The View Point

Guest: Trudie Broekmann, Attorney Specializing in Consumer Law at Trudie Broekmann Attorneys

Customers who choose to purchase used vehicles do so as an alternative thanks to the second-hand motor vehicle sales market. It turns out to be a better choice than purchasing a new car that one might not even be able to afford given the status of the economy. However, there are many instances of non-compliance and injustices against innocent purchasers of these automobiles on the used car market.

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born to Hubert and Angelina Sobukwe on 5 December 1924 at Graaff-Reinet, Cape Province. He was the youngest of five boys and one girl. His father worked as a municipal labourer and a part-time woodcutter, his mother as a domestic worker and cook at a local hospital.

Sobukwe was exposed to literature at an early age by his oldest brother. His earliest education was at a mission school in Graaf Reinet. After completing Standard 6 he enrolled for a Primary Teachers’ Training Course for two years, but he was not given a teaching post. He then went back to high school, enrolling at the Healdtown Institute, where he spent six years studying with financial assistance provided by George Caley, the school’s headmaster, and completed his Junior Certificate (JC) and matric. Sobukwe’s schooling was briefly interrupted in 1943 when he was admitted to a hospital suffering from tuberculosis.

Guest: Mzwanele Nyhontso, South African politician, President of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania

Julia Makhubela, helping corporates realise their own biases

 Despite humble beginnings, Julia Makhubela rose to the position of operations director at a digital marketing agency. She has been on both sides of the curtain, privy to the lives of hard-working, ordinary South Africans trying to make ends' meet, and shoulder-to-shoulder with the corporate CEO who calls a plush boardroom home.

At the boardroom table, as a high-ranking manager, she saw how decisions were taken. Often well-meaning and well-intentioned, these decisions did not account for the reality that many South Africans faced. So in 2018 she founded 54twentyfour, a consultancy with a concrete goal in mind: to improve the working conditions for ordinary people. As she succinctly puts it, "I used to be customer focused.

Now I am employee focused.""Most people are not evil. It's like the bell curve spectrum - you know you have the extreme people that will write into law bad things, and then you have the extreme people that are really good?

"I think the average person in the workplace does not wake up and say, 'I'm going to intentionally make decisions that exclude people. I'm going to ignore people's realities.' I think most people are just trying to survive their lives."

Still, the legacy of apartheid means that, prior to 1994, only a select few have been included. Now, the historically marginalised are being given opportunities. "It's all about how we get the organisation to ensure those [newer] needs are met," she says. 

The 54twentyfour mandate is threefold. "Because we are all naturally biased, a lot of leaders don't know how to manage people that are different from them. It is easier for them to manage people that are similar to them. So we try to steer [these leaders] on how to lead diverse groups," Makhubela says.

Next, she helps colleagues work - and understand - one another so that conflicts are rooted in the ideas they're fighting for, rather than the backgrounds they've come from. "You can't choose who you work with, but you can decide to be open-minded."

And three, on a broader scale, she helps the organisation think about recruitment, onboarding, performance and structures. "We help organisations identify 'moments that matter' to the employee experience, so that people can experience a sense of fairness and inclusion in those moments."

It could be something as simple as acknowledging that people are taking taxis to come in for interviews at 8AM and considering 'is it a reasonable time for the interview?'; or structuring the workday to enable working parents to look after their children and work at the same time. It's often the little things that matter most.

She offers up a simple yet effective analogy. "I heard this analogy at a workshop that I once attended. Imagine if the world was run by short people. And for thousands of years, they [short people] designed everything to suit short people, and then one day, tall people come in, but they [short people] don't change the doors, they don't change the chairs, they don't change anything. What you then have is a lot of tall people having a very uncomfortable experience."

As such, many of her clients struggle to retain talent and good people come and go through a revolving door. "So I ask clients: who are you trying to bring in? Who are you struggling to retain, and what do [the employees] need physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally and financially in order to stick around? Companies don't always know how to engage people that they're trying to bring in and retain."

In the knowledge economy, where Makhubela does most of her work, the looming threat of AI cannot replace the raw weight of human ideas. These are companies that live and die by the ideas their employees generate; that are better served by a diverse workforce than a homogeneous one.

Makhubela's drive to do this work stems from her upbringing. She grew up in the 90s when Mandela's release and democratic election were all over the news. There was euphoria in the air, she remembers, "and ads on TV about 'Simunye' - the idea that we are one. So I think I expected the workplace to be more inclusive. But I did not experience that [inclusivity]."

