We are going to be looking at another increase in the petrol price in March.  Possibly in April too, because during the Minister of Finance’s budget speech, 20 cents a litre was added onto the petrol price during the speech which are effective from 2 April.  The RAF will get 8 cents of that and another 12 cents goes to general tax.  

The majority of the increase now is going to be as a result of the currency fluctuation as the international price of fuel has not actually gone up very much.  We are fortunate that the currency has shown some strength in the last week or so and if that continues, the increase may not be as high as it is currently projected to be at 34c for 95 petrol ULP.  You can always find the estimated petrol increase at www.cef.org.za/images/petrolprice/daily.pdf.  At the current Gauteng pump price of R13,96 for 95 unleaded, we would be looking at a price going over R14,00 for the first time.  We will all certainly have to hope the rand strengthens over the next few months.

It is a great sign to see that Anglo Platinum is going to be suing Amcu, the trade union, for losses that they have incurred.  This is a trade union that caused all the trouble which led to the Marikana disaster in the first place.  They are also costing our country millions in tax revenue every single day while ludicrously trying to get workers to strike for salaries that they must know the mines cannot afford and will never pay.  The whole country is suffering as a result and the bottom line is that Amcu, no doubt run by one or two new kids on the block, who are trying to make their own personal fortune out of the miners, need to be taken on. 

Being a leader involves being responsible, and the leadership of Amcu has not been responsible – not only in terms of the country and the interest of the country in terms of tax revenues, which would be earned by the mines if the strikes are not taking place, but in terms of members.  It cannot be in your members’ interest to take them on strike every year for salaries that are way above the average salaries in South Africa, and which you cannot possibly, with any reasonable intelligence, believe that the mines could ever afford to actually pay.  So, my criticism for Amcu would be much more to do with the fact that their members are getting shot, missing out on earning an income while the leadership is making promises that can never possibly be realised than it is to do with the fact that we as individuals will sooner or later face a VAT hike or personal income tax hike, or perhaps see the brackets stay the same, which is the same as a hike, rather than government having earned that money from big corporate companies selling the one thing that our country is blessed with - that is, resources.  The strikes are disruptive to our country, they are dangerous for the individuals concerned and ultimately they will never result in R12 500,00 a month salaries for miners. 

A crèche has opened across the road from our offices and every time when I arrive at the office I hear the noise of children playing and making a noise.  It is such a happy sound and as we get older, I guess we learn to be more adult, and disguise our unhappiness as well as our happiness.  

The pure unadulterated joy of children, their laughter and the screams of delight are very pleasant to listen to and can always cheer one up.  I assume it also means that there is quite a demand for these types of services in the Parkwood area now that there are a lot more townhouses because from the day it was opened until the raucous started was not very long – and there is such a multitude of voices that I assume that it is fairly full already.

I continually stress to my staff and to family that they need to provide adequately for retirement. Something that is so logical and so obvious seems to escape 90% of the employed population.  They prefer to live for today, they prefer to say they cannot afford to save, because they don’t have any spare money – which is true. The reason that they don’t have any spare money is of course that they choose to allocate what they earn to different things – whether it is money spent on a cell phone, cigarettes, parties, fancy clothes or a car that is probably out of their budget.  

It is no wonder that there is discussion of a compulsory retirement savings product, because the government actually does need to do that.  On the one hand people claim that they don’t want rules and regulations and to be looked after, but the second they turn 65, they expect the government to take care of them whereas they would be in a far better position to do so if, from their very first working day, they have set aside 10% of their salary into a retirement annuity.  That is where the problem is – people have decided that the essentials in life are cigarettes and cell phones, not to mention parties and cars and have not decided that the very first thing that should come off their salary is that 10% should go towards a retirement annuity.  Once that 10% has gone off, then they can worry about budgeting everything else, and perhaps they could get a car that costs 10% to 20% less than the car they have.  The bottom line is if you don’t plan for your retirement, nobody else is going to and you are unlikely to win the Lottery – so you will spend the last 10 to 20 years of your life living in absolute poverty and if you are honest and open enough with yourself, you will at least admit that you put yourself there.  If you are not, you will try and blame society, the government or somebody else or you will be scrambling around like many pensioners trying to find some miracle financial product, and there is always one being advertised in the media that will give you a return of 30% - 40% a year on your money.  That normally ends with the last savings, possibly hurriedly squeezed together during the last five years of your working life, being lost to what always turns out to be scheme or a con.

