisite for doing business with them. The state is even the biggest culprit in this regard, yet claims to be shifting the focus on small businesses.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What start-ups are going through, is what inexperienced and unemployed graduates experience regularly. The entrepreneur\u2019s sector, unlike labour\u2019s, does not have such onerous regulatory requirements. One would have expected large corporations rushing to engage small businesses to supplement their capacity, yet these have chosen to ignore the sector, but lament government\u2019s stringent labour laws and quantum of the proposed minimum wage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Aside from other considerations, I do not think some starts-ups would really mind having ancillary functions of large corporations \u201coutsourced\u201d to them at a fee structure just below the minimum wage for each resource assigned. I exclude labour broking from those small businesses owing to accusations of their failure to add value to staff.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But the businesses I refer to are those by emerging entrepreneurs able to find a way of taking on such opportunities without exploiting their staff. One approach to avoid staff exploitation while accepting lower fee could be by giving staff meaningful equity in the business in exchange for taking \u201csmall\u201d income so they, with the founder, could give business a chance to grow and afford paying higher wages in future.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In my earlier article<\/a>, I wondered if a shift in interactions between big business and people engaged as sole proprieties or small businesses would not reduce our challenges. I still wonder to the efficacy of that approach.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In this climate of heightened punting of \u201cRadical Economic Transformation\u201d, we should be exploring this option more keenly as it could be one other way of turning people from being job seekers wanting to earn an income to job-creators paying wages.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the heart of high unemployment and low job-creation<\/em> rate, low entrepreneurship and related higher failure rate lies preventable and solvable problems many people in positions of influence largely ignore.<\/p>\n

\u00a0By incubation, nourishment and nurturing, I refer to the need to care about people without hope and prospects of being considered for serious opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A socially responsible capitalist system is likely to gain more favourable support if such interventions were to be implemented without waiting for government incentives or being forced by law or other pressures to do it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Locally though, I’d be more than happy if radical economic transformation was aggressively focusing on incubating, handholding and nurturing job seekers and entrepreneurs ethically through programmes of work by government departments. Such interventions are good for increasing the base of income-tax contributors and sustaining democracy than having only a few enjoying those privileges.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Some Economists would say for this intervention to occur, the economy needs to grow first to fund such programmes. With our economy growing at hopelessly unacceptable levels, is such an approach viable? The decision is a chicken-and-egg<\/em> argument. A farmer who does nothing waiting for a favourable climate would get nothing. But one finding other ways to adapt to the unfavourable climate would become a productive and wealthier farmer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let us do what we usually do in a national crisis by declaring \u201ccode red<\/em>\u201d to low growth, high unemployment and increased hopelessness. We need to do what we have to do<\/em>, and do so swiftly to resolve the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I propose now that the Western Cape High Court hindered the trillion Rand nuclear energy project investment, should we not repriotise some of that budget incorruptly to incubate unemployed youth and entrepreneurs start small businesses to work with government and the private sector? Would this not yield a more inclusive growth, or radical economic transformation that can ensure our future has more people contributing to the wealth of this country?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Perhaps it is now time poverty and unemployment are declared crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We can overcome. If many nonprofit organisations can be funded to implement diverse social programmes, surely some funding can be made available to programmes for creating jobs, starting and incubating businesses for sustainability.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Our economic slump may largely be owing to our apathy as we find comfort in our primary concerns being resolved and ignoring those affecting our neighbours.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Having regard to few things we may agree on, let us then rise from our comfortable situation and actively find ways we could assist struggling people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As if our political and social problems insufficiently kept us sick and depressed for days, Standard & Poor\u2019s and Fitch added to our woes, relegating our country\u2019s bonds to sub-investment grade. Moody\u2019s, bless their souls Lord, decided to play the wait-and-see game, placing us on notice for now. Our new finance minister\u2019s recent trip to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133,10,134,18,2,45,15,13],"tags":[231,229,226,227,228,183,232,230,3],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-development","category-economic-development","category-entrepreneurship","category-innovation","category-labour","category-performance-improvement","category-risk-management","category-service","tag-bigbusiness","tag-develop","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-handhold","tag-incubate","tag-incubation","tag-junkstatus","tag-smme","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.exodusintegration.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}