Most people are familiar with the fact that we have a very high unemployment rate in South Africa, but what that rate is, is somewhat controversial. The official unemployment rate is 25.5%. The unofficial rate is 37%. The difference between the two, and this is not unique to South Africa, is that government offices around the world don’t generally include in their unemployment statistics all of those who have given up looking for a job or are essentially trapped at home and cannot afford transport fees to even go into town and to try and apply for a job.

By excluding those people, every country has a lower unemployment rate than it would otherwise have and so I think in America that unofficial rate is approximately 12% whereas the official rate is little bit over 7% at the moment. You only have to look at the figures above to see the comparison with South Africa and realise the terrible problem that we face. We also need to give everybody basic services and assistance in life and it is the very small group of taxpayers who have to do so.

It is really hard, looking ahead to see anything other than tax hikes eventually, even if we managed to dodge that bullet in a few budget speeches in recent years. There is just so much that still needs to be done in South Africa - from education to infrastructure to our healthcare system - and so few people who have jobs in the first place, and then even a smaller category who are actually contributing to tax, because they might be earning a minimum salary or a meaningful amount of tax, because they might be earning a lower than average salary. How one resolves that is another question – whether it is tourism entrepreneurship, liberalising labour laws to make it easier for people to start a business, and give up if it is not succeeding. The fact remains that we have a huge problem and a huge number of people who are not getting anything out of the new South Africa and who are terribly unhappy about their lot in life.

Julius Malema, who left the political scene swearing blind that he would never ever be anything but an ANC member, is now launching his new party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). He is apparently off to a great start already, which is not surprising in a country with 30% unemployment and no doubt, for those of us who were irritated about hearing everything he had to say, we are now going to hear from him for another year, in between his corruption charges, etc.

For some of those who think the labour laws are just wonderful and not any problem for overseas companies, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they will no doubt also be impressed with the EFF policies. Malema plans to nationalise the mines, banks and other parts of economy, land will be taken away without compensation and there will be free quality education, healthcare and housing, etc. He says, like Zimbabwe, we will not allow foreign ownership of land in South Africa anymore, which will be something of a problem for those people who have invested in wine farms, game farms and apartments all along Clifton, but on the plus side he says there is plenty of space in South Africa and as a result nobody will have to be driven into the sea. He went on to say that he will share, black and white “but failure to share means you will be forced to share”. I assume that he is not totally convinced that his criminal cases are going well, because I cannot see any other reason for the following quote: “Not even prison will take away that political will. We will fight economic freedom from the cells, if need be because we are committed to this cause.” He did say that anybody found guilty of corruption will not be able to be a member of the EFF because the organisation is founded on the principle of being anti-corruption.

Government departments are not generally associated with fantastic service, but I must say that the Randburg branch of the Department of Home Affairs really try hard. I am not saying that the applications I am busy with there have been resolved successfully, but they certainly assist you in terms of not waiting very long and of friendly service. The staff members seem to get on well with each other, rotating through different positions – for example the guy who does the fingerprints might be assisting on the computer the next day and that also means that they invariably have learnt a few other skills, which is always so important. I like people who work in different departments in my firm to at least be aware of the entire process, and to have helped out with different things from time to time because having knowledge of the whole process which your company does will always make you a better employee. I can say that I would certainly rather drive to the Department of Home Affairs in Randburg and try and be assisted there than to pick up the phone to SAA or to try and log into their website.

It is amazing what you can do with taxpayers’ money, and how badly a business can be run, when it does not have to make a profit itself. The website invariably does not work, putting you through a torturous process of completing a booking by the end of which it then advises you that the booking has failed. If you then try to do the booking again it tells you that you already have a booking – except that if you try and search on your booking you will find that you have none. Phoning the call centre is not much better – you get put on hold, 12 or 13 minutes into the call the call is lost, and nobody phones you back. The second time I phoned, after I had been one the phone for 15 minutes, the lady advised me that their systems were not working properly and she would have to put me on hold while she checks on another system. It basically becomes impossible to actually give them your money and if you are foolish enough to believe in Voyager miles and the like you will find it impossible to actually find any flight where there is a Voyager flight available, particularly in business class, so you can accumulate the miles for all you want, but you will not be able to use them most of the time, if at all. Due to a lack of available flights, I personally have now accumulated over 750,000 miles, and every single time I try to book a flight using them, there are no flights available even though the website shows that there are. Twenty-two minutes into the second call, after I have been put on hold by a lady who promised me that she would not put me on hold, I gave up. It will not be a surprise to read of SAA’s continuing losses in years to come, because their systems and some of their staff are incompetent (I have also had some very positive and useful people help on the phone previously).