Webber Wentzel are designing what appears to be a beautiful building at a prime intersection – that of Rivonia Road and Katherine Street.  It is opposite the American Embassy and of course Sandton City and it is just a reminder that corporate firms practice in almost a different universe to smaller firms.  

I cannot imagine what the land (and building on it that was knocked down) at that location cost, let alone the building they are erecting which looks extremely impressive.  I use corporate attorneys for some of my own matters and when I see buildings like this I understand exactly why they also charge so much more than my own firm!  Ultimately of course, clients pay for what they get and big JSE listed firms with head offices and most of their senior staff working in Sandton, want to consult with their attorneys in Sandton and that is going to come at a cost, compared to shipping out, for example, to Vereeniging where the attorneys would be able, if they moved there, to render the same services at far less cost.  It has always fascinated me that people on the one hand do not want to visit their attorneys’ office in downtown Johannesburg and find staff sitting on broken chairs and using computers from 10 years ago and on the other hand, later complain about the higher fees that ends up going with the fancier offices and the extra service in terms of, for example, driving clients around to appointments.  It would make sense to me that everybody would understand that everything has a price to it and the more the background expenses are, the higher the fees will have to be for any business to then run at a profit.

I am already registered to vote from previous voting registrations, but had to re-register as I now stay in a different area.  I took part in one of the IEC registration weekends and I found that the queues were very short, the process was very quick and I was happy that I took 5 minutes out of my day to take part.  

People still have until the President officially proclaims the election day, which we know now to be 7 May 2014, to register to vote and they can do so at any of the Municipal offices of the IEC.  It is well worth it, because we get very little opportunity to say anything, other than to express your choice once every 5 years and even if it means queuing for 30 minutes or an hour on a day that you have off from work in any event, one should take part.  You cannot complain if you don’t take part in the electoral process and your vote is crucial.  I would like to hear other people’s experiences of registering or even their thoughts on taking part and voting in the elections.

The Winter Olympics are under way, and it is something that I actually watch quite bit of – perhaps as much as the Summer Olympics.   I find the contrast to every other sport quite amazing, and there are quite a lot of sports that involve either sheer strength such as the speed skating or artistry such as ice skating, not to mention young guys doing their snowboarding.  

These events certainly seem to be far more dangerous than the Summer Olympics in terms of the high speeds generated in some of the events and if nothing else, the Winter Olympics makes a huge contrast to anything else one gets to see on television.  It was quite surprising that we never sent a single athlete to the Winter Olympics, not in one event at all, and what is more our Olympic Committee forgot to apply for accreditation for tickets so that it became impossible for any South African who has an interest in the Winter Olympics to get packages via South African travel agents.  All the more reason for those who do enjoy watching it to enjoy it on television!

Most financial experts would have told you, six months ago, that a tax hike for individuals in South Africa was extremely likely in this year’s budget speech which would be towards the end of February.  The situation has now changed, and I certainly hope the Minister of Finance is taking note of the pressure that ordinary people are in, particularly couples with children.  It is very easy to survive on a lot less money if you don’t have children or if you are single than if you have to cover the cost of schooling – something that we used to take pretty much for granted and for free in South Africa 20 or 25 years ago.  

The reason a tax hike is necessary is because the government is spending more than is coming in each year, and you cannot continue to fund deficits by borrowing money from overseas – somewhere you have to start raising the taxes.  The reasons why it would be inopportune to do so this year, include amongst other things the e-tolls that people living in Gauteng now have to pay, the higher cost of any imported goods as a result of the Rand weakening, the record-breaking petrol price that we currently have, not to mention the first of what is undoubtedly many interest rate hikes.  People are feeling pressure right now, and the last thing they can do having just started paying e-tolls, 0,5% extra on their house and motorcar finance, not to mention the normal increases on school fees, is to now be hit with an individual tax rate hike.  We will have to hold our thumbs, because as I say, some six months or so ago one would have thought it was inevitable and in the long term it has to be.  It is not as if our mining sector is paying as much tax as it could be with productivity down with the workers going on strike every year now!

Parking is a major problem, not just at my offices, but just about everywhere one goes.  I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to the Rosebank Medical and Dental Centre or the Rosebank Netcare Hospital and have not been able to find parking.  One goes in, collects one’s parking ticket, drives around only to discover there is no parking, and is forced to look around the area for more parking space.  If it is one word of advice I would give to any business, it is whatever parking you think you will need, multiply that by three or four.  

