I have been asked to write a piece on why I believe that you as a student should stay in South Africa in the face of the issues that we have to deal with here, particularly the unacceptable levels of crime. But I’m not going to do that, because I don’t believe, and I have never believed, that students should stay in the country when they graduate. In fact I believe that the more graduates who leave South Africa, the better, as long as they come back enriched by their experiences abroad.

What I do recommend, however, is that you avoid telling everyone around you that you are going forever because this place has no future. You may feel like that now, especially if you’ve been a victim of crime, but you don’t honestly know how you will feel after a few years away. Leaving with a great fanfare of negativity makes it hard for you to come back with dignity when you’re done wandering the globe, and you can take it from me that you will eventually miss home. You can always make new friends but you can never make old friends.

We South Africans seem to think that we have some sort of monopoly on problems, particularly on crime. But just in the past week there have been several disturbing examples from abroad, including a bizarre yet intricate plot in the USA by a group of 9-year olds to murder their teacher, clean up the blood and hide the murder weapons. There was also the case of the great nephew of Cape Town’s Sir De Villiers Graaff, a student, who was shot dead in Mexico trying to defend his mother from two muggers.

By travelling you will see that the grass is not always greener on the other side. You will experience that when a power cut affects 15 million people in Florida, chaos ensues, as it has over the past few years in California, Brazil and Chile amongst others. In India or Egypt you’ll find that they just get on with things anyway, despite having no power, but there you will get sick, because that’s what happens when basic hygiene is so much worse than your body is used to. You will find that your luggage gets lost everywhere, like the 20,000 pieces that were lost last week at Heathrow. In Turkey you will learn that their constitutional court is in the process of banning their President and Prime Minister from politics for the next five years.

At the same time you will develop amazing skills, which will put you in great demand around the world, including back here (no matter what colour you are). The skills shortage is an international problem. In fact, according to the OECD, Britain (where the term “brain drain” originated) has lost more skilled professionals than any other country in the world over the past ten years. They are leaving for vibrant and sunny places like Sydney, Miami, Dubai and Cape Town, fleeing a massive increase in violent crime amongst British youth and ongoing immigration to Britain by people like you.

On a recent flight to Morocco I saw an advertisement for Louis Vuitton, which asked the question “Voyage-t-on pour découvrir le monde ou pour le changer?” (Do you travel to discover the world or to change it?) I think that the answer is both. By discovering the world, you see what is possible and you learn how things can be changed. This is why I am leading the charge to use the business community in the Cape to change our future. I’ve seen what can be achieved. Cape Town offers a unique blend of beauty, access to good universities, diverse cultures, great restaurants, a tremendous range of outdoor activities and the ability to access international businesses and three levels of government all in one place. That puts us in an enviable position to create what I refer to as the “Southern Tiger”, a rising power that stands above the rest. It just needs more people like you to travel abroad to experience what others have achieved in the face of similar challenges to ours, and then to come back here and apply the leadership, vision and self-confidence that we need to make it happen.

By the way, as you are leaving from one of our airports that are doubling as construction sites right now, remember that by the time you come home they will have been completed. There will also be new stadiums, roads, fast trains, power stations and harbours that you won’t have seen before. They are an important part of the R400 billion that we are spending on infrastructure to make sure that our economy keeps growing and that you will have more to come back to.

So take my advice and leave South Africa when you graduate. Go and see the world. But remember that, like the character in Paulo Coelho’s book “The Alchemist”, you might find that the treasure you are seeking is actually waiting to be discovered back home.

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I am reading this article as my wife drives us out of Cape Town along the N2, which is currently being widened, towards Wilderness. Already world class, the road to the Garden Route is nevertheless being upgraded in several different spots simultaneously.

It strikes me that the journalist must never have been anywhere else in the world; otherwise he would know that our road infrastructure is neither crumbling nor dilapidated. Had he driven on the highways of Los Angeles he would know what roads look like when they crumble, and had he visited Nairobi or Mumbai he would know what a dilapidated road network really is.

More importantly though, it worries me that the newspaper does not consider the impact of these inaccurate descriptors on the already fragile psyches of locals and the decisions of potential investors. This particular article appears right around the time that a large French business delegation is visiting Cape Town with President Sarkozy. What must they think about investing when they read this article?

Is it not time that our newspapers consider their responsibility towards promoting our country as an attractive business destination rather than constantly pointing out and even exaggerating its warts and blemishes? Is it not time for the media and the people to change the story and start encouraging the city’s residents and visitors to make the most of our enormous potential?