As of 23 July, SuperSport will have two new HD channels. The high definition channels, which will be found on DSTV 215 and 216 will also be able to take the overflow of other sports that cannot necessarily be catered for, which hopefully means for me more golf in HD with channel 216 largely having more football from the German Bundesliga, the Spanish La Liga and the Italian Serie A. Channel 215 will apparently focus on motorsports, boxing, swimming and athletics and will also act as the overflow channel. Once you get used to watching television in HD, it becomes impossible to go back to normal TV and so the more HD content there is, the better for sports fans and those who love movies.

The next petrol price increase may very well be decided by the currency, which is showing some strength at the moment. The problem though is that the international fuel price has now increased a little bit – costing approximately 36c a litre more, while the exchange rate is marginally positive. If the trend holds, and this blog is based on information available on 16 July 2013, then we are looking at an approximate increase of 35c per litre in August which will then take petrol to the highest price it has ever been in South Africa. Hopefully, before the end of the month the Rand will show some more strength and the international price of fuel will weaken a bit and we could then be looking, quite potentially, at a smaller increase than that.

The Open, which finished this weekend, was played at Muirfield near Edinburgh in Scotland. I was stunned to discover that the course does not allow female members, and even more stunned at the way that the organisers of The Open chose to defend this policy. Basically, they said they are not going to interfere with the rules of the various courses where they rotate The Open (between about 11 courses) and that they will simply choose where The Open is played on the basis of which are the best golf courses. Ernie Els pretty much took a similar line, saying that he will play in the desert if that is where the game is being played and that the course members must explain the rules.

I think that the comments of The Open’s organisers have probably done more to change the situation, in their feeble attempts to defend it, than if they had given them a more wishy washy answer such as, “We are not happy with it and are going to look into it and have it sorted out” which would have bought them another 10 or 12 years before the tournament was back there. In their approach of open defiance, I think that they have just signalled that Muirfield will either change its rules, or be left off The Open rotation in future. It is ridiculous, especially for those of us who have grown up in a country with apartheid, for people to say they are not going to be interested in the policies of the people running the golf course but they are just going to look whether the golf course is beautiful. You could make a similar argument then for visiting Nazi Germany during the Second World War or for breaking the sports boycott in South Africa and we know that none of those arguments would stand. Will they next say that it is okay if the club that does not allow black members or Jewish members? The most shocking part of all of course is that this is the heart of Europe, it is meant to be so liberalised and yet we have a golf course in 2013 which does not allow female members and the organisers of The Open go ahead and make idiotic comments saying essentially that is of no relevance! 

Spam messages seem to be forever on the increase. Some mail services like Google’s Gmail do an excellent job of routing out the rubbish, but even they fail to pick up some of the notices. Most recently, during the last week I received a number of e-mails, for example that I qualified for a refund from SARS. I think the only time I even qualified for a refund from SARS was the VAT payable on the purchase of a horse, and when we actually applied for it, we were subjected to an entire audit and many months before we were refunded, so only the naïve will believe SARS are about to refund them so quickly and are emailing them a link to ensure the payment is made.

On the other hand if your “business” model depends on a small percentage of people being fools by sending out millions of e-mails you will always recruit a whole lot of them. It is really a tremendous pity that more effort is not made to uproot the individuals behind this systematic fraud and imprison them.

I have been fortunate enough to have attended the last two Open’s, although last year’s Open was held in an absolute dump of a town called Blackpool, which is apparently largely a seaside getaway for people living in Manchester, or used to be in any event, and which is clearly having tough economic times and probably has had for the last 30 years because there does not appear to have been any development since then.