Of course, part of the problem in South Africa is that we have a very bad public transport system, compared to other countries, and basically you cannot get around anywhere unless you have your own car.  Once people experience the freedom of having their own car, they don’t really want to be part of a lift club, even though that will be better for them, not only from a parking point of view, but more especially from a cost of fuel point of view.  Perhaps part of the answer is for employers to encourage people to form lift clubs and then, if somebody is a member of a lift club and needs to go home early for an emergency or some sort of occasion, have a company car that they can rent at a nominal price – although no doubt that will lead to new complications.  The one thing that is certain is that, apart from the very modern shopping centres, there is invariably not enough parking space in any of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg – whether you are going to a restaurant in Parkhurst, going out in Greenside or visiting a doctor in Rosebank.

It is quite interesting to go through the statistics of the Law Society of South Africa in terms of the articles registered and the number of attorneys admitted each year.  The profession has changed quite considerably, so whereas for example in 1998 29% of all attorneys admitted were black, by 2012 that had grown to 52% or the majority of those being admitted.  In 2012 48% of those admitted as attorneys were white and 47% were male.  If one goes back to 1998, 63% of those being admitted to the legal profession as attorneys were male and only 37% were female and over the years the number of females being admitted to the profession has climbed steadily, peaking in 2009 and although the percentage was down for 2012 at 53%, the legal profession is still now dominated by females entrants to the profession. 

Graduates of University reflect the future of the profession, and in 2012 65% of graduates at University were black and 56% of them were female.  That is University graduates.  If we take the statistics another four years back and get to first year law students, the current statistics are that 22% of first year law students are currently white with 78% being black and 57% are female with 33% being male.  In short, the profession has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last 10 years or so, and it will continue to do so with the vast majority of future attorneys being black and many more females than males.  The issue that is not addressed however is what work all of those attorneys are going to do as with record numbers of graduates entering the profession there is not too much legal work available for all of them to do.  There is no doubt that average salaries of attorneys will continue to fall further and further behind those of, for example, accountants, as well as medical specialists, because as a country we are producing far more legal graduates than we actually need.  The people who need the most access to justice unfortunately also don’t have the money to pay for it and so producing more attorneys is not necessarily going to help us as a country in any event because there does not appear to be sufficient funds to provide actual access to justice for those who need it the most in the largely rural areas. 

An article on IOL News caught my interest recently when it indicated that a man, who approached the Road Accident Fund directly have now eventually obtained the help of attorneys.  He did the claim directly with the Road Accident Fund, after hearing that one could approach them directly and they settled the case for R38 000,00.  After the accident he suffered head and leg injuries and was in hospital for weeks, he was not able to work and he is still without a job.  

He was quoted in the newspaper saying that he genuinely believed that the RAF would have his best interests at heart, as this was part of its mandate.  The Road Accident Fund not only under-settled this case but they then tried to claim that the summons had been issued too late in his matter!  This is the problem with doing a claim directly with the people you want to pay you out at the end.  The Court awarded R1,5 million in compensation.  You can read the article http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/man-finally-gets-r1-5m-from-road-fund-1.1638299 and you can always get more information about Road Accident Fund claims on our website www.accidentclaim.co.za.  

I have read a very interesting review recently of a book that has just been published in the US.  The book is called “The Triple Package: How three unlikely traits explain the rise and fall of cultural groups in America”.  The book is all about how certain ethnic, religious and national origin groups do better in America than people from other groups.  While it is not generally accepted to make such statements, they have indicated how for example with Jewish people only making up 2% of the population of the United States, they still account for one-third of all the Supreme Court Judges, and about one-third of anyone who has ever won a Nobel Prize in America, let alone their dominance in industries such as Hollywood.  The book says that this is not just because this is about rich parents passing on what they know and various advantages to their children. The same can be seen in certain Mormon families as well as Indian and Chinese families and the children of Korean and Vietnamese who go to America are also exceptionally upward mobile.  

The book says that these groups all share three traits and that you need these three traits if you are to be successful.  They say that some groups, whether it is racial or religious, are better at putting those beliefs into their families than others and that is why they enjoy greater success.  Those three traits are that firstly you have to have a superiority complex – a belief that you are exceptional and that your family is exceptional. The second trait contradicts that somewhat and one needs to be insecure – a feeling that what you have done is not good enough.  The last trait is that of impulse control – the ability to resist reward now and always aiming for a bigger reward later. 

