The Upside of Down

Bruce Whitfield

Description

New edition with updated content

In a world shaped by Covid-19 and characterised by fake news, manipulated feeds of information and divisive social-media agendas, it’s easy to believe that our time is the most challenging in human history. It’s just not true.

It is a time of extraordinary opportunity. But only if you have the right mindset and attitude. Fear of the future breeds inaction and leads to strategic paralysis. Problem-solvers thrive in chaotic and uncertain times because they act to change their future. Winners recognise that in a world of growing uncertainty, you need to resort to actions on things you can control.

A robust mindset is the one common characteristic Bruce Whitfield has identified in two decades of interrogating how South Africa’s billionaires and start-up mavericks think differently. They don’t ignore risk or hope that problems will go away. They constantly measure, manage, consider and weigh up opportunities in a tumultuous sea of uncertainty and find ways around obstacles.

If, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller suggests, the stories we tell affect economic outcomes, then we need to tell different stories amidst the noise and haste of a rapidly evolving world.

Sujets

• Vente
• Economic Development
• Marketing et communication
• E-Commerce
• Economic growth
• Electronic commerce
• Economics
• Development
• Business
• Commerce électronique
• E-commerce
• E-Commerce
• E-Commerce
• E-commerce
• E-Commerce

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 18 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781770107694
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for The Upside of Down
‘With everything that’s happening right now, it’s easy to get bogged down with doom and gloom. In this book, Bruce Whitfield shares his wealth of financial knowledge and shows how to snap free of negative thinking and adopt a can-do mindset.’ – YOU magazine
‘Opportunities arrive all the time but, because of an atmosphere of doom and gloom, not enough of us dare to dream. Whitfield understands the power of storytelling in channelling positive energies towards turning those visions into reality.’ – Karina M Szczurek, Cape Times
‘If one is tired of the negative headlines, this is the ideal book to help ignite a renewed sense of hope. Packed with stories about ordinary South Africans who rose in times of great difficulty, The Upside of Down is testa ment to its title, and perhaps all that is needed is a shift in perspective.’ – The Namibian

For Cameron & Scott
Make your stories matter

The Upside of Down
How Chaos and Uncertainty Breed Opportunity in South Africa
UPDATED EDITION WITH NE W CONTENT
Bruce Whitfield
MACMILLAN

First published in 2020
This edition published in 2021
by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag x 19
Northlands
Johannesburg
2116
www.panmacmillan.co.za
isbn 978-1-77010-768-7
e- isbn 978-1-77010-769-4
© 2020, 2021 Bruce Whitfield
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Editing by Russell Martin and Sally Hines
Proofreading by Wesley Thompson
Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg
Cover design by publicide
Author photograph taken on the rooftop of Discovery HQ by Abigail Javier

Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 . How well do you know your country?
Chapter 2 . An extraordinary series of incredible events
Chapter 3 . Opportunity knocks
Chapter 4 . The amazing South African stock market
Chapter 5 . South Africa’s inequality crisis
Chapter 6 . Education
Chapter 7 . Learning from billionaires
Chapter 8 . The economy
Chapter 9 . Jobs
Chapter 10 . The (not-so) mighty ZAR
Chapter 11 . Blunders
Chapter 12 . Champagne tastes with beer money
Conclusion 206
Epilogue 228
Acknowledgements 274


