I was really looking forward to the Summer Cup this Saturday.  It is a huge stake, it is Johannesburg’s biggest race, and after my horse, Master Sabina, came a very narrow second last year and was closing the ground on the winner with every stride, he was again the second favourite for this year.  

I was looking forward to a huge battle between him and Louis the King as well as Rakes Chestnut.  I received a terrible call earlier this week to tell me that he cannot take part anymore because he has hurt his tendon and will be out for many months.  In fact, I’ve had two horses who had tendon injuries before and neither of them ever raced again after injuring their tendons.  It is a terrible blow to me which means he will also miss the J&B Met, and he may well never run again, when with his ability he would certainly have been expected somewhere to win one of the big ones – whether it was the Durban July, the Summer Cup of the J&B Met.  In many respects racing is just like life, filled with incredible highs and incredible lows.

I have written before about the power of stars, long after they have died, and in Michael Jackson’s case it is really taking on epic proportions.  You will all remember that when he died his estate was basically bankrupt, owing money to everybody and he had financial problems before he died and was being forced to go on a new tour.  While Dr Seus continues to roll in $10 million a year for his estate, many decades after he has died, from the sale of children’s books, Michael Jackson pulled in $150 million during 2014.  The money accrues to his estate and his beneficiaries including his mother and his three children.  It is quite incredible to realise that since he has died, and obviously he had no say in it, he has released 7 albums!  The movie, “This is It”, earned $260 million and his estate has also made a lot of money out of a show called “The Immortal World Tour”.

A lot of experts have been calling for tax-free savings accounts for some time.  This is a country where people have a very poor record of saving money and to turn that around, we certainly need to give people some incentives. At the moment, for those of you who don’t know, if you have money in an account and you earn interest on it, you end up paying tax on that interest at whatever your tax rate is!  

In other words, with interest rates as low as they are, you still end up with less because the interest that you earn still gets taxed as well.  The government has obviously realised that this is not a good idea and so they are now introducing, from 1 March 2015, tax-free savings accounts.  You will be allowed to contribute R30 000,00 a year to a tax-free saving account, without any tax being levied and a lifetime contribution limit of R500 000,00 will apply.  One assumes that with time and inflation in years to come they will increase that.  It is not anything to get particularly excited about, but it is a start and hopefully when they introduce compulsory retirement contributions, that will go a long way to solving some of the problems that people have in terms of not saving at all, and not providing for their retirement.

With the iPhone 6 now available all over South Africa, I think it is time for me to give my thoughts on the phone.  Everybody knows it has a bigger screen, and with the Retina HD display, the images are certainly sharper and better than any previous iPhone.  It is also the thinnest ever iPhone at only 6,9mm – which you notice the second you hold it, its sleeker and feels better in your hand than any iPhone before.

The chip is the new A8 chip which is far more powerful with 64bit architecture.  It also has the Motion co-processor which obviously is behind some of its step-counting facilities.  I think one thing that is clear about the new iPhone is that, apart from looking and feeling better than any iPhone before, it has by far the best camera.  The slow motion can go to as little as 240 frames, the time lapse video mode is lots of fun if you want to see your family running around at 10 times the speed and the video shoots at 1080 HD.  The camera auto-focuses faster, and with an F2.2 aperture, it captures amazing light for most phones.  It is also noticeably faster when you operate it on wireless.  I have not yet had the opportunity to try the Apple Pay using the Touch ID technology.  It’s no surprise that Apple’s share price is up dramatically this year, whereas most phone manufacturers are flat or down – my only regret is selling my Apple shares last year at 50% below where they are now!

More and more celebrities are making the news for hings they allegedly did in their past.  Recent sex scandals in the UK indicated that many used their fame to try and convince teenagers and would be actresses or singers into bed.  Bill Cosby, who is now 77, has just seen more women emerge in the US alleging that they were drugged and raped or sexually assaulted by him.  He and his lawyers have denied the allegations, but the sheer numbers make one think.  

Channels have stopped showing repeats of The Cosby Show, appearances on David Letterman’s show as well as that of Queen Latifah have been cancelled and NBC and Netflix have cancelled or postponed up-coming shows.  Some accusers have made it clear that they are raising the allegations too late now for action to be taken, but they just want them known.  An actress on one of the shows he did in the 80’s says she believes she was drugged and sexually assaulted when she was 15.  The one common theme they all allege is that after they had drinks with him, they would pass out.

