Speaker 1: And now The Money Show with Stephen Credits on seven
Speaker 1: O two.
Speaker 2: Let's walk little.
Speaker 3: The Money Show with Stephen Curtis has brought to you
Speaker 3: by Absters CIB, proud sponsor of the Sarah Rail Conference
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, Powering Progress, Connecting Economies. Good evening, Welcome
Speaker 3: to the program. Eight minutes after six. I'm Stephen Curtis.
Speaker 3: Plenty to come be in a busy day on the
Speaker 3: Stock Exchange News Service today as several big companies and
Speaker 3: institutions and soees and call them what you will or
Speaker 3: delivering or sending publishing results and updates. Just one of
Speaker 3: those mondays, Sasil, probably the biggest of the bunch, and
Speaker 3: we'll speak to their CEO as Simon Beloy in just
Speaker 3: a moment. I was fascinated by Advertecs results because they
Speaker 3: seem to be growing the number of learners at their
Speaker 3: schools in South Africa, while KRO seems to be going
Speaker 3: in the other way, and I'm not sure why that is,
Speaker 3: what exactly is going on there? Jeff White, the CEO
Speaker 3: at Advertec, he'll be on your radio in a little while.
Speaker 3: Meryll Pick will be taking you through some of the
Speaker 3: market movements and pull me in Porfu at the CEO
Speaker 3: at airport's company, South Africa, plenty to say. I think
Speaker 3: about their results, blockbuster results, to be fair, one point
Speaker 3: one billion rands worth of profit are coming from airport's
Speaker 3: company South Africa. And we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: tax towards the end of the hour as well, and
Speaker 3: taxing cryptocurrencies and sars. Looking at that, I was very
Speaker 3: interested in some of the numbers. I don't know what
Speaker 3: your experience of going through our airports has been recently,
Speaker 3: and unless you go through Lansia or one or two
Speaker 3: of the others, you're probably almost certainly going through an
Speaker 3: airport which is controlled owned, run by airport's company, South Africa,
Speaker 3: technically part of government. And my own personal view is
Speaker 3: that things are fine, but I kind of wonder in
Speaker 3: two years time, is it just does it need a
Speaker 3: bit of maintenance, a bit of work now then? And
Speaker 3: pull me in Porfu the CEO and ACCE just making
Speaker 3: the point they're going to spend twenty billion rounds and
Speaker 3: on airports over the next five years. I mean that's
Speaker 3: a huge amount of money. I do wonder where it's going.
Speaker 3: And when I look at how their revenue is up.
Speaker 3: And if you've been listening to me long enough, you'll
Speaker 3: know that paying for parking I find particularly aggravating and
Speaker 3: I will be sure to throw in a question like
Speaker 3: that as a standard to see that forty nine percent
Speaker 3: of access income does not come from aeronautical matters. It
Speaker 3: doesn't come from landing, managing and helping planes take off.
Speaker 3: It comes from other things that comes from parking fees
Speaker 3: and from rent. So your experience please of our airports.
Speaker 3: And if you're twenty billion rand to spend, which airport
Speaker 3: would you spend it on and what would it be for?
Speaker 3: Would it just be to subsidize I don't know, free
Speaker 3: parking at our tumba, which is probably where I would
Speaker 3: put it. I know for some people in the business,
Speaker 3: they'll talk about air bridges, the bridge that connects your
Speaker 3: plane to the airport so you can get out quickly,
Speaker 3: making that work. There are other things, of course, But
Speaker 3: where would you spend your money twenty billion rand and
Speaker 3: you had to spend it at South African airports?
Speaker 2: What would you do with it?
Speaker 3: Good year from you tonight on O double one double
Speaker 3: A three oh seven O two two one four four
Speaker 3: six five six, seven and voice notes this evening on
Speaker 3: O seven two seven oh two one seven oh two
Speaker 3: seven two.
Speaker 2: That's on the Money Show six to eight pm.