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The main purpose of daylight saving is to make better use of daylight. It was
introduced in the US and UK during World War I, when it was adopted in order to
conserve fuel needed to produce electric power. It has been proven that the
introduction of daylight saving time does save energy. U.S. Department of
Transportation research has shown that daylight saving time trims the entire
country’s electricity usage by a small but significant amount, about one percent
each day, because less electricity is used for lighting and appliances.
Similarly, in New Zealand, power companies have found that power usage decreases
3.5 percent when daylight saving starts. In the first week, peak evening
consumption commonly drops around five percent.

Energy use and the demand for electricity for lighting homes are directly
related to the times when people go to bed at night and rise in the morning. In
the average home, 25 percent of electricity is used for lighting and small
appliances, such as TVs, VCRs, and stereos. A good percentage of energy consumed
by lighting and appliances occurs in the evening when families are home. By
moving the clock ahead one hour, the amount of electricity consumed each day
decreases. The change to daylight saving time allows the use of less energy in
lighting our homes by taking advantage of the longer and later daylight hours.

A study by the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration found that crime
was consistently less during periods of daylight saving time than during
comparable standard time periods. Data showed violent crime down 10 to 13
percent. It is clear that for most crimes where darkness is a factor, such as
muggings, there are many more incidents after dusk than before dawn, so light in
the evening is most welcome.

Interestingly, Namibia is only the third African country to introduce daylight
saving time, the others are Tunisia and Egypt. South Africans have been
discussing it since before the Boer War, when the Johannesburg mines called for
it in order to give mineworkers more daylight recreational time. In 1952 the
Johannesburg City Council even passed a motion endorsing its introduction, but
it was never instituted, and in 1985 Plettenberg Bay introduced Plett-time, but
that was later abandoned due to the difficulties of the time difference between
Plett and its neighbouring towns.

After more than a hundred years of debate and discussion, surely there is no
better time than the present, with our need to save as much energy as we can, to
finally take the leap. Obviously it will take time to get used to it, and
government will have to run a massive education campaign, but in the end we
would stop wasting valuable daylight. The spin offs for productivity, tourism
and much more are so great; what are we waiting for?
 

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What struck me, though, was the work that is going on to fix and upgrade the infrastructure, which took such a battering during the civil war. Of the 600 or so kilometres that we drove, only about 100 were really shocking, and the rest was brilliant. This is a far cry from what it was even just five years ago, and what it means is that Mozambicans are now able to transact with each other, which means that the economy can start working.

It really is so important that roads, rail, harbours, airports and the like actually work, and preferrably work well, so that business can be done across the country and people in far flung areas can be brought into the mainstream local, regional and global economies. It is a lesson to Africans everywhere who want to move the continent into a better future - get your infrastructure working, and then the people with natural ingenuity will get the economy working.

Another striking feature was the number of brand new and renovated schools across the country, bringing education into every little town. This shows that the country is focussing on making sure that they have more people with natural ingenuity who will be able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the upgraded infrastructure.

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Dubai is a brilliant example of future vision, and more importantly action to turn the vision into reality. In many other parts of the Arab world the same kind of vision and action is also being played out. The question I kept asking was “where does the money come from”, and the answer is that it comes from all over the Arab region (e.g. 30% of the investment in Dubailand is Saudi money). It is estimated that right now there is $4.1 trillion of cash in the Arab countries, driven by money having been pulled out of the US and Europe after 9/11 and by the “second oil boom”. This money needs a home; somewhere where it can be spent…

We in South Africa have a tremendous amount to learn from Dubai and the other Arab countries about big, hairy, audacious projects, and we should get as close to them as possible. Especially in the Cape, where we have a significant Muslim population, we must position ourselves aggressively as a Muslim-friendly investment and tourist destination. Hopefully that way they will continue to invest in projects like the Waterfront, Boschendal and Pearl Valley and show us how to think REALLY BIG.

P.S. We can also teach them quite a lot about environmental sustainability in return.

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I am especially interested by how they use Camp Nou, the football stadium that is home to FC Barcelona, as a tourist attraction in its own right. It is one of the stops on the circular tourist bus routes (along with the famous Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudi and still being built over 120 years later), and it has stadium tours (11 Euros a pop), a football museum (6 Euros), restaurants and a 2000 square metre megastore selling FC Barcelona merchandise. Elsewhere in the city the Olympic stadium and facilities is also a tourist attraction, with an Olympic Museum.

