Paul Janisch

Oliver – look what I eight

There was little doubt that Oliver was going to be a bright child with a mother like his. My bias will tell you that he leans towards Mensa/Genius status. Perhaps I equate intelligence with a genuine desire to learn. The school system has at last (I say this with a fair amount of irony) provided us with an objective measure that I understand to determine his cleverness. He loves to read and enjoys numbers. As I write this his favourite author is Hergé., Tintin is the book du jour. As a parent in this digital and televised age there is nothing more exciting than when your child looks forward to reading a book. Sometimes this is at the expense of watching TV (not often) or having a story read to him. He was genuinely excited when I arrived home with a compendium (when last did you hear that word out of the Asterix context?) of Tintin stories – I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. He grasps language logic very quickly. He was given an Afrikaans story book and he grasped the pronunciation very quickly even when certain words looked like English words.

Oliver becomes a more well-rounded boy each year as his exposure to sport and extra-murals increases. A highlight of our weekends this year was watching him and his soccer friends play in the Shabbos league for Wanderers. He's also stuck with tennis for the whole year (except yesterday when the EFF march went past his school – I got him out of there before they got there). He's learned a few discipline lessons in this process but they've stood him in good stead. I think I've spoken about him and the trampoline before, this is what I've learned – if you spend at least an hour a day bouncing up and down you are going to develop a gymnast's physique. I'm not sure where his brother is going to get time to develop his gymnast's physique because Oliver is very territorial when it comes to THE TRAMPOLINE.

There is one story (amongst 365 others) that resonates with me that I would hate to forget. We were away during the August holidays with Oliver's grandmother, aunt and cousin Julia. The Juliver (as the collective is referred to) have always just slotted into each other. They only see each other once a year but they immediately play together like they've never been apart. Julia is a year older than Oliver and a character of note. The resort we were staying at had a talent show and we all assumed that the Juliver would do something together. Unfortunately for Oliver a 12 year old girl had decided that Julia would be her new best friend. You know what it's like – someone three years older than you pays you attention………. We watched Oliver trying to get into this new clique. He was met with little success. I know he's a sensitive little boy and I thought that he might withdraw, but to our surprise he didn't. He decided that he was going to go ahead and do the show on his own. He and I rehearsed three great timeless gags in a very short time and he got up and did it. I was almost tearful. We were so proud of him. We were just as proud of the Juliver after they perfected standing up on a surf board in their first surfing lesson (we know what we are doing this December).

There are other things about our marble-mad boy that cannot be omitted. He was bitten (nipped) by a lion cub this weekend (proper hey, nice little bruise he's got). He still overcame the shock and petted the same cub. He loves his school, his teacher and is fiercely loyal to his friends. He now enters his 9^th year on this planet and our lives. He is absolutely adored by his family and all though he appears to fight with his brother ALL THE TIME, he is a fantastic, concerned older brother.

Happy birthday our beautiful eldest son. You make us so proud. The world is your oyster and you are well on the way to claiming it.

Now back to tradition. It is well known that Peter Green shares Oliver's birthday. As it turns out so does Denny Laine – I only figured that our last year.

The more I listen to the genius that is Green the more I don't understand why Oliver doesn't worship him as much as I do (he will tell you he hates Green and the guitar but he knows every lick in "Oh Well"). I'm going to veer off the safe Green pasture and post an oblique Green-like track. This song is in fact a Beatles' song. It comes off their last album and was inspired by Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross". You explain it George.

In an interview in 1987, Harrison said that the recording was inspired by Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross". "At the time, 'Albatross' (by Fleetwood Mac) was out, with all the reverb on guitar. So we said, 'Let's be Fleetwood Mac doing Albatross, just to get going.' It never really sounded like Fleetwood Mac... but that was the point of origin."

11 - Sun King

Denny Laine is best known as McCartney's rhythm guitarist in the seventies. He was always going to be overshadowed by McCartney but he did release a few solo albums during that period. I only know the "Ahh Laine" album and I like it. It's patchy and under-rehearsed at times but has some great moments on it. I posted a track off the album in last year's post.

05-Talk To The Head

And then Ollie Halsall. Another absolute favourite. Ollie is perhaps best known as the Leppo character in the Rutles' movie. He doesn't act in it but there is a picture of him in the movie (it is available on any good search engine near you). Ollie was initially considered for Dirk McQuickly (McCartney character). It would have been a perfect fit, Ollie was left handed and brilliant musician but alas not as well-known as Eric Idle. Nevertheless Ollie recorded most of the guitar parts and sang many of the Dirk parts in the movie. Boxer was a post-Patto band, which included Mike Patto. This is a Beatles' cover taken off the Bloodletting album and rivals the original.