She relays one story where, at a job interview, she was asked whether she was planning to get pregnant any time soon. "So it was like, okay, that already matters. So I can't have children as a working person."

At other times, well-meaning colleagues would ask her questions about her race and upbringing - conversations she found awkward. "I was in a very white working environment having experiences I didn't know how to talk about.

"Identity matters in this country because people treat you differently based on where you come from, and based on your race, age, gender, disability, sexuality. Do you live in Soweto? Do you live in Sandton? It all matters."

Post Covid, what's changed?

Of course, much has changed since 1994. We've since had B-BBEE laws passed and, in more recent times, the disruption of COVID.

But how much has actually changed?

In terms of B-BBEE, Makhubela has seen companies toe the line for compliance-driven reasons. But all it ends up doing is tokensing some and excluding others. On the flipside? There are firms that "buy into the spirit of B-BBEE"; that consider an individual's environment and really try to understand what that person is going through. When it comes to retaining talent, this is key.

"As for COVID, what's interesting is that some people didn't have the right space at home to set up a home office - they didn't have the right tools. So all those differences in terms of, 'we don't have access to the same resources', showed up. And then some people had to multitask between working and parenting when we had the hard lockdown; or were in abusive relationships and preferred to go to work. I think, more than anything, COVID showed that we are human beings at work. Not emotionless machines."

Makhubela's last point is perhaps the most striking of all: we're all arriving at work saddled with our own baggage. In a South African context, that baggage is varied, yet we're all human beings in the end. To survive in the knowledge economy, you need to empower your employees to share their ideas; their vision; their lived experiences. This only works when people feel comfortable.

"We just try to awaken people to the realities of everybody else," Makhubela says. "Because if you keep that in mind, then how you engage with people, how you show up at work changes; how you judge someone who might have been on the road for three hours and gets there five minutes late. You might not judge them as sloppy - you might realise that they've been up since 4AM. Or a person that has to leave early because they've got children - you might think of them in a way that is more pro-social than antisocial."

Makhubela won't be drawn on politics ("I'm not a practitioner in that space") but as an expert on the private sector, she is optimistic. "What I'm seeing is that when leaders are committed to taking responsibility for how their environment is set up... taking responsibility for how people are experiencing them, and trying to be a force for good, not just seeing themselves as responsible for only profit creation, I've seen things that make me hopeful."

Does she miss being part of the corporate inner circle, a member of the boardroom elite?

"I could not imagine myself doing anything else," she says with a smile.

SA-Taiwan relations

Does South Africa have a complicated relationship with Taiwan? 

In 1998, after the fall of apartheid, South Africa commenced diplomatic relations with the People’s Re-public of China (PRC). This ‘normalisation’ of South Africa’s China policy came with a condition to recognise Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy proclaiming Taiwan an inalienable part of China. At the heart of the relationship between South Africa, China and Taiwan exists an economic pragmatism which exists in tandem with a policy of diplomatic isolationism. Nevertheless, while trade with Taiwan has continued, South Africa has been loath to strengthen the relationship, in part due to a fear of alienating its relationship with China. Given that relations with China have steeply increased in importance, cautious behaviour of the South African government is reasonable. However, in the case of economic diplomacy towards Taiwan, South Africa appears to not use available policy space. This can be seen as reflective of a South African foreign policy accused of being beholden to China.

Guest: Oliver Liao, Head of Mission: Taipei Liaison Office (Taiwan)

• Mr Liao's journey in international diplomacy;
• The relationship between South Afrika and Taiwan;
• Taiwan programmes and investments in South Afrika;
• HEALTH (Humanitarian Assistance; Education; Agriculture; Leisure and Tourism; Trade; High-Tech; Health);
• Taiwanese technological prowess;and
• Opportunities for South Afrikans in Taiwan (teaching and whatever else).

Representative Oliver Liao is a career diplomat of the Republic of China (Taiwan). He joined Taiwan’s Foreign Service in 1994, starting as a desk officer in the Department of African Affairs. He then got posted to Los Angeles in 1997, spending six years in the US.

After coming back to Taiwan in 2003, he worked shortly in the Public Diplomacy Coordination Council (the Ministry’s Spokesman Office) before joining his colleagues at the Ministry’s Secretariat. Later on, he became a Section Chief of the Department of NGO International Affairs and helped Taiwan NGOs to enhance their participation in international fora.

