At the moment, in terms of the world golf ranking points, and the ratings can be found at www.officialworldgolfranking.com, nine of the top 100 players in the world are South African. That is a singular achievement for a small country to have such an unbelievable amount of people on the top 100 in the world, particularly in a sport which, unlike rugby for example, is played all around the world. The whole of Asia for example has only four players in the top 100 and Australia has 8.

The leading South African is still Charl Schwartzel, followed by Louis Oosthuizen and then Retief Goosen. Ernie Els has been slipping down and is now 65th in the world, followed closely by George Coetzee. This year, new sensation, Branden Grace, has entered the world rankings at 94th spot, after two back-to-back victories early in the year and no doubt he will improve on that 94th position. Currently sitting outside the top 100 would be top South African players like Tim Clark who won the Players Championship as well as Trevor Immelman who won the Masters a few years ago.

It has been revealed that towards the end of this year, Google is going to make available for public sale, sunglasses, similar to Terminator style sunglasses where you can see what is going on in the world around as well as use all of Googles data! In other words, while you look through these sunglasses it will identify scenes around you and give you information about those scenes as well as allow you to, one would imagine, obtain further details on those things. I don’t think it is going to work as well in a country like ours where there is not necessarily as much information available on the Internet about every single shopping centre and house, because our buildings are not 600 years old, they don’t all have some ancient history or some huge significance, but I could only imagine if you were a tourist in another country, particularly one with a long history, that it could be an incredibly resourceful tool.

Google has a lot of projects that they become involved in that are not necessarily big profit spinners or are not at this time in any event such as a car which drives itself without a driver and this is probably another such project. I cannot imagine that they believe it is going to be a big seller, but it is most probably more of a futuristic experiment, which may or may not lead to a business model later. It is clear however that we are getting closer and closer to a time when people are wearing sunglasses that have video cameras attached, that more law enforcement agents are wearing permanent video cameras, and there is going to be a lot more video footage available of any incident, in 10 years time, than there is now. From a justice point of view I think that can only be helpful and of course when people know when they are committing a crime that they are captured on video by a variety of cameras, whether that is street cameras, building cameras, people’s cell phone video cameras or sunglass cameras – that can only be good in terms of reducing crime.

It is quite sad to see that the ANC has now decided that the next project to tackle, after the threat of nationalisation for the last two or three years, are our Courts. The Chief Whip of the ANC reportedly told Rapport newspaper that South Africa is, “… busy becoming a one party state led by the Courts that were not elected.” It is somewhat shocking that this is now the approach to an independent judiciary and that they seem to feel that whatever Parliament decides, whether it conflicts with our Constitution or not, needs to be upheld by the Courts and if it is not, then there is a problem with our Courts! One has to wonder what the Cabinet’s motives are in asking for a “review of the Court and its decisions.”

It is Telkom PGA time at Country Club Johannesburg once again. The Woodmead course hosts the tournament, and when I last looked it was rating about the 15th best course in the country. It is a fair course, where if you are having a bad driving day, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble! You need to keep it on the fairway, or in play, and if you do that, there are plenty of birdie opportunities – while not for regular golfers, but professionals!

It is always nice to see a course that you play regularly on television and it of course gives you a completely different perspective because many of the cameras are situated at heights that you would never actually see the course from. For example, on the third hole where an eagle chip of mine stopped short by about 5cm a week or so ago, the view is typically from way above the green, and unless one had climbed a tree during one’s rounds, one would never recognise the hole from that angle! I hope you will excuse the gratuitous reference to one of my few recent birdies.

I was quite happy to hear that the Health Minister is thinking about legislating on the fatty content of food as well as salt. This is a conversation that needs to take place in more than just our country, and it will help all countries to get their health costs under control. We all end up paying millions in taxes to look after people suffering from cancer as a result of smoking as well as weight issues brought on entirely by unhealthy foods.

