TONY LEON: Doing business in a 'state of war' as government grabs at everything
'Shoprite was hit in the financial year by 489 armed robberies, 13,200 products in deflation, a VAT hike, a sugar tax, the listeriosis crisis, and 150 trading days lost to protests'
EXTRACT
The state charged to provide an enabling economic environment and basic services for both business and citizen is beginning to resemble Otto von Bismarck's put-down of late 19th-century Italy: "It has a large appetite but poor teeth."
Our government cannot ensure regular electricity or even basic sanitation at primary schools, or safely care for psychiatric patients. But its appetite to encroach ever further into the sections of our economy that actually work appears limitless: health care, private farms, and even the rare foreign firm actually wanting to invest here. All these our political masters want to control. Or anaesthetise. Or close down.
Resilience. That's what two business mavens advised me was the secret sauce that allows SA to power on. Even with blackouts from Eskom and other travails from our failing state. "Africa's grocer," as resilient Shoprite Checkers is dubbed, displayed some of this sauce in its annual results this week. Headlines trumpeted the word "disappointment" with the retail giant's first earnings drop in two decades. But the wonder in the bad numbers was that the group managed to increase its volumes and customer numbers at all. Because, in the detail of the results, were numbers redolent of a "state of war", as the shopping giant tells it. It was hit in the financial year by 489 armed robberies, 13,200 products in deflation, a VAT hike, a sugar tax, the listeriosis crisis, and 150 trading days lost to protests. The wonder is not the 8% slump in its share price, but the fact that it trades at all. The state charged to provide an enabling economic environment and basic services for both business a...
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