They say it is strange to think about the superiority complex and the inferiority complex together, but it is exactly that sort of unstable combination that generates the drive within a person which is so necessary to succeed and the review describes it as “… a chip on the shoulder, a goading need to prove oneself.”  It is apparently one of the many reasons that immigrants to America, or to any country, often succeed the best because they say that there is a world of difference between parents telling their children how much they love them, and they never need to worry about anything or as immigrants typically tell their children, “If you don’t do well at school, you will let down the family and end up a bum on the streets.”  Feeling superior would make you feel complacent but feeling superior with an insecurity generates what they call a longing to rise.  Drive is certainly something I should write more about because as an employer you have a front row seat noticing differences between one’s staff, a small number of whom have that insatiable drive to keep rising and many of whom are fairly complacent.

I really enjoyed The Wolf of Wall Street, even though it is a very long movie.  There are far too many movies these days where the directors feel that to make a statement or tell a story they need 3 hours and I honestly do believe that in many cases justice could be done in the normal 90 to 100 minutes.  I am glad that Leonardo di Capprio has been nominated for an Oscar as a result of his role in this movie – it is once again a superb performance by him and overall a good movie – especially for those who like watching others live a life of excess and take, in many case, the wrong path in life.  

It is a true story, no doubt exaggerated somewhat, about a company involved in fraudulent share dealings and selling on any stocks to unsuspecting investors who suffered losses, according the research I did, of approximately $120 million through these dealings.  The company eventually even got a main street designer to let them take their products to the market in an IPO, in the form of Steve Madden, a designer of shoes, and he eventually went to jail for four years for some of his activities while involved with this particular stockbroking firm. The recipe they had, as detailed in the movie, was not to bother, initially at least, trying to sell things to rich people eventually because they said rich people were too clever to go and buy rubbish shares and shares selling for small amounts of money and that that is typically something that appeals to poor people who are more keen to try and take a chance.  The profits were spent on all the usual things one read’s about – cocaine, hookers, strippers and eventually a new wife and it is certainly worth seeing if crooked business people, and what they spend the money on, interest you.  I don’t think it is going to win any Oscars, but I do think that it is a good movie and worth seeing.

The interest in this trial is so large that DSTV has now announced a special 24 hour channel that will dedicated to the trial.  It is going to be on channel 199 and it is called The Oscar Pistorius Trial:  A Carte Blanche Channel.  It is apparently going to be produced and put together by the producers of Carte Blanche and one assumes that they hope that most of the coverage will be live coverage of the trial.  The trial begins on 3 March but obviously the Judge still has to make a decision as to whether or not it can be covered on television.  The new channel will of course place some pressure on them to allow that coverage!

I love trying to work out each year what stallions to send the mares that I breed with.  I have already bred one Grade one winner, Do you Remember, and another horse I bred, Master Sabina ran second in the Grade 1 Summer Cup.

Of course, the actual hard work is done by the stud farm where my mares board, Varsfontein Stud.  I have always believed in using the best genetic material, so typically speaking I send my mares to the most expensive stallions that over the years have produced the best results.  I believe that quality begets quality and so I do not really experiment with those that are much cheaper, but have not been as successful.  Sometimes though that is impossible, because the top stallions are so popular, it can be hard to get a booking.  Most people do not realise that when you are offering to pay R120 000,00 for a service, you actually can and do get turned down for a lack of space.  Most stallions are limited to about 100 to 120 mares a year and the shareholders often have the first 80 or 100 services.  That means there is very little left over for all the other breeders around the country and so even though you are ready to pay the fee, there is no availability.  A shareholding in a popular stallion like Silvano, who is the father of Do You Remember, goes for about R850 000 and for that you can send him two mares a year – or buy a townhouse!

Politicians in South Africa are very lucky that they are not, to a large extent, judged by the population on service delivery.  They should be judged on service delivery, just like private businesses are, and should face complaints on a daily basis about things that are not working, or services not being delivered.  

The fact that so many people still live in shacks in South Africa is unacceptable.  Even worse, numbers of them still do not have access to clean running water, electricity or even basic functioning toilets.  It is no wonder that we are seeing more and more service delivery protests, and they are not going to go away if the current pathetic delivery of services continues.  20 years into the new South Africa there have been many accomplishments, and much of the government can be proud of, but it is terribly sad that conditions are so bad for so many people that there are so many service delivery protests.  