Boxer - Hey Bulldog

(By the way - the picture is Oliver dressed up as Oliver Twist at school.  He's wearing my old army boots and a tail coat that belonged to his great grandfather. The same coat met Princess Elizabeth (Brenda to you) in 1947.  He looks more like the Artful Dodger in that get-up.  When he announced who he was on stage he sang the chorus "you've got to pick a pocket or two", an Artful Dodger standard.

This is the 1000th post or THE SUCCESS OF BLACK BUSINESS WILL BE MEASURED AGAINST THE FAILURE OF WHITE BUSINESS

This blog was started in August 2006. I started writing it as a guide to people who wanted to know more about the vagaries of black economic empowerment. Perhaps the liberating experience of having a platform to pretty much say what you want went to my head because the blog soon evolved into a political vudderfok venting place. Many would argue that it devolved into such a home. There were some particularly good posts - I have to say this myself because no one has told me as much - that contained my analyses of certain aspects of this sordid industry that I operate in. Other times there were knee jerk digs at the quality of personage that works in our rudderless regering. I came across some of the biggest racists that this country has ever seen (jungle jim) and in certain cases I endorsed one or two people who have slipped so far in my estimation that I cannot understand why I bothered with them in the first place (Thami Mazwai).

This post is a short(ish) reflection on the last 9 years. A hell of a lot has happened in those years. The first codes of good practice came out in February 2007 followed by a number of sector codes. All this good work was negated by Rob's Folly (revised BEE codes). We have seen the politically connected benefit (Penuel Maduna under Mbeki – and I don't care if I spelled his name incorrectly) and now Zungu under Zuma. To a certain extent Zungu got his arse kicked in the Arcelor-Mittal deal – but not hard enough unfortunately because it is his band of BBC merry men that are attempting to hijack the economy with the full endorsement of Number One and his handlers.

When I started in this business I believed that we could make a go of this empowerment thing. The Maslow-approved scorecard made so much sense that it could only but work. That was in spite of the fact that the codes and all of the supporting documentation wasn't particularly well written and that the DTI had absolutely no clue what they were doing. Even when you take this into account we saw an amazing take-up of BEE throughout the country. I measure this by some of my more remote clients who couldn't get a scorecard out of the local Worcestor butcher in 2007 and now you can get scorecards out of their local filling station. If the scorecard message is getting through to rural Worcestor then it must mean that a greater awareness has drifted through the economy.

This is what happened over the next five years

1. Scores steadily improved. I noticed that certain verticals stuck to an industry average, the banking sector is probably the most obvious.
2. The message circulated throughout the economy
3. Investments in enterprise development (more often than not donations) and skills development increased
4. High profile BEE deals petered out. Most of them had been concluded and needed to run their course, in many cases they were extended
5. The new breed of potential BEE takers started getting pissed off because the deals were done. They persuaded Rob that a change was needed

And so change arrived. Rob's revised codes were bludgeoned through, the DTI paid scant regard for any comments. And here we sit on the cusp of the new BEE era.

The NEW BEE ERA

I hate the term BEE, irritates me. The new ERA is simply a system where by a small cabal of connected Africans (someone described them to me as the Aurora crowd but I think you can throw in the Imperial Crown Trading crew too) designed a system whereby they would benefit under state procurement because white companies (a broad term describing everything that is not black by definition) could not compete on points or on racial profile. To quote Loane Sharp

The government is now creating 100 "black industrialists" (the government's term), and it appears that the much-vaunted R1-trillion infrastructure programme is being delayed to ensure that government-nominated industrialists win the overwhelming proportion of civil engineering tenders.

You see the problem here was that companies were making such great progress in their BEE endeavours that black owned companies could no longer compete on points. To make matters worse they would also need to go through the expense of empowerment even though they were black just to match a white owned competitor.

"Nee fok dit," they said sobbing into their single malts at the Michelangelo. "We'll reduce everything down to race and create a system that can only suit us." And so they did, the revised BEE codes are just one small element of this, the PPPFA is the next to fall.

Where do we find ourselves in this 1000^th post? A simple summary must be – THE SUCCESS OF BLACK BUSINESS WILL BE MEASURED AGAINST THE FAILURE OF WHITE BUSINESS, and ultimately the economy. Anthony Butler perhaps captured this sentiment perfectly when describing Malusi's ridiculous visa rules

It would be comforting to imagine that this is merely a "departmental silo" problem, in which Home Affairs is preoccupied with child trafficking, while Tourism is preoccupied with visitor convenience. Or that this is all a matter of face for a young minister who wants to be president, has failed as minister of public enterprises, and now cannot bow down before the forces of reaction. But it is much worse than that. (I)t is about race. The tourism industry, no matter how many jobs it creates, shows a white face to government, and the success of the sector breeds resentment.

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