This year’s tournament is taking place at Muirfield in Scotland and the defending champion, who obviously feels very differently about Blackpool than I do, is Ernie Els! It is one of the easiest golf tournaments for most people to follow in South Africa, because the similar time zone, as well as the fact that the sun only sets at about 10 pm in England and Scotland at this time of the year, allows for one to watch it most late afternoons and early evenings over the next three days unlike the PGA Tour where you have to stay up until all hours every weekend. The Open is typically famous for courses involving links golf alongside the sea, although it rotates between a number of venues, so that is not true of all of the courses, but certainly invariably it is pretty cold and probably windy too.

I love the atmosphere of a golf tournament and being there in person, but with the weather of the Open I could enjoy watching it on TV this year as well! Somehow I feel more comfortable at home in front of the TV when I watch people huddled up under two or three jackets, barricaded behind umbrellas when the rain starts pouring down, but on the other hand you will never at home get the sense of the sheer shock of somebody throwing away a tournament, namely Adam Scott last year, and then a South African winning the tournament while you are there, 10 000 kilometres away from home.

Nelson Mandela turns 95 today. The whole world knows about his perilous state of health and so I thought I am not going to write anything about that, but rather how lucky we are to have a man like him in our country, who urged peace and forgiveness at a time when many others would have had it differently. It is not very easy, especially for those who are younger than let us say 35 or so, to appreciate the South Africa we used to live in. If you look around you in whatever office you are sitting, in the old South Africa three out of every four people around you would have been supporting the National Party and voting for apartheid. Of course, you will not even find one out of a hundred people admitting that now, but the fact of the matter is if you are white, that most of your parents supported apartheid and the National Party.

That is a reflection of the very sick and sad society that we had and for liberal white people, who were most definitely in the minority before 1990 and largely English speaking at the time, the release of Nelson Mandela was a huge and positive step for the country and so it turned out to be. I was brought up quite differently to a majority of white people at that time – when I turned 13 my mother gave me a book by Chief Albert Luthuli called “Let my people go”. Strangely enough, the book was not banned, because he was the President of the ANC when the ANC was banned and at that time Nelson Mandela was only the leader of the Youth League. It was certainly a book that blew my mind at that time to realise what a disgusting country I was living in, in terms of our racial politics and laws.

I cannot say that I was ever involved in very much – in a way I was too young. Probably my only claim to fame is having the special Security Police visit my mother, when I was at Wits University, because I had taken part in protests against detention without trial (most people also though that was ok before 1994). I cannot say I ever “met” Nelson Mandela in person, although that is probably true about a lot of people who appear in photos with him, but at a cricket game at the Wanderers many years ago, when he was the State President, I managed to shake his hand over the fence and I just remember what huge hands he had – far bigger than mine and probably befitting a man who had done lots of boxing.

We have been truly blessed in South Africa to have such a wonderful man and I think without him there is little doubt that most of the country would have been up in flames – which is after all what all the foreign media who arrived in South Africa in 1994 to broadcast back to the world were waiting for - and who was sadly disappointed with the incredibly peaceful elections.

Very few people are aware, and once they become aware, they get quite upset that money paid for medical expenses in RAF claims are invariably refunded to the medical aid. Most clients feel that they pay the medical aid a monthly amount, and when the case is finalised, they should then get all the past medical expenses themselves. What very few people realise is that, if they read the policy they actually have quite carefully, they actually only have a sickness benefit in terms of their medical aid and not an accident benefit. In other words, medical aids do not actually have to pay out if you are injured in an accident, and the only reason they do this, is that they know in most cases that money will be refunded from your Road Accident Fund claim.

The one benefit that people have is that there is no doubt as a result of the moneys recovered by the medical aids in this regard, that they are able to keep medical aid contributions lower than they would be – in other words, if none of that money went back to them, every group will then be responsible for the payment of all of the accident expenses, and as a result monthly premiums would certainly have to go up, over and above whatever the usual increases are – and may then make medical aids even more unaffordable. There is only one medical aid in the country which allows its members to keep the money, if the accident was after 30 June 2009 and you may think about it when you hear who that medical aid is, especially when you think about who actually pays the costs in an event of a shortfall. It is GEMS, or the Government Employees Medical Scheme, and they not only cover the expenses, but allow the employees to keep whatever is recovered from the Road Accident Fund. That is obviously one of the benefits of working for the government, and having your salary and benefits paid for by – wait for it – us!

I have shied away from writing about politics and local events in my blog for some time now, largely because it is all so disappointing. You cannot open a newspaper without reading how various members of the Mandela family are fighting each other and that is not even to get into the allegations about Madiba being on life support or not.