It really inspires me to think what we in Cape Town can do with our new stadium in the future, as long as we can fight off one tiresome legal challenge after another by people posing as environmentalists but who really just don’t want a football stadium in their neighbourhood.

Barcelonins have really embraced their future and they have welcomed the changes that they have gone through since the 1980s. They are now reaping the rewards by being seen as a creative, innovative city; a city of design, art and architecture that is a must for people all over the world to see. We in Cape Town really must learn as much as we can from Barcelona, so that we too can recreate our city as a Creative Capital.

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The conventional wisdom states that there are 1 million South Africans in London. I’m sure most people have heard that one before. In fact, the Economist magazine ran an article in 2005 on the South African brain drain, which stated “some 1.4 million South Africans are thought to be living in Britain alone”. It’s when this sort of number gets into an international publication that conventional wisdom truly becomes accepted as gospel. But let’s look at some of the available data.

The last UK Census (2001), showed 140 236 South Africans living in the UK. One tenth of the Economist’s estimate. Either the ensuing 4 years saw a 1000% increase in the number of South African immigrants, or the census was woefully inaccurate, or the Economist’s journalist heard those numbers from a disenchanted South African in a pub somewhere.

StatsSA estmated in 2001 that there were 107 226 South Africans in the UK, although they admit that their own numbers are probably under-estimated by about 57%, which would mean that the number is closer to 168 000. Still a tad lower than the 1.4 million.

It is estimated that 8% of people living in the UK are foreign-born, which out of a population of 59.8 million means that there are about 4.8 million immigrants. 1.4 million South Africans would mean that almost 1 in 3 foreigners in the UK are South Africans. Unlikely!

Finally, greater London has a population of around 10 million people. If the conventional wisdom is correct and there are indeed 1 million South Africans in London, this would mean that every tenth person you meet in London is a South African. Although it may sometimes feel that way, this too is highly unlikely.

So there you go; some numbers that will hopefully help you to respond with “hogwash” next time someone tells you that there are a million South Africans in London or a respectable international magazine reports that there are 1.4 million in the UK.

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The organisation aims to mobilise strong, independent business leadership to develop and implement a bold and innovative 20-year vision and growth path for the region.

Accelerate Cape Town provides the Cape business community with the necessary voice and dedicated resources to develop and drive the growth of a sustainable and successful world city. A city with the skills, infrastructure and environment necessary to compete internationally for business and talent.

Working with city and regional issues, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about urban development. Here is something I wrote a while ago but never got around to putting on the blog.

Urban Sprawl

With the current rate of urbanisation in South Africa, local authorities are working hard to provide housing for the poor in metropolitan areas. However, they are making a mistake that will dog us for generations to come by continuously building one house per property in increasingly larger circles around the main urban centres. Not only is this a continuation of apartheid urban planning, which ensured that the poorest had the furthest to travel to get to work; it is also counter-intuitive.

Increasing sprawl puts strain on the transport infrastructure and requires much greater investment in infrastructure to provide water, sewerage, electricity, railway lines and so on because all pipes, cables and other necessities have to stretch further. We should be going for a more urban, high-rise approach, with areas closer to the CBDs being upgraded and built up. This is much more in line with the approach in Europe and much of South America than the disastrous urban sprawl we see in Los Angeles and other US cities.

Authorities will contest that they are encouraging densification, but if one looks at Johannesburg, for example, the densification is taking place in areas that are still spread very far apart. This doesn’t help alleviate the existing problem of overloaded infrastructure, it only serves to exacerbate it.

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Crime – Where Facts, Politics And Emotions Clash

The huge emotions generated by the planned FNB ad campaign illustrate how intense feelings around crime have become. It is a combustible combination. Thus it might not be too wise for an analyst to pontificate on the topic. But what the hell, lets tell it like we see it …

What the forensic evidence tells us

The first point is that South Africans have never felt as vulnerable and fearful of crime as now. Two sources confirm it: victim surveys from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) as well as research from the HSRC. Questions are asked like: are you more/less afraid at night; are you afraid to travel alone; do you travel at night and so on. The overwhelming response to these questions is that citizens are more fearful than previously. The conclusion is clear: citizens’ perceptions of crime are that it has deteriorated – matters got worse.

