I am someone who is known by banks as a “freeloader”.  That is somebody who has a credit card who pays off the full balance each month before they have to pay any interest.  Banks don’t enjoy that because then they don’t get the chance to make much money off you.  I don’t believe, as I am sure some people will reply to this blog article, in not having credit facilities at all.  If you don’t have credit facilities at all you cannot build a credit record and be given credit when you need it.   

I do like however what I have seen on bank statements in some overseas countries and that is how they are obligated to give you information on your statement as to how much interest you will pay if you only ever pay off the minimum amount.  So, for example, on an account of R3 321,06 you would get a warning that if you only pay the minimum amount on that account each month, with interest continually being added to it, it would take an unbelievable 16 years to pay it off and you would pay R8 308,00 in total over 16 years.  If you paid R119,00 a month it would take you three years to pay off R3 321,06 and you pay interest of R4 296,00.  I would like to see those types of warnings on credit card statements and revolving credit in South Africa because it will bring home to people the reality of what happens to you if you don’t use the card wisely.  Exact amounts and time frames on an account will spell out the true costs of unpaid credit.

Wise use of credit is paying off the entire balance each month or if you cannot afford it, at least paying more than the minimum payment. As you can see, if you only ever pay the minimum payment, even on a small balance, it will take you 16 years to pay it off!  I honestly think that legislation like that in South Africa would be of far more benefit to the average man in the street than the CCMA legislation and it would create far bigger savings for the public at large, in a country which already does not have a very good savings record.

When I go through clients’ files it always leaves me with a sense of horror of driving on the roads in South Africa.  So many of my clients have had accidents in the most bizarre circumstances.  Driving along a road and another car, travelling in the opposite direction, separated by then from an island takes off, goes through the air upside down, crashes into their car before killing everyone in the car, but for my client.  

Another example is clients who are driving along a road where a trailer disconnects from a vehicle and suddenly comes veering towards them.  Hearing all these stories ends up making one very nervous when driving on the roads in South Africa and as I say in my one TV advert, we all focus too much on crime when you have just as much of a chance of dying in a motor accident in South Africa as you do from crime.  In fact, depending on the area where you live, you probably have a higher chance of dying from a motor accident, given that there are a higher number of deaths from crimes happening in townships, so if you are not living in a township dying in a motor accident is probably your biggest risk other the diseases of older age- heat disease, cancer etc.   

It also reminds me of the situation my family and I have been in.  My wife told me how my niece delayed her at gym just outside Broadacres and when she was running behind time, a trailer disconnected from a vehicle and had been spinning around.  She always wonders what would have happened to her if my niece had not been delaying her in gym.  There are so many near escapes – my own brother who was in an accident where some of the passengers sitting alongside him were put in homes for the rest of their lives due to the catastrophic brain damage they suffered.  As a young University student I was a passenger in a vehicle on Sixth Street, Parkhurst where I think the driver must have skidded the car for 50 metres as he went round an intersection with 4^th Avenue and probably drove through a red robot as well, but I cannot remember now.  As you get older and depending on how much you went out when you were young, there are so many situations and scenarios that you can think back on which might well have ended very differently and tragically.  Sometimes it is your friends – or my brother David’s friend that drove off with his car, drove through a wall and was also been institutionalised for the rest of his life.

Game of Thrones fans will be excited to see that the 6^th season begins this Sunday, 24 April. It is going to consist of 10 episodes and who knows what shocks are in store this time. Probably one of the biggest shocks is to know that, although this is subject to change, they claim they only have about 13 episodes left, 7 of which will be produced and shown in 2017 and 6 in 2018. 

HBO will no doubt try and put pressure on the writers and producers to keep, what is an incredibly successful show, going. It is without doubt their number one product and to quote Wikipedia, “It has received widespread acclaim by critics, particularly for its acting, complex characters, story, scope, and production values, although its frequent use of nudity, violence and sexual violence has attracted criticism.” The trailers certainly hint more violence, and one never knows whether the characters one has seen being killed off are indeed finished or set to return in this season or later. It is amazing to see, even on YouTube that not only have the trailers been watched millions of times, but that there are a variety of videos that even analyse the trailers and what people believe this means the show has in store. I cannot say that I am that devoted, but the show certainly is worthy of the 26 Emmy awards it has already won. 

I don’t think that there is any one trait that defines whether one is successful or not, but there are certainly things that I look at, because I know that they worked for me.  I have always been a keeper of statistics.  

For example, when my practice first opened I used to keep statistics every week as to how much post I received.  I used to average about 35 items of post a week and by that I mean all incoming correspondence, so it would be almost impossible to track now because you would have to include e-mails to all staff.  It does give one a good sense though as to how one’s business is growing.  I now use a sophisticated computer system in our offices which we refer to as E-file to track a lot of statistics for me, but I also have staff members who keep statistics for me such as what the absentee rate is at our firm, staff turnover and the like.  Statistics have always interested me and while that can certainly be designed and interpreted to often twist reality, I find it very useful.  I love to see which of my staff members keep statistics and which do not and we even keep statistics on the advocates that we use – such as what their average settlement rate is and how much the average case they handle is settled for.  Overseas, for example, in the UK, there is a lot of attention given to those statistics when it comes to doctors.  That obviously helps, for those who like to do research, to discover which doctor has had the lowest death rate from a certain procedure – so one must not just dismiss statistics, despite the fact that used incorrectly they can be manipulated.