Almost everything we eat has sugar and salt added to try and enhance the flavour and we have forgotten what most raw vegetables taste like now, because even the veggie portion at a restaurant has invariable been sweetened with sugar! It is actually appalling that companies make a profit out of making us fat and unhealthy, and then we as taxpayers end up paying for all of the consequences and in America this issue has been quite famously tackled by Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, and we need to have an open and honest conversation about it here, together with all the food manufacturers – which is a scary process in itself and a topic for another blog – ‘manufacturing’ food.

One of the shortest life spans must certainly be as a club DJ - top of the world today and absolutely forgotten tomorrow. If I talk to my staff about some of the famous DJ’s in South Africa from 6 or 7 years ago, young 20 or 21 year old staff members have not even heard of them.

That is exactly the fate that awaits the vast majority of the club DJ’s they are currently listening to. Internationally of course, some of the DJ’s have lasting power, but some of them like Tiesto have done a complete somersault on the music that they play, moving from trance into house or progressive music. Tiesto, who was the world’s number one DJ for three years about 8 years back, is now number 3, number two is another Dutch trance master, Armin van Buuren who was the previous number one for four years, as listed by DJ Magazine and the new number one is David Guetta. I think they all have a long way to go before they can match Tiesto’s playing at the opening of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

It has taken a long time for the ANC to give its answer on the question of nationalisation, and it is exactly the one that everybody expected. It is sad that foreign investment has been discouraged for a few years with idle chatter about nationalisation, when it was obvious that they would never come to such a decision and nor would it be feasible.

Amongst the reasons they gave for reaching this decision are exactly the arguments that were raised – that it would require changes to the Constitution and it would harm potential foreign and direct investment in South Africa, not to mention South Africa’s standing in the international business arena. Apparently, the cost of nationalising all of the mines would cost our country’s entire budget for one year and that also made it impossible. Of course, now the discussion will move to a rent resource tax and the activation of a State mining company. Where they are correct of course is that the current mining process, in terms of licences and exploration rights, needs to be examined fully, and attended to with great care so that you don’t get dubious reasons behind the awards of licences or rights.

Tomorrow, 22 February 2012, is the annual budget speech. It is a very important speech because it determines economic policy for the year ahead and also of course in the longer term for the next few years. It is the time when the usual announcements are made about the increase on tobacco and alcohol products, but there are usually a few surprises as well.

One hopes that the Road Accident Fund will receive another increase, as its increases have not kept pace with inflation over the years and perhaps a lump sum injection as well. Certainly, from my point of view, I would put at least another R1,00 onto each pack of cigarettes, but I am sure it is going to be something much smaller like 50c. I would like to hear from you as to what you think we are likely to see tomorrow in our budget speech and certainly read the comments below. I think the untouchables are that VAT cannot be increased, but we may possibly see an increase in tax for higher income earners as well as companies.

The Emerald Casino is hosting the World Series of Poker. I barely understand the rules of poker, let alone being able to play it, so I am probably a little bit biased when I say watching poker on TV makes golf look as frenetic as a rugby game! I sometimes struggle to understand the whole commercial side of the big prizes, although I somewhat suspect that it is largely financed by the players’ entry fees and while anybody who takes on legal cases, and funds them at their own expense, must have some gambling instinct to them, I cannot say that I would find it relaxing to earn my living playing cards!

What would make it more exciting on TV is exactly what the players are trying to hide – and that is their emotions. So you cannot see somebody’s eyes rolling or somebody look nervous or scared, because they all have caps on, and underneath those caps they have sunglasses. There can be no doubt there will be some interesting characters arriving at the Emerald Casino and even if I did not watch the poker, I would, if I was in the area, love to see who arrives to take their chance.

I see that the State President has said that you can tweet any problems to him on his Twitter account @SAPresident or via e-mail to [email protected]. I think it is great that we are encouraged to come forward like that and obviously it encourages a democracy and gives us all the chance to vent our frustrations or anger or propose an idea.