Mr. Liao spent his second overseas tour in Washington D. C. between 2007 and

2013, assuming various positions in Consular Division, Administration Division

and Political Division during his five and a half year tenure in the US capital. After wrapping up his tour in Washington D.C., he went back to Taiwan and became Assistant Director General of the Office of Parliamentarian Affairs and helped the Ministry to communicate with the Parliament.

In 2015, Mr. Liao went on his third overseas tour as Deputy Counselor of Taiwan’s Embassy in Solomon Islands. He swiftly ascended through the ranks, assuming the post of Counselor, then Minister Counselor and finally became Taiwan’s Ambassador to Solomon Islands. After the severance of the diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Solomon Islands, Mr. Liao returned to Taipei in September 2019. In July 2020, He assumed his post as Taiwan’s representative in Papua New Guinea. He was subsequently appointed as Taiwan’s representative in the Republic of South Africa in October 2022.

Mr. Liao graduated from Soochow University in Taipei as an English major. He’s

been married and has two adult children. Mr. Liao enjoys reading and swimming.

Guest: Dr Zuko April, Deputy Director at the Department of Trade and Industry

Guest: Thabile Nkunjana, Agricultural Economist in the Markets and Economic Research Division at the National Agricultural Marketing Council

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a piece of legislation that was approved by the U.S. Congress in May 2000. The stated purpose of this legislation is to assist the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and to improve economic relations between the United States and the region.

Last month, South African politicians from the ANC and DA have made their way to Washington to advocate for SA's participation in the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act despite their disagreements over Russia's war against Ukraine.

President Cyril Ramaphosa sent a delegation to lobby administration officials and congressional leaders amid rising concerns about Pretoria’s deteriorating relations with Washington. This over what the US and other Western governments see as the ANC government’s increasingly friendly relations with Moscow.

FMHS psychiatrist recognised for pioneering schizophrenia research

Dr Lebogang Phahladira, specialist psychiatrist and senior lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences), has received the prestigious Global Schizophrenia Award for his pioneering work on improving long-term treatment outcomes for schizophrenia and psychosis in the South African context. The objective is to see patients with schizophrenia live optimally in their family environments, to complete their education, hold down jobs and live a full life. 

Guest: Dr Lebogang Phahladira,  Psychiatrist and senior lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University

Guest: Kefilwe Pitsie, Head of Finance for Personal & Private Banking (Gauteng Province) – Standard Bank

Guest: Itumeleng Barnard | CA(SA),  MD at BrownedSKYN  

Kefilwe’s experience defines her as a qualified Chartered Accountant, she is the head of finance for Standard Bank’s Personal and Private Banking Divisions in Gauteng. In parallel to her mainstream career milestones, Kefilwe’s track-record as a ‘catalytic

connector’ and her heart for ‘root-cause’ social change defines her as a leader in the areas of people-centric sustainable value creation, diversity and inclusion and socioeconomic transformation.

With a track record that characterizes her as someone who always looks for strategies and tactics that have high payoffs, Ms Pitsie’s journey has validated her as a unique, collaborative leader with a balanced strength in strategy and operations.

A speaker, and facilitator, her contribution in the Financial Services sector may be defined as socially conscious, agile and impactful. With her desire to see more women thriving within the corporate world, she ignites the spark in them and serves as a connector to victoriously bring people, ideas and resources together. Kefilwe’s ambition is to see more previously disadvantaged people occupying corporate spaces, to experience true gender inclusivity beyond gestures, and ultimately bring harmony amongst communities and societies.

She pursued her studies at the University of Cape Town and obtained her CA qualification at the KPMG Johannesburg office. With a background in the finance and auditing profession, her career expands over several industries including occupations as internal reporting manager at Standard Bank, senior manager at EY and a consultant for Cross-Country Consulting.

HOW CAN WE HELP MAKE SA GREAT AGAIN?

The promise of a ‘new dawn’ for South Africa has been violated by an ever-increasing narrative of scarcity and a serious and real fight for survival in South Africa! We need not look far – interest rate hikes, loadshedding and the flood of retrenchments that are taking place in our watch are enough to not allow us to hope for better in as far as the economic future of South Africa is concerned.

With this growing narrative of a South Africa that is falling into pieces, is there hope for REBUILDING A COLLECTIVE INTUITION THAT SAYS: HOLD ON, WHAT CAN I BE DOING WITH MY PRIVILEGE TO HELP BUILD A BRIDGE IN MY

OWN POCKET OF INFLUENCE?

South Africa does not need yet another negative narrative, instead, we are in desperate need of CONNECTORS, of BRAVE BRIDGE BUILDERS who can create a new standard, a new way of seeing things and more importantly, newer avenues of access to the spaces we get to enjoy.