Preface
‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.’ – Maya Angelou
It’s my ‘Wall of Worry’.
I look at it now: an extraordinary array of books detailing the failings of South Africa and its corporate and political leaders over the last decades. The titles stare malevolently from the shelves. There’s Jacques Pauw’s The President’s Keepers , Rob Rose’s Steinheist , Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s Gangster State , RW Johnson’s How Long Will South Africa Survive? … and a slew of many other similar doomsday books, whose rate of publication has escalated in recent years. Together they tell a story of a country on the verge of self-destruction. It’s a wonder there is a country left to speak of.
What in fact has ensured that South Africa has not collapsed in on itself?
For one thing, civil society has been pivotal in fighting for the rights of citizens, especially the marginalised, and forcing the hand of government, often through the courts, to acknowledge its responsibility, its duty of care, and its obligations under the constitution. The judiciary too has been crucial in steadfastly upholding the rule of law and ensuring that the hard-won consti tution has remained the lodestar of our society. Moreover, without a free media highlighting some of the worst excesses of public- and private-sector malfeasance, the South African story would be very different too.
But there is another story to tell as well. It’s about the role that many companies and some of their bosses play, often unseen in the public domain, in guiding, cajoling and influencing the country and its leaders in the pursuit of a sustainable future.
This is often derided as a new form of state capture, but as delegates to the 50th World Economic Forum gathering in Davos in January 2020 were reminded, there is a complex interrelationship between government, business, labour and civil society which creates a series of checks and balances that occasionally do veer out of kilter, but generally serve to keep all interest groups in hand. Just as business requires political stability and policy certainty to thrive, governments need profitable businesses to keep creating jobs that provide the growth that pays the taxes that can service the needs of voters. Straddling all of the vested interests is a range of civil society bodies, acting for a multitude of interest groups, all seeking to influence the way in which nations develop and striving to keep key role players honest. It’s imperfect. But it’s the best system developed so far.
The political settlement of 1994 not only brought democratic rights and freedoms in South Africa, but it also provided the conditions in which the economy could flourish and businesses could contribute to the economic growth of the country and the building of a better life for all. Foreign investors, who for years had shunned South Africa because of the apartheid ideology, began to return and to invest; while local conglomerates, which had been built up by virtue of the fact that they had nowhere else to invest their capital, began to unbundle and spread their wings internationally. There was a groundswell of optimism and fresh energy as bold entrepreneurs saw new opportunities in both the domestic and global environments and created new enterprises which contributed to job creation and overall economic growth. For the first decade or so of the democratic era, there was a strong sense of hope that South Africa might just make it.
But that sense of optimism has been eroded in recent years and South Africa is now running out of time and money. The ANC-led government is stuck in an invidious position in that it has made big promises to an increasingly frustrated electorate and, unless it can conjure up growth quickly, it will not have the financial resources to make good on its pledges to voters. Unemployment has risen to unsustainably high levels. Service delivery at local government level is failing. Most provinces find themselves in a dire financial state and national government has borrowed almost to the hilt. Not one district in the Free State received a clean audit in 2019 nor did one of the 15 largest state-owned entities in the country. You can’t fix it if you can’t measure it.
As I write this, rebellions have welled up in Chile, a resource-rich, deeply unequal society much like South Africa. In Lebanon, too, people from all walks of life have taken to the streets in a highly organised protest movement. Following the events of the Arab Spring which saw the overthrow of the likes of Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya, it is not unlikely that a similar scenario could play out here.
South Africa is a deeply challenging place in which to live and work – especially if you are poor, have little education and live in an under-serviced community. But it’s in the very crisis in which South Africa finds itself today that there lies an enormous opportunity for renewal, growth and optimism.
Although this came to me third-hand and I cannot vouch for its provenance, the founder of an Israeli start-up is supposed to have told a recent gathering in Johannesburg: ‘You can make a lot more money out of solving misery than you do out of providing comfort.’
It doesn’t really matter who said it. If entrepreneurs in South Africa can find ways to alleviate the suffering of people who are otherwise helpless and unsupported, so as to make them productive members of society, then there is a better-than-even chance that the great democratic experiment begun more than 25 years ago in 1994 might just be fulfilled.
Because, if you want problems, you have come to the right place. South Africa is a land of crises. With pervasive inequality and too few opportunities for people to dig themselves out of the poverty trap into which they have been born, the country has the potential to sleepwalk into disaster. Business confidence is at multi-decade lows, the tax base is shrinking, migration is on the rise, and unless today’s start-ups can be encouraged to grow and invest in this market, then the grim prognosis of many of the books on my shelf may just come to pass.
Yet it doesn’t have to be that way.
At least part of the answer lies in the latest book on my shelf. It’s by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, called Narrative Economics , and it is all about how popular stories drive economic events. In a world of disinformation and internet trolls, where (certainly in the digital world) the loudest voices appear the most compelling, ‘narrative economics’ has extraordinary power. It can improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and mitigate the damage of financial crises, recessions, depressions and other economic disasters.
Ideas move markets. The Bank of England made it someone’s job to monitor Donald Trump’s Twitter feed after he became president because his musings did move markets. It doesn’t matter whether they are true or not; if they gain traction, they have influence.
Shiller says the stories we tell ourselves about the world drive our behaviour, and if enough people buy into the same stories they will impact on the world at large. Stories influence the way we think and behave and, at scale, influence markets