I think sometimes people complain and protest a little bit too much, because often they complain that something is never being fixed, for example when they have never written to somebody and told them it is out of order. I am quite sure if you are driving along the road, on the way to Hartbeespoort dam, and the robots were out of order, that each person thinks it is unacceptable that it is not fixed – but how many people go through the effort of finding out which municipality is in charge of that area, and then advising them of it? If they are not told about it, they cannot be expected to automatically and instantly know and to fix it immediately. Making things better in our country, or indeed in your own company, starts with raising the problems and letting people know about them and thereafter tackling them.

Facebook has announced its long awaited IPO, and I have given my opinion previously on its value – or lack thereof in my opinion – but I thought I would focus more on the privacy issues in this blog.

There is a real danger in the way Facebook operates, that people expose themselves to having all of their information readily seen by strangers or perhaps people that do not mean them any good. Most people are not very good at attending to the various privacy settings and Facebook makes it a lot harder by continually changing the look of the site, the layout and where everything is and so it needs quite a bit of time to actually get the settings right and if, for example, your setting is “Friends of friends” it means that anybody that you met, just once in a bar and agreed to add on Facebook, and all of their friends who you simply do not know to see all of your information. There is no much that can be gleaned from photographs, let alone the written information and very quickly a profile is built up of where you shop, where you typically go on the weekend, where you work and I don’t believe it is healthy that people are able to research you in depth.
It is even stranger when a company’s business model is basically to sell your private information to other companies and tell them that, for example, you are interested in movies, so they advertise movies to you on your profile and that of course is an innocuous example. I am quite sure at some stage there will be a backlash against a company making money out of your own private information and likes and dislikes.

 Eskom’s own predictions are that, as early as April this year, there is going to be shortfall of capacity of more than 4 000MW at peak times. It looks like the blackouts of two or three years ago are about to return, and perhaps all those people who tried to invest in the generator business at that time, are going to find people to sell those generators to now.
If demand is going to exceed supply by April, one wonders how bad June through to August, with the demands of winter, will be. Of course, in getting businesses to trim their use of electricity, they will also be trimming the economic growth of the country, so either way this is not good for South Africa. It is going to take many, many more years to bring on line new clients and of course that holds back job growth.

A special press conference was held by the Reserve Bank on Saturday, 11 February, to announce the new bank notes for South Africa. The current designs have been around for 20 years and in keeping with international practice, new notes with new designs are released from time to time. The new ones commemorate South Africa’s first democratic President, Nelson Mandela.
The design looks good and will be in use before the end of the year. I think a new R500 note may have been a good idea, but no doubt that will come in time. Without different pictures on each note one will distinguish more by colour and the amount on the face of the note.

Media report that 1,35 Million condoms given away during the African National Congress’ Centenary Celebrations are being recalled. Apparently many of these broke during sex and others were porous – which sort of defeats the object of a condom!

An activist of the Treatment Action Campaign apparently complained to the media saying that, “We had people flocking in, coming to report that the condoms had burst while they were having sex.” Apparently many panicked because they were already infected with AIDS and were concerned for their partners. After the complaints started coming in, the Treatment Action Campaign tested them, by pouring water into the condoms and apparently, they were leaking, not just in one place, “… they were leaking like a sieve … you can see where there are small pores.” They have asked all people who used these condoms, distributed free around Bloemfontein in January, to go and get “post-exposure tests and treatment”.

Facebook recorded revenues of $3,7 billion in 2011, and $1 billion of that was a profit. Facebook is hoping to be the next Google, which from its first day of trading in 2004 has seen a share price increase of more than 580%. The question is going to be what price a Facebook share is going to provide value at and what price it is going to trade at.

Apple trades at 16.5 times last year’s profits, Google at 19.6 times their most recent profits, and that would then give Facebook a valuation somewhere between $15 to $20 billion. It is quite clear however that everybody is anticipating that it is going to be priced at a much higher value than the market value of $20 billion and some people are talking about $100 billion. Facebook makes an approximate profit of $1 per user, per year, and while there is no doubt that Facebook is a huge success, I simply cannot believe that it can be worthy of any value higher than that given to Google and since it can be almost guaranteed that the market is going to give it a higher multiple, my own belief is that a lot of people who buy Facebook shares now, are going to be howling in a few years’ time.