The coronation of King Charles III, a symbolic event that combines a religious service and spectacle, is being celebrated by millions of people throughout the UK and beyond. The King, who will be crowned on May 6 alongside Camilla, the Queen Consort, will be the 40th reigning monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey since 1066. There will be traditions from more than a thousand years ago on the day of splendour and formality.

Guest: Professor Saul Dubow, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History Cambridge University

We will talk about the Commonwealth and its broader global ramifications while also reflecting on this momentous date and the oppression and colonial history it commemorates.

Heading into winter, the impact for businesses is compounded, especially those in the mid-market sector. As well as the impact on business, the growth of imports in this space and lending solutions for businesses

 Guest: Itumeleng Merafe, Investec for Business

The solar energy sector has been fully embraced to offer some much needed relief to the market, crippled by loadshedding. According to research, the global solar energy market was valued at $52.5 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach $223.3 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 20.5% from 2019 to 2026. In South Africa, there is no doubt that the need for certainty around business continuity, in addition to our geographical landscape, the move towards greener energy and government incentives, have fueled this market growth.

Questions

• What are mid-market businesses looking at when it comes to back up energy solutions?
• Lenders have created service offerings to cater to the solar energy need – please talk to us about this
• What do businesses operating in SA need in order to qualify for such financing?
• The growth of businesses in the solar import space – how are they fairing when it comes to meeting demand?

His plays Paradise is Closing Down, Panorama, God's Forgotten, Auditioning Angels, Faces in the Wall and Just Like Home have been performed internationally, and his one-man shows Adapt or Dye, One Man One Volt, You ANC Nothing Yet, Truth Omissions, Live from Boerassic Park, Dekaffirnated, Foreign Aids, Evita for President, Elections & Erections, Desperate First Ladies, An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Uys, The Echo of a Noise and When in doubt, say darling have been presented in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Australia, the USA and Canada.  His performance of Foreign Aids at La Mama received the Obie Award in New York in 2004.

Guest: Pieter Dirk Uys, South African author   

Guest: Justice Edwin Cameron, Former Judge   

His plays Paradise is Closing Down, Panorama, God's Forgotten, Auditioning Angels, Faces in the Wall and Just Like Home have been performed internationally, and his one-man shows Adapt or Dye, One Man One Volt, You ANC Nothing Yet, Truth Omissions, Live from Boerassic Park, Dekaffirnated, Foreign Aids, Evita for President, Elections & Erections, Desperate First Ladies, An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Uys, The Echo of a Noise and When in doubt, say darling have been presented in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Australia, the USA and Canada.  His performance of Foreign Aids at La Mama received the Obie Award in New York in 2004.

Pieter-Dirk Uys has been doing this sort of thing for so long that people now refer to it as a career.  Officially unemployed since the early 1970s, he writes, directs, acts, produces and does everything else, including the making of dresses and the wearing of them!  Having survived the mediocrity of apartheid kultuur, it is his therapy and his joy to expose the bones of that dinosaur for the entertainment of democratic audiences worldwide.  He is delighted to still have a government that on a daily basis writes his best material!

Most of Uys’s satirical work was available in South Africa on video (and still is, on DVD) and so, in spite of government censorship during apartheid, he built up a very large multiracial audience.  Members of the present democratic parliament remember seeing his videos while in exile and in prison!  He has been seen on SABC since the late 1970s in a variety of programmes, including An Uys up my Sleeve (1985); One Man One Volt, which was to be screened prior to the 1994 election, but was held back for ten months; You ANC Nothing Yet (1996); and The Great Comedy Trek(2004).  The series Going Down Gorgeous, featuring Nowell Fine in a saga from 1976 to 2004, was screened towards the end of the last century.  Foreign Aids has been broadcast for Aids Day (1 December), and in 2007 SABC2 presented Dinner with the President, a 13-part talk show hosted by Evita Bezuidenhout.  Ten of Uys’s shows are currently available on DVD.

A prolific writer in many genres, Uys’s novel Trekking to Teema was South Africa’s first internet book in 2000, before being published in tree-format.  His second novel, Panorama, was published by Missing Ink in 2013.  He has also written Evita Bezuidenhout’s biography, A Part Hate A Part Love (1994), as well as a book based on his12-part 1994 MNET television series, Funigalore, in which Evita Bezuidenhout interviewed the new democratic government’s leaders, including Nelson Mandela. His (and Evita’s) cookbook, Evita’s Kossie Sikelela (2010), became a bestseller and was followed in 2012 by a second cookbook, Evita’s Bossie Sikelela. Uys has written three memoirs, Elections and Erections (2003) Between the Devil and the Deep (2005) and The Echo of a Noise/Weerklink van ‘n Wanklank (2018), as well as the ‘autobiography’ of Evita’s younger sister, Bambi Kellermann, Never too Naked (2011).   