I love this picture, and I love it even more because the horse was mine and one of my favourites. Soul Master at one stage was a serious contender for the July, but unfortunately he had a mood of his own when it came to racing and only really put in an effort every third or fourth race.  When he did, he would win comfortably.  Only 3% of horses ever win three races or more and he won six races, so he certainly was an exceptionally talented horse, with a fabulous finishing speed.  

He was unfortunately plagued with injury problems and after I turned down an offer to sell him to Mauritius for R500 000, he actually never raced again nor recovered from his injuries.  We had to retire him and he has found a lovely home on a farm in the Cape and his new owner, or friend, gave us a copy of this picture just to show him enjoying his retirement and told us of his friendship with the dog who is sitting on his back.  It is a happy story and not all racehorses get treated as well in their retirement and I am happy that a talented horse of mine is in a good place and enjoying himself.

We are looking at another substantial petrol decrease at the beginning of December. That will certainly help people get into the Christmas mood and cheer up a lot of people.  Of course, typically speaking, during the northern hemisphere winter, prices do go up but at the moment oil is on a slide.  What that price will be is going to depend entirely on the Rand’s strength, but at mid-month we were looking at a decrease of as much as 65c a litre and, if somehow, the Rand can show some strength, it could be a lot more.  It is unfortunate that due to currency weakness, we are not getting the full benefits of the sliding oil price, with the movement in the exchange rate adding to the cost, while the oil price comes down.

I think that NUMSA’s expulsion from Cosatu is going to be very good for South African politics. I am sure there is a long way to go with this, and there are other Trade Unions that are also considering their options, but Cosatu has not exactly been a great success in politics and nor has the ANC recently.  NUMSA was the biggest Trade Union left within Cosatu, with some 350 000 members and their leaving Cosatu is in fact a major deal.  That is not just some small split.  

It will be interesting to see if Zwelinzima Vavi stays with Cosatu or he heads to NUMSA as most people would expect.  It also illustrates the troubles that Jacob Zuma, the President, has brought to the ANC – the only split in the previous 95 years of its history that the party had, was when the PAC split from them way back in 1959.  During Zuma’s leadership the ANC has already seen people leave to form COPE, next we’ve had the EFF breakaway and we really have to see the NUMSA breakaway from Cosatu in the same light and it is no doubt ultimately going to have an impact on South African politics – and I believe it is going to have a good impact.  

We have a number of case studies on our website www.accidentclaim.co.za that indicate some of the good work that we do and they are also quite interesting, from an informative point of view, explaining how various claims pan out.  I have extracted one below as an example:    

Passenger Left With No Leg To Stand On 

Fortunately, de Broglio Inc provided much needed support in her time of need.  This leading law firm settled her Road Accident Fund claim for R2, 461, 827.00 in the South Gauteng High Court. They represented her suing the RAF for her damages. 

Phumla Monwabisi* was a front seat passenger in a motor vehicle travelling through Sandton one day when suddenly the driver of her vehicle lost control and hit a pole. Phumla could not remember anything about how the accident happened, and still to this day has no memory of the terrible events that occurred on that summer day in 2009. 

Traumatically, Phumla lost her left leg which was amputated below the knee. Her right leg was also badly broken and she underwent numerous operations in order to save her right leg. She lost consciousness following the impact of the accident and only regained consciousness in hospital where she was admitted for 3 months after which she underwent rehabilitation for a month. 

Phumla had just started her job at the time of the accident, and as a result of her injuries suffered, was unable to return to work, consequently losing her job and her source of income. 

Phumla was really struggling to accept and adapt to her new situation. She felt overwhelmed and needed help. She consulted with de Broglio Inc and the firm decided to represent her in her claim against the RAF. de Broglio Inc are specialist attorneys in personal injury and medical negligence claims. They are widely considered an authority in RAF claims. They took on Phumla’s RAF with their usual vigour and prepared to settle her claim drawing on their knowledge and experience of the last 19 years in the field. 

The legal squad from de Broglio Inc attended the SGHC with Phumla mid May 2014. The matter was settled in the amount of R2, 461, 827.00. all parties involved agreed that this was an outstanding settlement. 

Phumla was beyond happy with her settlement. She said, “it’s a new day, new chapter being opened filled with goodness. I do not have many words but to  just say keep up the fantastic work. I will 100% recommend anyone to you.”

*Names have been changed to protect client confidentiality.
Case results depend upon a variety of factors unique to each case. Case results do not guarantee or predict a similar result in any future case.