In short, while I can see Facebook increasing its profits, I don’t think $1 billion profit in one year makes a company worth $100 billion, which would mean you would need to own it for a 100 years to get your money back and even if they treble the profits next year, which should not be hard off such a low base, and particularly when they are only managing to extract $1 per user per year at the moment, then you are still going to have to wait 33 years for the company to earn the profit that a $100 billion market valuation would require. I said at the beginning of the year that I thought over 12 to 18 months my best bet would be placed on Apple and if you ask me to take a long-term view, because obviously Apple’s time will come and go, I would put my money on Google.
[I am not a registered financial advisor, and obviously before you invest in shares, you need to get appropriate advice].

It appears that with the Crime Stop campaign, instead of putting in the number 08600 10111, they left out the one zero and had 086010111 instead. That is going to cost a fortune and it is going to lead to a lot of people, on an urgent basis, calling the wrong number and being met with a busy tone. It is amazing how such a catastrophe can happen, and how little effort must have been made by the advertising company concerned in cross-checking the number. One of the basics to me would be to dial a number that you are given in the first place and see whether or not it is working. In fact, with my own free number, 0800 accident, if it was not for testing, we would have had some tremendous problems, because it was not initially registered correctly!

Over the past year BlackBerry shares are down 75%, and they have now replaced the two joint CEO’s who have both left the firm. They have gone from a 50% share of phones in the American market to 10% and people are asking where to next for BlackBerry?

Quite frankly, apart from the developing nations, where they supply a very economical package, including BBM, they are pretty much finished in my opinion, and the share price at a 75% down, is going to continue going down. I think they are headed the same direction as Kodak, Atari and the numerous companies who simply disappeared or have gone bankrupt. They may well continue to play a role as a 1% market shareholder, but they simply don’t have the products to compete with the iPhone or some of the new Android phones. The problem for them is that it is a vicious circle as well, the more bad news there is about BlackBerry and RIM, the less likely people would want their next phone to be a BlackBerry, so it is almost guaranteed that in the next sales or upgrades cycle they are going to lose out bigger than ever before. Now and then a company comes back when it is almost down and out, but I would not be betting on anything other than a continued fall for Research in Motion (RIM).

During recent interviews that I heard on radio stations, the police have confirmed that thieves using jamming devices are targeting schools to steal parents’ motorcars. Apparently, because the parents often leave the car, they are ideal targets and the thieves are utilising jamming devices to make sure that the remote control does not lock the car properly. In other words somebody knows they have pressed the button to lock the car, and assume that the car has been locked, but a jamming device has prevented that signal from reaching the car.

This is a terribly frightening situation and people really have to guard against this very carefully because there are much worst things than your car being stolen – a parent for example leaving one child in the car while stepping out a few metres to get another child or perhaps load luggage up in the back of the car and having their car, complete with a child inside, stolen. However advanced the technology gets, it seems that the criminals are always just behind with some or other new device or technique to try and steal what amounts to the hard work of others. We invest our time in earning money, and then the things we bought with that money are taken away by somebody else, who believes his or her role in life is to simply steal what belongs to others.

I am always fascinated by property prices, and of course there are a lot of surveys each year and each of them telling a different story. The Sunday Times reported on the biggest percentage increases, in value, over the past year. Naturally, a category like that is going to be won by an area with a relatively low price that has gone up quite substantially than an area that, for example has an average price of R10 million and where prices go up R1 million during the year is only going to see a 10% increase whereas an area with a R500 000,00 average price, goes up to R750 000,00 while only showing a R250 000,00 increase is going to show a 50% return on one’s money.

In terms of return on one’s money, as a one year percentage increase, Broadacres in Fourways came first in South Africa. I have written quite a lot about developments in the area over the past year and so that is no surprise to me and of course there is still a major development of Douw Steyn City, where a blog I wrote on this development some time ago, continues to attract anonymous comments.
There is no doubt that the whole of Fourways, and probably Lanseria next, is the “new north” and that there is a considerable migration towards those areas, with a lot of young upwardly mobile people and developments, and so it was not a surprise to see Broadacres feature so well.