The second empirical fact is that several categories of crime have declined. A critic of the government and certainly no friend of the Mbeki administration, The SA Institute for Race Relations, reported that 8 of 12 crime categories have declined over the period 1994/5 to 2005/6. This is confirmed by victim surveys. In victim surveys official stats are ignored and a sample of the population is asked if they experienced crime, what types of crime, how often and so on. These victim surveys confirm the official stats the SAIRR used.

Some of the crimes that decreased and the percentage by which they decreased (measured in the standard measurement of crimes per 100 000 of the population) are murder (41%), attempted murder (36,5%), car theft (32,8%) & commercial crime (28,9%).

The crimes that increased, according to the SAIRR analysis are rape (1,6%), indecent assault (106%), aggravating robbery (16,8%) and drug related crimes (72,4%).

Some people argue that in the middle nineties we had death squads and third forces and political killings and how can we compare ourselves with that period? Sure, that applies to murder. What about the other declines?

Why these opposing trends?

Citizens feel more unsafe, but several crime categories are falling. What is going on? It is perhaps best explained by the increase in robbery in peoples homes – your house after all is suppose to be your castle where you are safe and in charge. All of that is destroyed when robbers enter your house. Add to that the savagery of some actions and one can understand why people feel insecure.

Are Whites targeted?

A friend asked me last week whether crime is a weapon to get rid of Whites. Beeld reported that a victim in Centurion was told by a group of robbers “we will kill all whites�?. (Why they did not kill this victim is not sure.) Victim surveys also tell us that Whites and Indians feel more unsafe than Blacks and Coloureds.

But here is an interesting statistic from Jonny Steinberg, one of the more sane voices on crime: Whites constitute 1 in 11 of the population (just over 9%) but only 1 in 33 of murder victims. Your best chance of being a murder victim is if you are Black, male and young. Driving Whites out? Me thinks not.

I looked at pictures of David Rattray’s murderer in the dock and I cannot imagine him being part of a conspiracy to drive Whites out of SA. To me he just looked like a screwed up young man with no hope and a gun.

So what is going on?

When it comes to crime, we only discuss efficiency and political responsibility. We make the police and politicians responsible. And that is fine, they should be held responsible. But in my view that is not the full story. I will submit there are two aspects around crime that we do not discuss, values and demography.

Take values first.

In 81% of murder cases the murderer knew the victim. In other words only in 19% of murders was the victim unknown to the murder. In the case of rape the numbers are 76% v 24%; and serious assault 89% v 11%. These come from an analysis of 2005/6 crime stats. Is this the normal way citizens treat one another?

The same lack of societal values is indicated by an opinion poll in the Sunday Times that 1/3 of all South Africans experience road rage. Nice, tolerant way of interacting with one another, would you not agree?

There is something seriously wrong with our society’s social capital. No degree of police efficiency can deal with this. No amount of shouting at politicians can cure this. The sooner we start focusing on social capital, the sooner we can deal with this problem.

Link this to a second factor, demography. There is a school of thinking that says most violent crime is committed by males under the age of 35. Sociologists link the rise of crime in the US in the late 1960’s to the birth of the baby boomers in the 1940s (Jonny Steinberg). If the age group 15 and 29 in a society is more than 30% of the total population, violence follows (Caldwell, Fin Times, 5 January 2007). There are 67 countries in the world with such “youth bulges�? now – and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of serious killing, civil war, insurgency and so on. According to the latest Actuarial Society of SA demographic projections (released late in December), precisely 30% of the SA’s population are now in the age cohort 15 – 29.

From the television pictures, David Rattray’s murderer looked as if he fitted exactly in the 15 to 29 year age group (in fact he is 23). Born in the mid 1980s, he grew up in a society of violence. Little values, no job, limited education and a gun.

So What?

• It is not sufficient to talk just about police efficiency and political accountability. More is needed. People do not change their values or behaviour because politicians ask them nicely to do so. (Remember when Mr Mandela famously urged the Kwa-Zulu Natalians in the early 1990s to throw their spears in the sea and make peace with one another? Political violence increased, perhaps even spawning Rattray’s killers?)

• Values require the re-building of social capital. The Germans after WWII launched a deliberate campaign of establishing Academies where the values of the new (West) German state were taught and drilled into a new generation of West Germans. There was a conscious effort to counter their own legacy. Counter all nepotism and corruption. Do not carry jailbirds into jail. Take action against incompetence. But also avoid cynicism – the ultimate destroyer of social capital.