I must say that some of these websites tend to infuriate me.  In particular, I’ve had some experiences with HelloPeter where, although they ultimately dealt with and responded to my complaints, that we have been subjected to complaints which are clearly laid by competitors.  Interestingly enough, one of our competitors had a number of obviously fake compliments and some complaints listed against their name, and all of them were removed last year by the administrators of HelloPeter.  They have never given me an answer as to why.  

At de Broglio Inc we almost never get complaints about updating clients, because we have an unsurpassed updating system, nor about anything else of actual consequence, but we tend to get complaints that allege that an unnamed person at our office, whose name they cannot remember, either did not want to help them, or that we did not bother to assist them and take on their case.  In terms of the HelloPeter procedures one is entitled to then contact the person to try and resolve it and what I find interesting is that whenever there is what appears to me to be a malicious complaint, I find that the person on the other side will not actually answer the calls or reply to messages.  A recent complainant complained that we were not interested in his claim and did not bother to help him and when we pointed out that even now he still does not answer his phone or reply to any SMS messages, he just blithely replied that he has terrible phone reception where he is and cannot reply to any of his messages!  One wonders how, on a serious note, such a “potential client” ever intended doing business with us or expected us to be able to call them back and discuss the matter further, if they could not do so in repeated calls trying to follow up their complaint?  I have no doubt that HelloPeter can play a valuable role, although one wonders why one has to pay, as a company, to have the right to reply to complaints, but they certainly need to spend a lot more time removing invalid and nonsensical complaints which in most cases have clearly been laid by a competitor.  

From a personal point of view, I have not found HelloPeter useful, other than if there are an extraordinary number of complaints all about the same company.  For example, if you wanted to look into various cellular companies and who you are going to have the least problems with, HelloPeter is not really going to help you – because you are going to find that the complaints about the different companies, to a large extent correlate to their business share.  In other words, if you are a big business, of course you are going to have complaints and Cell C is obviously going to have much less complaints than Vodacom is, because Cell C has a much smaller share of the market.  It is only when the complaints are out of all proportion to that company’s share of the market that it would send out a signal.  

In another case a client, who subsequently withdrew the complaint, who complained on HelloPeter that although we advertise to help people we could not help in her case.  We had to politely point out to her that the reason we could not help with the loss of support case, relating to her late husband’s death, is that the evidence showed that he was drunk at the time when he crashed his motorbike and unfortunately passed away. So, people’s complaints, while they may sometimes be sincere, unfortunately on closer investigation have nothing to do with what the actual facts of the case are.  

The Road Accident Fund is making a big noise about taking on lots of cases themselves at the moment.  I, like many attorneys, am continually approached by people who have their cases with the Road Accident Fund.  Most of the time they complain that nothing has happened in 2 or 3 years, because of course the Road Accident Fund does not tell them to issue a summons against them.  It must be very difficult for a Road Accident Fund employer on the one hand to try and help the claimant and on the other hand to adopt the usual tactics of the Road Accident Fund which is to offer less than a case is worth.  

We would not after all be taking so many cases to court if the Road Accident Fund was making appropriate and fair offers right from day one, so why any member of the public would like to put themselves in the hands of the Road Accident Fund, unless they have a really minimal claim, I cannot understand.  

The latest case we have just taken on is the case of a paraplegic who received a good settlement from the Road Accident Fund for general damages of R1,8 million – and settled the case himself.  Unfortunately, they neglected to tell him that he could also sue for any loss of income that he may have as well as his past medical expenses and both of those were left out of the settlement.  We will now, on his behalf, have to issue a summons against the Road Accident Fund and sue them, as if it were another attorney, for under-settling the client’s claim. This is certainly not an isolated case and there are numerous attorneys across the country who deal with such cases.  It certainly illustrates the peril of taking a substantial claim to the Road Accident Fund directly, in an effort to avoid legal fees, because what you save will in most cases be far outweighed by what you are going to lose by your claim being under-settled.  

We all read about hard drives crashing, but I got to the point where, to be honest, I never thought it would happen.  I don’t think between all my staff members’ computers and my personal computers I’ve ever actually had a proper hard drive crash and I read on the websites of most of these companies which assist with that, that in 91% of the cases they recover the data.  It makes you believe that you don’t need to keep a back-up until it is your personal computer, which has all your children’s and family photographs of the last 6 or 7 years, which you never backed-up, that goes.  

