People in South Africa may understand fully the inconvenience of having a six-hour power cut (in the case of Cape Town several days in mid-winter) more than many other nations out there might understand, experience and tolerate. How can it be that a nation’s power utility was not fully prepared and anticipated the growth in […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Hope returns: Obama’s victory and global politics
Damn, I love Americans. Just when you’ve written them off as hopeless, as a nation in decline, they turn around and do something extraordinary, which tells you why the United States of America is still the greatest nation on earth. But too, what is happening in America and Kenya holds lessons for politicians everywhere, and […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Talent is the new oil — why SA is running on empty
“Talent is the new oil and demand far outstrips supply,” executive search firm Heldrick & Struggles, in partnership with the Economist intelligence unit, noted in its Global Talent Index released late last year. But South Africa is getting it wrong if it wants to become globally competitive.
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
Milking it
Have you ever tasted real milk? I’m not talking about the insipid, 0% fat, homogenised milk you buy from your local supermarket. I’m as city slicker as they come, but after a trip to the local petting farm (Sleepy Hollow, are you still there?) in primary school, I drank milk straight from the cow.
Posted inBusiness, Media
Four marketing and media predictions for 2008
While 2007 was one of the most exciting years in the online marketing space internationally, I’ve been wondering what 2008 will hold in store for South Africa. Here are a few of my thoughts on what we can expect: 1. Watch out for Google South Africa. A local Google office will open in February 2008 […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, News/Politics, Tech
Ten Predictions for 2008
Hillary Clinton will become the 44th US president on November 4 2008 and if she is wise and the world is fortunate she will select Barack Obama as her vice-president or appoint him to a senior position dealing with internal US policies. The world will shift intense and expensive efforts focused on HIV and Aids […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Matric results: Fire Naledi Pandor
Polokwane taught us that South Africans are tired of promises and of people with posh voices telling us what to do and doing nothing themselves. We begin 2008 with dreadful matric results — 21 500 young people failed in Gauteng alone. How is that possible in the wealthiest, best resourced province in Africa?
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle
Service in South Africa: Heroes and zeros
South Africa has one of the worst service ethoses in the world. I’m trying to think which nation in the world that I have travelled to is worse and can’t. And yes, I deliberately avoid Nigeria, there is just so much trauma I’m prepared to experience in one lifetime.
Posted inBusiness, Media
An original idea? Beaten to it by 600 years
My friend Mike and I have been working on a plan for a new product. Mike likes to look me in the eye and say: “Arthur, we are not geniuses.” This is his way of reminding me that we need to get a move on, because somewhere, someone else has already thought of the same […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Web 2.0: The emperor’s new code
Every time I hear the term “Web 2.0”, I throw up a little. The man behind the phrase, Tim O’Reilly, is a legend, sure. His publishing company, O’Reilly, is a thousand-megawatt leading light whose ideas I filch regularly. But, oh, what a turdy little storm he started when he coined the term back in 2004. […]
Posted inBusiness
Legalese vs the little guy
In a telling op-ed piece in the New York Times, legal-lingo expert Adam Freedman cuts to the chase on the debate about the “right to bear arms” mentioned in the US Constitution’s Second Amendment: it’s all about a comma that means everything to us now, but meant very little to its writers. The article is […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Zuma: Reap the whirlwind
It felt strangely like a wake, watching the inevitability of Jacob Zuma’s election as the new head of the ANC. Unless he is convicted on corruption charges he is now a near-certainty to become the next South African president in 2009. That’s what you get for half-hearted commitment to market reforms and economic freedom.