A page later you will read more about Nkandla, where the reports are all top secret, despite even the Deputy President saying they should not be, and politicians try to assure us that the President is paying for his house, but just not the security upgrades, which include a tuck shop for one of his wives, not to mention, it would appear, everything other than the shell of the house. For example, since they say there has to be air conditioning in the area, and I am assuming they are saying that from a security point of view, the President is not paying for any of the air conditioning that is put into his house – that is a “security upgrade”. It is amazing that more members of Parliament are not taking the “if you cannot beat them, join them” approach and all asking for “security” upgrades of their houses. After all, an argument can be made for just about every feature that you put into a house that it could be a security upgrade. If you live on a busy road, double glazed glass is far better to keep out the noise and to keep you warmer – but I am sure if somebody aims an arrow at you, the double glazed glass will also do a better job of keeping you safe. An underground home theatre must be a safer way to watch television, perhaps with a downstairs bar and other refreshments in the event of an attack while you are watching TV.

With the latest and most expensive technology ranging from fridges to of course the tuck shop, which will prevent you from having to go outside the property for some of your shopping, you can be more secure and have taxpayers fund it all. I have always felt that Presidents in South Africa are paid too little, as are most politicians, and while that far exceeds the earnings of the average person, it allows temptations to arise, but I think everybody, had they known this was on the table, would be prepared to be the State President or indeed a Cabinet Minister, at little or no cost, just for a R200 million plus “security upgrade” to their mansion or family village.

I am not the type of person who would put somebody off going into the field of law. I, after all, was told by a then girlfriend’s stepmother, some 20 years ago, that I was going into a field where there were no jobs and I would have no chance of being successful. I think somebody that is hardworking and motivated – and that is by an objective perspective and not necessarily their own opinion, will always succeed in almost any field, but I do have to say that whereas when I entered the profession there were approximately 10 000 attorneys in South Africa, and it was already getting crowded, now that we have about 30 000, the field is very crowded. Sitting on the Law Society I have seen attorneys who got themselves into trouble because they genuinely cannot afford to pay their accountant R2 000,00 to audit their trust account, attorneys who turn up at proceedings of the Law Society advising that they have hitchhiked to get to the Law Society and I feel terribly sorry for those who are in the profession and trying as hard as they can, but simply cannot make ends meet.

It will only get tougher as law schools pump out more and more entrants into the profession here and in overseas countries – basically overselling law degrees. By the same token, I get e-mails from prospective candidate attorneys who explain to me their credentials, or because I have written articles on my blog and on my website about obtaining candidate attorneys, they berate me, or presumably attorneys in general, for not reading their CV’s properly. What they fail to understand is that between the hundreds of other e-mails every attorney gets each day, are one or two applications a day from people who want to do their articles at the firm and who do not understand that a firm is limited, by the number of directors it has who have five or more years experience, to no more than three candidate attorneys at a time. It goes without saying that a firm with lots of directors can then take on many candidate attorneys, provided those directors have been directors for five years or more. Smaller firms are limited and generally have to wait until somebody graduates as an attorney, before they can make that position available and by the time that position becomes available, the same people who feel you have not given enough time to their CV, simply do not understand that you would have received more than 1 000 CV’s in that time.

It is a very tough profession, it is extremely hard to get your foot in the front door, and perhaps when you are looking for articles, if you cannot get into the specialised field where you are looking, as some people have written to me, you will need to look at other positions as a candidate attorney. In other words, if you just want to do intellectual property law, but there are no positions available at any of the firms you have applied for, you may have to consider taking a position at any firm, and doing whatever work they do, for a year or two and then move onto something else. I, for example, did not do any personal injury work during my articles when I worked for an attorney who specialised in insolvency law and divorce litigation at that time, although he subsequently stopped doing family law. It was the first position I was offered, I grabbed it with both hands then, 18 years ago and it was certainly easier to get articles than it is now – but I was not going to be fussy and it turned out to be a fantastic learning opportunity for me. 

My staff made my office look fantastic on my birthday.  Not only did they put too many things for me to eat and drink in the office, but it was covered in streamers and balloons also!  Certainly helped ease the migraine that I arrived with and added a lot of colour!