• As for demography, the only solution is jobs, training and skills. And that requires economic growth and deliberate anti-poverty intervention (like the social allowances and public works programme). But it also requires time – be under no illusions. We are now paying the price for the lost 25 years between 1977 and 2002 when the population grew quicker than the economy and labour market. Fortunately that has now turned (it may turn out to be Mbeki’s biggest legacy) but it will take time to undo two decades of damage.

• The complexity of the problem makes it all the more important that government addresses the feelings around crime. It will change very little about crime itself, but it will empower citizens to cope better. Will they? I do not know – we will have to watch this space.

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“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.�?  Many years ago I was an exchange student in the USA, and every morning in my school, as in all schools across America, all classes came to a halt as the Pledge of Allegiance came over the loudspeaker system and every student stood to repeat these words.  I was quite amazed by this display of daily brainwashing in the so-called “land of the free�?.  But in hindsight it isn’t actually that amazing, because we’ve all experienced how Americans are just so proud to be American.  No matter how big their problems, and heaven knows they’ve got a lot of them, Americans will still spend hours telling you how fantastic their country is, and in fact how it is better than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

What a contrast then, when I later spent a few years in London, and I ended up actively avoiding other South Africans.  Why?  Because frankly their negativity about our homeland irritated me so much.  These people, who will gladly put new South African flags on their cars and support a whole cottage industry importing biltong and NikNaks to munch on as they cheer on the Springboks at Twickenham, will spend hours telling anyone who will listen just how awful it is in South Africa, how lucky they are to be in London, and how they are never going back because it’s in such a mess.  At the time I put it down to the fact that they were justifying why they were holed up in their dingy little flats under grey London skies while their friends and family enjoyed the sunshine on Camps Bay beach.

However, when I came home, expecting to be greeted by the smiles of new South Africans everywhere, I was very disappointed to find that exactly the same attitude is pervasive right here.  The number of people who asked me why I came back here, and why on earth I had brought my French wife with me, simply amazed me.  I would have thought the answer was perfectly obvious.  I was later very disturbed, although not surprised, to hear that our president found it necessary to make a point to South African businessmen that they should stop running down their own country on overseas business trips.  Can anyone tell me what it is that makes sense about running down your own home to foreign people that you would like to visit here and invest here?  It seems to me like inviting your boss to dinner at your house in the hope of getting a promotion but discouraging him from coming because you’re a terrible cook and your dog bites.

Yes, we have problems, but so does everybody else.  Sure, the Rand is down the toilet, but if you look closely enough you’ll see that just about every other emerging market country has suffered from the same woes – and that includes Australia and New Zealand, which everyone seems in such a rush to get to.  And aren’t we lucky that we aren’t living in Argentina with their currency crisis?  Sure, our neighbour, Zimbabwe, is run by a mad, despotic fool, but man am I glad that I don’t live in Pakistan right now.  We have AIDs, and we also have an army of people trying to find a cure for it – possibly more vigorously than anywhere else since we have the most to lose from it.  We do have corruption, and the Americans have George W. Bush, whether they like it or not.  We’ve got all sorts of problems, yes, but must we be so hard on ourselves?

In many ways we are far better off in South Africa as a whole than we have been at any time in our history.  Our people are getting educated and housed at a world-beating rate, we have amongst the world’s cheapest electricity, our inflation is the lowest it’s been in my lifetime, we have an economic growth rate, and there is development everywhere you look.  We have so much going for us; we have so many good people, such an interesting mix of cultures; we have so much beautiful countryside and natural resources that we can draw from – we really have such a bright future ahead of us.

Let us concentrate on the positive things that surround us every day, the sunshine, the people, the beauty, the progress.  Constantly criticising our country can only do harm – for you personally, your personal feeling of happiness and well-being, and for the country that you know from the bottom of your heart that you love, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I implore you, do not run down South Africa, neither at home nor overseas.  Become ambassadors for your country.  Welcome foreign guests and point out how far we have come and how far we’re going to go – how they need to watch out for us on the world stage.  And if you’re overseas on business or holiday (if you can afford it), tell people how much South Africa has going for it, and invite them to come and see for themselves.

I have devised my own pledge of allegiance and I’d like to repeat it to you now –
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Republic of South Africa and to the interesting people, places and idiosyncrasies for which it stands, one nation under several religions, languages and cultures, yet indivisible, with freedom, basic needs and progress for all.�? 

That is my pledge of allegiance to my home, our home.  I pledge to help others see what is so good about it.  Join me in being positive about our country and about ourselves as South Africans.  Let’s get out there and spread the word so that we can eradicate negativity and replace it with a wave of positive South African patriotism.

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