Our money is spent on different things.  Taxpayers’ funds are spent on building the President a glamorous house complete with his swimming pool which is not a swimming pool but is there to extinguish fires and all the other absolute bull we are told.  R200 million could have gone a long way towards providing some towns with water and toilet facilities, not to mention how many RDP type houses that it could buy.  That is just one example of wasted expenditure – where the money that we work hard for and are taxed on, is spent on absolute nonsense and does not get to the people who actually need it.  Those people are becoming more and more militant, to the extent that instead of trying to resolve their problems, we use the police to suppress them and of course every now and then they have to shoot a few protestors.  It is a very dangerous recipe and it does not bode well for our country.  There are people who protest and have reason to do so, like those who do not have basic services in their area, and we are about to be subjected, during the strike season, to the protest of people who really don’t have a basis to protest because they do have services, they do have jobs and they should feel free to rather give up their job and let a needy person take it over than damage our economy with these ridiculous strikes we see every year.

You hear news, from time to time, on radio stations like 702, as to what is going on in the Central African Republic.  It is amazing how many stories like this we’ve had to read over the years, whether they take place in the former Czechoslovakia, or various African countries.  People end up slaughtering each other, displacing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and many countries with violence that has a history of a dictator, Bokassa made himself President for life, and ultimately declared himself Emperor.  

He was alleged, although it was never proved, to have fed his political opponents to wild animals and in some cases served them as dinner to visiting officials.  There are once again stories of mass graves, people being tied up, people running around declaring what they have just eaten, people being displaced and a 100 000 people are apparently living around the airport – some of them sleeping at the end of the runway, just to try and keep themselves safe.  It is truly terrifying to hear that some people do not have the peace that we largely do, and have to spend every night feeling like an Impala in the middle of the Kruger National Park, that they are about to be killed, and possibly quite literally, eaten. 

In the recent study, conducted on rats, has important implications for all of us.  Scientists put rats in two separate cages – one with running wheels where the rats were encouraged to run and one without running wheels.  The scientists wanted to investigate a portion of the brain that controls breathing and other activities such as our blood pressure.  They found, after 12 weeks, a noticeable difference between the brains of the different rats and the rats than ran or kept exercising had their brain in the same condition as before the test began.  

The neurons in the brains of the sedentary rats had more branches meaning that the neurons would be more sensitive to stimuli and to send off much more messages to the rest of the body than a normal brain would.  In other words, the brain becomes overactive and that is apparently problematic because an overactive sympathetic nervous system causes your blood vessels to constrict too much.  This ultimately leads to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.  The importance of this study, according to the scientists is that they always thought that activity changes the brain, but now they realise that it is actually inactivity that changes the brain.  Scientists apparently plan to demonstrate this to their colleagues in a slide show and the message of the slide show will ultimately be, “This is your brain – and this is your brain on the couch”.

As everyone knows a number of States in America allow the use of marijuana, one for no reason at all – that is Colorado – and the rest on the flimsiest of medical excuses – such as you have a pretty bad cough and your doctor thinks it will clear it up!  President Obama has always been against marijuana noting that the federal government rejects the legalisation of marijuana.  

That situation now appears to be changing, given that in a recent interview published in New Yorker magazine, the President was quoted as saying he would not “encourage” smoking dagga as he believed it is “a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy”.  He did admit to smoking dagga when he was young and said that he thought it was not as dangerous as alcohol in terms of the damage it can do to an individual.  He also pointed out during the interview that whenever people get arrested and sent to jail for marijuana it is always children from poor families and that children who smoke marijuana, but come from wealthy families, never go to jail – so the treatment by the government in that regard is incredibly unfair.  When it came to the issue of how grass is being treated in Colorado and Washington, he said in the interview the experiments should go forward “… because it is important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”  

That all hints at a big change coming in America, although often they take another 10 years once they have reached this phase of Presidents thinking that things are not so bad but of course it is a difficult topic, because on the one hand there are many who do not believe that it is as dangerous as alcohol, and you have even now the President of America supporting this point of view and he is probably correct in doing so, and on the other hand there is no denying that dagga is not good for your health, and it certainly, apart from leaving you paranoid, is pretty demotivating.  Those that appear to smoke it all the time invariably have a view that is against much of organised society, not particularly interested in hard work and trying to live the easy life.  I think you would be hard pressed to find a successful person, and I am not talking about people who make their money singing songs or acting in movies, who smoke dagga on a regular basis.