Those who use Wikipedia will notice from time to time that they call for donations.  Although the people who edit and write Wikipedia are all unpaid, the Wikimedia Foundation handles all the services, the technical support, legal services and everything else that it takes to run Wikipedia.  That costs money and that is why they call for donations from time to time.  They are in a relatively healthy situation, given at any one time they have enough money to run Wikipedia for approximately another year, but it is one of those projects that I support, because I think it promotes a wide international free access to the kind of knowledge you used to have to pay thousands of rands to have in the form of an encyclopedia.  Every family can have it for free now – except that, as we know, it is not free because they have all those expenses they need to pay.  

I donate money to them, although truthfully I cannot remember if I donated it in my own name, which I probably did, or in the name of the firm, and it is not a huge amount, but I really do believe that every cent helps even if that amount is only approximately R1 000.  I have learnt many times in my life that it is a good thing to be generous and nothing comes back to you if you don’t give anything.  That is not to say that that is the motivation behind my giving, but it is certainly the motivation I use in trying to motivate others to give.  The truth of the matter is we can all give in so many different ways – whether it is a more generous tip to the person who is putting petrol in your car than the feeble R1 or R2 some people give – you know even if you tip only 1% it would have to be at least R5 a time - and there are so many charities where even your R10 or R20 could make a difference.  What do you think about donating money?  What do you think about Wikipedia?  Are there any charities that you support and if so, what are they?  Perhaps you support them by giving them things, not necessary money or perhaps you support them by going and giving of your time.  I would love to hear from you and I encourage you to put links to the websites of various organizations.

We live in a world where we are always trying to shorten things, as well as shortcut things.  Shortcuts of course are dangerous, but I was just thinking about the abbreviations that we use in my office and possibly in that of some other plaintiff RAF and personal injury firms that don’t actually exist in the real world.  Here are a few of them:

• LOS – loss of support in a case where somebody has lost somebody who was the breadwinner.
• OBO – we use that as short for “on behalf of” when a parent is doing a claim on behalf of their minor child, for example.
• WOM – I use that when I go through my statistics (I love statistics) as to where my clients have come from and for me it stands for word of mouth – almost a quarter of our clients come from word of mouth.
• MVA – that stands for motor vehicle accident.

Can you think of any others apart from the obvious RAF for Road Accident Fund and PI for personal injury?  

I see with some interest that the first two branches of Starbucks are about to open in South Africa.  One is going to be in Midrand and the other one close to our offices in Rosebank. They have signed a licence agreement with a company called Taste Holdings, which gives Taste Holdings exclusive rights to roll out a coffee chain in South Africa.  They apparently expect 5 Starbucks by the end of the year with a total of 16 Starbucks in a few years.  The Starbucks in Rosebank will be at the corner of Cradock and Tyrwhitt Avenues and will be a 485 square metre branch.  

I am surprised that Starbucks took so long to move into South Africa and for many years, because I used to look into it, their website would reveal that if you were from South Africa there was no franchise opportunity available.  I was very interested in getting a few for South Africa.  The current company seems to be a small one – I can’t really understand why the roll out in South Africa would be so small otherwise – only 5 stores by the end of the year seems very small.

I think that Starbucks will succeed in South Africa, as it is a huge international brand with 22,000 branches around the world and high-priced coffee has proven to be one of those things that people are prepared to pay for.  They would obviously have to charge a different price to what they charge in America which is on average about $5 a drink which would work out to about R77,00 for a cup of coffee!

I see that Cosatu is again pushing for a minimum wage which they want increased to R5 000,00 a month.  I understand the motivation behind it, and I understand that people around the world are pushing for minimum wages, but I just cannot see something like that happening in South Africa.  Those employed will always be quick to say that they like such a minimum wage, but I wonder though how many of those people who have workers assisting them at their house or with their garden would actually agree to give those employees of their own R5 000,00 a month. There are a lot of people in the country who work as domestic workers, for example, and while it would be wonderful if they could all be paid a minimum of R5 000,00, I just don’t see that the vast majority of people can afford to pay that much.  There is no doubt that a good domestic worker is worth at least that, but it is not always about what one is worth – it is about the state of the economy and what people can afford and one must think very carefully before introducing minimum wages in a country which has such a devastating and high unemployment rate.  

One must not forget that the unemployment rate, as is published from time to time, is the percentage of people who are actually looking for a job and it does not include those living, for example, in rural areas who long ago gave up on looking for a job.  There is room to believe that the real rate of unemployment in South Africa is 40% and of course that is precisely why, together with our lack of effective policing and criminal sanctions, we have such a high crime rate.  The first thing we need to do is to attract foreign investors and get more money into South Africa.  One would think that with our weak currency it would be a haven for all sorts of overseas companies to use for their off-shore call centres and outsourcing all sorts of work, from reading radiologist reports to manufacturing.  In regard to the example of radiologist reports, one must never forget that most radiologists sit and look at a computer screen of the X-rays – they do not need to be in the same office, same country or the same continent as to whoever is being X-rayed to do a report on that particular person and frequently are not, but that is the kind of work that we are losing to India as well as outsourcing of secretarial services and the like because highly qualified legal secretaries can be outsourced to India more easily than to South Africa.  I am not going to mention our labour laws again, but that is certainly one of the major problems and it is a pity that with such a weak currency we cannot at least take advantage of our currency by competitively offering our employees to companies around the world.