Unfortunately, I then discovered that my hard drive was amongst the 9% that cannot be recovered because allegedly the heads clamped down on the drive – whatever that may mean.  In future I am going to set up my computers on a Raid 1 setting, which is basically to have two hard drives and whenever you save anything, it is automatically mirrored to the other hard drive.  Before facing the wrath of my family for losing all of the photographs, I did have one saving grace, although it is a lot of work to download the pictures, and that is about a month or two before the hard drive crashed, I decided to take up Google on their continuous offers to store all of my photos on the Cloud and uploaded about 85 gigs of my photos to the Cloud.  That is a lucky break but the only problem is downloading them all back again, but at least they have not been lost forever – which many of my standard documents have.

The investor services of Moody’s, a rating agency, have now downgraded South African government debt a further notch to Baa2.  They say this is because there are poor growth prospects in South Africa and rising public debt.  That now gives us the same rating as Brazil and Russia and we are now just two notches above the rating for junk rating which is a very bad rating.  

The effect of this, for example, is that Eskom said that each downgrade costs their financing for all these new power stations that they have to build, an extra 30% to 40% in terms of the interest that they have to pay.  We say the interest they have to pay – we all know at the end of the day that is the interest that we have to pay.  The National Treasury is obviously going to react to this and in a release they issued said, “Government will continue to make the tough decisions that are necessary to address our challenges …”.   One can only assume that they are not going to reduce what they pay government employees, they are not going to reduce the benefits to the poor and we are going to be seeing tax increases, not only in 2015, but for many years ahead.  

The best investment you can make is not some secret share that is about to explode, it is much more simple.  The best investment you can make, particularly in these times, is to pay off your debts or to reduce them as much as you can.  World stock markets are not moving up that much at the moment, and in fact they are quite turbulent, and so it is not a situation where you could borrow money and then make 28% on the Stock Exchange as you could have last year.  The best investment is settling or reducing your debts now while interest rates are low.

Whether it takes 12 months or 18 months, sooner or later interest rates are going to start going up and everybody who has a home mortgage or vehicle finance is going to discover at that time they have to pay more.  That is why the secret is now, whenever you have a little bit of extra money, and you can always make sure that you do, that you reduce those debts.  Even paying an extra R1 000,00 a month into your bond or your car will have very positive benefits in the long run and will certainly assist you if you ever run into any sort of financial drama.  One should always try and have at least one month’s salary, if not two months’ salary in cash in a call account, but as long as you owe other people or companies money, the best possible investment you can make is paying off those debts and the best way to do that is to commit to a monthly amount each month and then try in some months, such as when you receive your bonus, to put a little more in.  If you only ever live for today, you can only have yourself to blame if one day you don’t have enough money for tomorrow. 

I have written previously about UIF and their promises to make it a better organization.  It seems that none of my staff, however capable, can ever get maternity payments from UIF when they really need it.  By the time they are back at work they usually get their payment.  That of course is of little use when they need it when they are not at work to look after themselves and a new baby.  UIF is more important than many think – and also because what is proposed for the RAF will ultimately become a similar state run organization with no attorneys involved to keep the organization in line with Court reviews and actions where necessary.  I will let the staff member take up the rest of the article with some of the problems she has experienced: 

My claim was submitted online in July 2014 via the UIF's new u-filing system as advertised by the department of labour. Since then I have not received any compensation from the UIF for my maternity claim. I have phoned their call centre repeatedly and been advised repeatedly over the months that they have everything from me but that my claim is still with the assessor and that "I must learn patience" because one cannot speak with the assessor and there is nothing one can do to speed up the process. On calling the call centre again yesterday, I was advised that my claim has not been processed at all and my only option is to phone the hotline. I phoned the hotline and after 20 minutes I was told you can't do a claim online, that you have to go in to the department of labour, and that I must send them the birth certificate. Why did they create the online system if you can't claim online? Why was I told my claim was being processed for 3 months? How am I supposed to go into a government department while I am breastfeeding my small baby? And why are they now asking me for a document which has never been requested before? Not even listed as a requirement anywhere. Is their plan to push a person so far you simply give up on ever receiving any compensation which in any event is supposedly so insignificant it doesn't cover your monthly expenses. It is truly despicable how when a woman is at her most vulnerable, she is tormented by the government's absolute neglect.

Should I cry or laugh? The problems we have had with our phones are just unbelievable.  The sad part is this circus happens at least once a year, every year – if not twice.  In the past week, as everybody knows we’ve also had some load shedding, and apart from load shedding, we’ve also had most of Johannesburg without electricity for most of Tuesday, for reasons that are not related to load shedding – which of course hardly inspires any extra confidence! If load shedding wasn’t enough, there will be days when you have no power and this time it’s not Eskom but the Johannesburg metro.