Pieter-Dirk Uys was awarded South Africa's prestigious Truth and Reconciliation Award in 2001. He has received honorary degrees from Rhodes University (D.Litt.Hon. 1997), the University of Cape Town (D.Litt.Hon. 2003), the University of the Western Cape (D.Edu.Hon. 2003), the University of the Witwatersrand (D.Litt.Hon. 2004) and University of Kwazulu Natal (Doctor of Literature honoris causa 2014). As well, Pieter-Dirk Uys's celebrated alter-ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, proudly received the Living Legacy 2000 Award in San Diego, USA.  In 2011 Uys was honoured with a lifetime achievement Teddy award at the Berlin International Film Festival; in 2012 he received both the FW de Klerk Goodwill Award and the German-Africa Award; and in 2016 he received the ACT (Arts & Culture Trust) Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award.  

Since 2000 Pieter-Dirk Uys has been travelling around South Africa with a free AIDS-awareness entertainment called For Facts Sake!, visiting over 1.5 million school children, as well as prisons and reformatories, He has also released a corporate AIDS-information video, Having Sex with Pieter-Dirk Uys, as well as the family-friendly video, Survival Aids, and Just a Small Prick!, addressing the fears surrounding testing for HIV.

Recent successes include F.A.K. Songs and Other Struggle Anthems (2010), a cabaret revue featuring Bambi Kellermann with her Bokkie Band, and 50 Shades of Bambi (2013), both for the Fugard Theatre, Cape Town; extended seasons of Adapt or Fly (2012), An Audience with Pieter-Dirk EISH! (2013), The Echo of a Noise (2016), Evita Bezuidenhout and the Kaktus of Separate Development (2017), When in doubt, say darling (2018) and #HeTwo: Evita Exposed! (2019) in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town; and seasons of An Audience with Pieter-Dirk Uys (2014),The Echo of a Noise (2018) and When in doubt, say darling (2019) at London’s Soho Theatre.

In 2009, Uys directed Macbeki, his first new play since 2003, at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg.  His next play, The Merry Wives of Zuma, was premiered in 2012, and his most recent play, African Times, in 2015.

In 2015, Pieter-Dirk Uys turned 70. To celebrate, a new collection of his Afrikaans plays, Stukke Teater, was published by Human & Rousseau, and he was chosen as the National Arts Festival’s first Arts Icon.  Uys performed three special solo shows during the 2015 festival: A Part Hate A Part Love (featuring Evita Bezuidenhout); Never Too Naked (featuring Bambi Kellermann); and The Echo of a Noise.  In honour of Evita Bezuidenhout’s 80th birthday, Kyknet presented Kyknet vir Tannie, produced by Evita’s former secretary, Bokkie Bam (Lizz Meiring), with greetings from Evita’s far-flung family and interviews hosted by Coenie de Villiers. Uys is the subject of two award-winning documentaries.  The first, Darling!  The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story (2007), directed by New Zealander Julian Shaw, is about Uys’s Aids-awareness campaign. The second, Nobody’s Died Laughing: A Journey with Pieter-Dirk Uys (2016), directed by Willem Oelofsen, follows the peripatetic Uys for most of 2015. 

The 2020 pandemic shuttered theatres worldwide, including Evita se Perron, Uys’s cabaret theatre and restaurant in Darling. Happily, the venue has been bought by the owners of Darling Sweet, who have made it the home of their new bakery, Swartland Kitchen, as well as a new Perron cafe and deli, while retaining such unique Perron features as the museum/nauseum collection of apartheid-era artifacts and the satirical garden, Boerassic Park. There are currently also three Perron cats in residence. Uys returned to the Perron stage in September 2021 and premiered a new show, Lockup/Lockdown, at Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town in October 2021.

During the pandemic, Uys presented live-stream shows from Cape Town’s Penny Lane Studios in July, August and September 2020. The pandemic lockdown also inspired him to revisit his earliest one-man shows, collecting them as One Man Shows: The black and white years, which was released on his website in December 2021, free for all to enjoy. The next collection, One Man Shows: The Mandela Rainbow Honeymoon, will be released in 2023.