I think one of the long-term implications of Mitt Romney’s run to be the Republican candidate, is that there will be tax changes in America. It seems ludicrous, as it is being revealed, that the laws in America would change so that you pay much less tax on investment income, than on income from ordinary salaries and considerably less. Worse the definition of what is investment income is extremely generous to those working at big Wall Street firms.

In other words, wealthy people simply make investments, and then live off the income from the investments paying as little as 15% tax, while everyone else has to rely on their salary and pays let’s say 30% or 35% tax. The people who need the tax breaks the most don’t get it, and the people who should be paying the most tax, namely the wealthy, don’t pay it. I have written about this in my blog before, but it is no doubt going to become a bigger feature of the election for a man who is worth in excess of $250 million pays less than half the tax than the average American, and also pays, for example, considerably less tax each year than the current President Barack Obama pays. I think many wealthy Americans will ultimately regret Romney’s effort to become President because I think they will see tax hikes for “investment income” as they define it.

We have seen an incredible turnaround in the State’s policy to HIV in the last two years. ARV’s are being made freely available and the sites where they are made available have increased from 400 sites to over 2 000. Government no longer has a policy of denial of Aids. It is a tragedy, of course, that it took them so long to realise that it really does not cost much money to keep most people alive by giving them the correct treatment and that is one thing that Thabo Mbeki will have to explain one day.

Personal experience suggests that the new campaign is working very well – my staff members who used to obtain assistance and ARV medication from me via my pharmacy no longer approach me and it seems now that there is an acceptance of the disease. It was only about 5 years ago that I implored one of my staff members to get a family member to take ARV’s and they refused, insisting that it was TB and not Aids. The lady concerned died only a few months later, whereas I have been involved in other matters where people had CD4 counts as low as 90, who have totally turned around and are perfectly healthy many, many years later.

I had an entertaining evening recently, discussing with two advocates whose opinions I really respect, golf clubs, lightning and their duties to members insofar as their safety is concerned. This followed a request from a golf pro and given that the danger of lightning is a subject that I have written to two Clubs about previously, firstly Serengeti and recently to Country Club, Johannesburg, I thought it would be an interesting topic.

Consensus was that Clubs are going to lose the vast majority of legal cases that are brought against them but our approach, or our view of how the judicial system would get to those decisions, was quite different. The one advocate felt that I am clearly too much of a liberal – that it was my Wits University background which led to me taking an approach as to what decision a Court will reach when faced with a widow who has to support two children because her husband has just been killed, and a Club that has lots of assets, and probably an insurance policy as well. I think it is a very winnable case, each and every time depending on the facts, no matter what each disclaimer says, and the advocate agreed with me, but said he did not feel that it should be so in law.

What everybody agreed on was however that if Clubs are going to put in some level of protection, they are creating an impression that they are taking care of people, and creating a bigger onus on themselves. In other words, once you put in a lightning system with a hooter, clearly you are taking some responsibility, and once you do that, you are going to have to make sure that you do a proper job. The one advocate said that if he ran a Golf Club, but he admitted that very few people would be interested in being members of such a club, and it certainly would not be regarded in any way as prestigious for members to belong to, he would have no safety shelters at all, no lightning warning systems and a disclaimer that advises people that they must simply decide what they want to do, when they want to do it and the Club will have no responsibility at all. I don’t think most people would be happy to play at such a club and of course it automatically creates an impression of a Club that must have such terrible financial problems that it cannot even afford insurance.

In short, and that would be my advice to any Club if they ask me, is that if you are going to have a lightning system, and I think you must, then you have to make sure you build proper and secure lightning structures around your golf course as well as to ensure that that hooter or siren can be heard anywhere on the golf course so that you do not have some golfers playing a hole where it is not audible, for example once the wind has picked up. Some attorneys, especially those who take a robust litigious route to every case will say it is not necessary, but as Country Club Johannesburg found out, when it lost a case, we all felt that the vast majority of the time the Club will lose the case.