So it is the second blog this week that really is about a picture - but as they say sometimes a picture does say a 1000 words - or at least 350!

It seems that a new age in computer software is upon us, the age of software rental. Until recently all software has been sold, but now Microsoft is experimenting with Office 365 where, instead of purchasing Microsoft Office, you rent it for a yearly fee of $100.

Adobe has taken it a step further and with the current version, Photoshop CC now available only as a rental. In other words, you cannot buy it. If you want it, you will have to sign up to pay $30 a month or $240 a year for the privilege of using the latest Photoshop version. Photoshop is by far the premier tool used by photographers around the world, and their product is the only programme whose name has even become a verb! The rental only plan has already resulted in Adobe shares going up and while this development is very popular with Adobe shareholders, it is certainly going to be much less popular with users. Of course, users can also purchase shares and then benefit on the other side, if they really think the company is going to make a lot more money as a result. Users also have the choice of sticking to the last version that they bought and not upgrading at any time – but most photographers would want to be able to have the latest and greatest magical tricks that Photoshop contains!

I am sad to see that MultiChoice is ending Bloomberg television, which used to be on DSTV 411 at the same time as they end the MK music channel (DSTV 324). Apparently parts of Bloomberg television will be featured on Summit TV, which is now being renamed Business Day TV.

Bloomberg was by far the best of the business channels, far exceeding the weaker content, especially during the locally sourced content, on CNBC. DSTV strangely enough has only discontinued Bloomberg for South Africa but it will remain available throughout their offerings to the rest of Africa. Apparently, Charlie Rose’s talk show will still be shown within the programming blocks on Business Day TV, but those are pretty late now, including 11 pm to 3 am and 7 am to 12 pm when it is much harder for most people to watch.

The first thing that people have to remember about the July Handicap, before asking someone if they can win it, is how hard it is to get into the race in the first place! Once you are in it, it is a handicap which means that they have assessed each horse, according to its ability, and the more ability they believe that horse has, the more weight he or she is carrying. In short, you should have a close finish, as you do in most July’s and somebody who gets luck in running, where the right gaps open up at the right time, normally goes on to win the race.

If somebody asks me what my real concern was – I would say that it is well-known to be a very rough race, and with a small filly in the race, the only lady in the race, I hope that she comes out well and not injured. After that, of course I have dreams, and if you have a ticket, you have a chance. You cannot win the July if you are not running in the race and the fact that she is in the July means we have a chance – like all 20 horses do as it is a handicap after all!  Handicaps like this are the exact type of races that professional punters don't bet on - every horse has a chance and with a very short straight the July will often have upset results. Having said that both Pomodoro and Cape Town Noir look very good, have very fast finishes and I would struggle to see how my filly could beat them.

The bookies assess her chance as 25/1 which mathematically means that they believe if the race was to be run 26 times, she would win it once. The fact that I have a 25/1 chance in the July, and it is my first runner in the July ever, means that it is unlikely that she will win, but she certainly does try very hard and I think that all the comments that she has a big heart are very true. If she comes around that bend, close to the lead and makes a quick dart for it, she is going to be very close. She was initially at 14/1 but there has been very little money for her which has seen her drift right out to 25/1.

The victory over Cherry on the Top cost her another two kilograms – if she had not won that race she may not have been in the July, but if she had been she would have been carrying 52 kg and now instead she is carrying 54,5 kg which is more weight than some colts carried who have won million rand races already this season! So, I don’t think she is better than her rating and ideally, when you are looking for the winner of the July, you are looking for a horse you believe is actually better than their rating because that horse, with luck in running, and a decent draw, will then win the race, all things being equal. So I think Do you Remember is certainly going to need her share of luck, and she is up against some very talented horses – and I am not just talking about the favourites – there are horses like Seal who are far better than their odds of 20/1 indicate.  Some of the 3 year old boys undoubtedly should be carrying more weight also.

What I am certainly looking forward to is the massive build-up in the media, the atmosphere in Durban and the crazy nervous tension of the whole day, not to mention the little over 2 minutes when the race is run at 4.20 pm on Saturday in front of a jam-packed, and I mean literally impossible to walk very far very quickly, 50 000 crowd at Greyville Racecourse.  The race is covered on DSTV 239 but the better bet will be to watch it all on SABC 3 from 2:30 on Saturday.