If you have been trying to call our offices, you can try 011 7887273 and after 10 days of not working, at least the number in our adverts is once again working as well, namely 0800 ACCIDENT.  Unfortunately these numbers are working on a very limited number of lines, so there is still the chance, if you’re dialing us, that you will get an engaged tone.  It may be best to email us on [email protected] or to keep trying again on 011 7887273 until you get through. We don’t seem to be able to call out either. 

Telkom told us that the problem was that cables were stolen in our area, and once they were put back, they then told us they needed a welder to weld some of the cables together and now that that has apparently been done, they claim that the technician who initially came to our offices, and reported a number out of order, reported the wrong number out of order and so they are going to have to look at that as well. It certainly is challenging doing business against this background of incompetence and thank goodness I took the approach of a backup UPS battery system for the offices (which cost over R200 000), and gives most of my staff an extra 3 or so hours on the computer, before they to lose power as well as a backup internet line and having kept my old phone number and lines. Ultimately, it all just adds tremendous cost to doing business, because almost every form of communication has to be duplicated and backed up with a backup system just top ensure that one way or another we can communicate with clients and other lawyers.

It is amazing how, whenever I write about the latest Apple products, I will get all of the comments that one would expect on my blog.  In other words, people will say that they are sticking with their BlackBerry, their Samsung or whatever device they are currently using and how they prefer that to Apple products.  

In that regard I found a media piece in the Financial Mail by Toby Shapshank quite interesting.  He is the editor of Stuff magazine and as he said he has tried every system and every device and “it is my job to test them and then give an honest, intelligent and unbiased opinion.”  He said at the end of the day, despite being able to test and use all the devices, he uses Apple phones and devices and that is because as far as he is concerned, they are just simply the easiest to use of all devices.  As he points out, if you give an iPad to a child, they will very quickly work out how to use it and you cannot say that of all of the competing phones.  Obviously, it comes at a price in South Africa, which makes the choice harder for many, but in many respects the reason why Apple dominates the market now, is that their products are easier to use, they are more intuitive and if the truth be told, many of the other companies have products that try and many ways to imitate them where they legally can.

This is the latest home entertainment, with the box from Altech.  I see they have spent quite a bit of money promoting it with television adverts as well as full page adverts in the newspapers, but I think it is going to be a product which is going to struggle to take off.  Most of us already have DSTV and together with Box Office, pretty much have all the options you could possibly want.  The one good thing that the Altech Node does have is that it enables you to have video cameras linked at home and then you could monitor what is going on at your house, not only when you are there but also when you are away.  I struggle to see how Altech Node is going to recover their advertising and how this product is going to take off in South Africa, bearing in mind that those that do have fast Internet and unlimited Internet, if they are not downloading movies and programmes immediately, are probably watching TV by Apple TV, as a few of my friends are, or alternatively have used a VPN, at a cost of less than R100,00 a month, to then join Netflix for another R100,00 a month and be able to download all the movies and TV programmes direct from America.  However, I may well be wrong, so I would like to ask any of you who heard about the Altech Node and are seriously considering getting it or know of somebody who has got the product and is using it.  

It is disturbing to see the recent trend in South Africa towards people simply lying about their qualifications.  It seems half of the people appointed at the SABC, for example, do not have the qualifications they allege in their CV, whether that is a Matric or a UNISA degree - where in fact UNISA has a record of them failing every subject they ever wrote – it seems that some people have no qualms about putting anything into a CV.  

It is probably because, in many cases, they know that they are going to be given the position, that they have certain friends and political connections that will lead to them getting the position that they are after.  No proper check is going to be done on them and they simply have to put in a few things in their CV so that whoever is arranging the job for them does not look bad in terms of arranging an unqualified person.  The second you are in the job, when subjected to investigation, you of course allege conspiracies, that people are out to get you, call in your lawyers and refuse to respond any further.  That is exactly what happened before Parliament recently with the one SABC lady and we are still reeling from the shock of discovering that Dr Pallo Jordaan did not have the doctorate he claimed.  He was a leading member of the ANC, highly regarded by the media and certainly regarded as an intellectual, who had also awarded himself a Doctorate.  It is a sickness and unfortunately the lack of action against those who have been caught doing it so far is only going to see this continuing to grow.  Of course it does not end there, because next time the “doctor” actually doing your medical operation may also have faked his or her CV and the “lawyer” representing your case may also be another failed UNISA prospect.