This is the wrong time of the year to write about the latest research on sunscreen – it being winter, but recent research is interesting nonetheless. Essentially, on a study involving 900 white people aged 25 to 55 in Australia, a test was done on the skin of people over a 5 year period and you can read the full article at this link: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/slathering-on-sunscreen-shows-results-researchers-find/ . This is the first test actually done with people, as opposed to mice, and that is another topic altogether, and it was basically on people who were already using some sun protection – in other words, they were not the worst offenders who ran around without hats or no suntan lotion in the first place. Results indicated better quality skin for those who used sun tan lotion all the time compared to those who used it now and then.

They made silicon casks of their skin at the start of the study and five years later the results were that those who used an SPF15 factor every single day had better quality skin, which had aged much less and although they have not tested it on darker skins, they believe that the theory will hold true for them as well. Apparently, in a biopsy it is easy to see the effects of skin damage with those who don’t have it having nice pink fibers, and those who have been exposed to too much sun having a purple and amorphous material which the researchers say is almost like looking at a photograph taken by a camera lens covered with Vaseline.

Everyone focuses on the stake money involved in the July Handicap, forgetting that from that R2,1 million first prize, at least 10% of it goes to the trainer and another 10% of it to the jockey. What they don’t realise, and while it is a great honour to have a runner in the July Handicap, which is the biggest race in South Africa and the social event of the year in Durban, is quite how expensive it is.

Firstly, you have to pay to enter the July and the early entries are about R6 000,00. Once your horse is declared as a runner in the July you have to pay an additional sum of approximately R36 000,00 and so, by the time you toss in your air flight and hotel accommodation, the July weekend is going to cost you at least R50 000,00 if you have a runner in the big race. Most horse owners who never had a runner in the July, and I have had to wait 10 years to have one, would happily pay that R50 000,00 to have a runner, but what it does make you realise is that unless you get at least 5th place where the stake money is R83 750,00, you are actually losing money by being in the race! Sixth place through to tenth place all pay R30 000,00 and that is not going to cover your expenses to start with. The top three get the bulk of the money with R335 000,00 going for third, R670 000,00 for second and R2 093 750,00 for first place! It does mean, for little over two minutes at 4.20 pm on Saturday, anyone with a runner in the July has a dream of not only winning the most famous horse race in South Africa, but also of walking away with R2 million whereas two minutes later most of them will be engaged in discussions as to how their horse could and should have won if only, or but for – another aspect that makes racing so interesting!

Our labour laws are certainly not the most competitive in the world, although there are always employees who feel that they are, and to hell with the effect on international companies wanting to invest in South Africa, or rather not, after seeing the laws we have. The Labour Relations Amendment Bill is expected to be in effect before the end of this year and has a number of changes, but some that have seen a liberalizing of the rules. For example, they have now decided that people who earn more than R1 million a year really don’t (because of what they earn) need the protection of the CCMA. Employers would be able to fire such highly paid individuals simply by giving the person concerned three months’ notice pay and they will have no right to proceed, other than to the Labour Court, unless it is an automatically unfair dismissal as set out in some very specific provisions of the Act. Part-time workers and part-time employees will also gain more rights and there are a number of changes relating to the terms of employment and remuneration of Judges of the Labour Court and changes relating to the calling of a strike or lockout, the status of picketing rules and agreements and to clarify the powers of the Labour Court in respect of breaches of picketing rules or agreements.

LinkedIn is clearly campaigning, far more actively now, than before and I am getting bombarded with e-mails from people who want to connect with me on LinkedIn. Motley Fool selected LinkedIn as their share of the year for 2013, although it has been essentially flat for most of the year. The argument is basically that they are going to take over from employment agencies to a certain extent and to another extent have become the hunting ground for employment agencies in the United States who all pay various fees to LinkedIn. You also, by paying LinkedIn a nominal amount of R400/R500 a year, get extra services. In some respects LinkedIn seems a another variant of Facebook – although far more serious.

I would like to know from readers of the blog as to how they use LinkedIn, differently for example to Facebook, and what they believe its relevance in South Africa is – so it is really some market research for me, but I would appreciate your opinions on LinkedIn, whether you are on it or not, and what use it has been to you as well as what you believe its future role is likely to be.