Speaker 3: Well, strong results from Sassel swinging back into profit in
Speaker 3: the last financial year to the end of June. It's
Speaker 3: headline earning's doubling to twenty two billion Rand. Some of
Speaker 3: that is non recurring items as a settlement with trans Nett.
Speaker 3: There's a big reduction in provisions for environmental rehabilitation. The
Speaker 3: company's turnover down nine percent. It's eb dah At down
Speaker 3: fourteen percent. The president and CEO at Sasil is Simon Beloys. Simon,
Speaker 3: good evening, welcome back to the Money Show, and thank
Speaker 3: you for your time. I suppose it's kind of in
Speaker 3: the nature of the businesses that you're in that lower
Speaker 3: oil prices in particular will have a big impact on you.
Speaker 3: There's still problems at Sekunda and sasas. All in all,
Speaker 3: it's been a little bit of a rough ride off
Speaker 3: and through things not of your making.
Speaker 4: Everything Stephen and evening to your listeners, Yes, I mean
Speaker 4: we we did fire. I mean we did face macroeconomic
Speaker 4: conditions this year. You've already mentioned the rent all price
Speaker 4: and the refining imagines. There are some volume challenges as
Speaker 4: well that you encountered. However, despite that, I mean, teams
Speaker 4: are all delivered a strong set of results. I mean
Speaker 4: in terms of focusing on what we can control. So
Speaker 4: so we made sure in terms of the free cash flow,
Speaker 4: I may not be standing the trans neest settlement, even
Speaker 4: if you normalize for that, our free cash flow is
Speaker 4: actually up thirty percent without the transit settlement, and with
Speaker 4: that it takes us to seventy five percent. So it's
Speaker 4: just good overall focused from the team in terms of
Speaker 4: the cash fixed cost as well, where we were just
Speaker 4: below seventy billion rents, which means one one person sent
Speaker 4: up a year year and beat inflation. So so I
Speaker 4: mean we placed with feel the results.
Speaker 3: You've been through a process of resetting your international chemicals division.
Speaker 3: That's quite a tricky time. How different do you expect
Speaker 3: that division to look over the next few years? What
Speaker 3: are you going to be doing.
Speaker 4: In the international chemicalst space? You correct, we'll busy with
Speaker 4: a reset. You remember in f for twenty four our
Speaker 4: Abita adjusted a bit there from that business was two
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty eight million dollars and we did give
Speaker 4: a target that by for twenty eight we want to
Speaker 4: be at between seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty million years dollars. We did guide that by
Speaker 4: the end of this year we wanted to send uplifts
Speaker 4: between one hundred and two hundred and we ended up
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty million billion dollars. I mean, in
Speaker 4: line with our guidance. And the key foocust is there
Speaker 4: there's three key levers that're using. Is the is the
Speaker 4: market focus, so we focused on the markets and the
Speaker 4: markets that we serve. Then aset optimization, I did previously
Speaker 4: speak about asset optimization as a tool where we're most
Speaker 4: bowling or closing non value adding assets. And finally, cost discipline,
Speaker 4: so extreme cost discipline to make sure that I mean
Speaker 4: both our costs in terms of our input costs and
Speaker 4: operating cost is under control. So so those three key
Speaker 4: livers are helping as if you look at the uplift
Speaker 4: in terms of value outs at seventy percent is self
Speaker 4: help measures. And then we did get some mean maget
Speaker 4: tail winds in terms of Italy and the price of
Speaker 4: Kennel oil, which are facts. The overall pricing of suffectants,
Speaker 4: but seventy percent was our own focus.
Speaker 3: You focus, actually you say you try to keep costs.
Speaker 3: You spend a lot of focus on keeping costs down
Speaker 3: across the group. You kept them below inflation, which is
Speaker 3: quite low at the moment. I mean, I would imagine
Speaker 3: it's quite tough to get to get any more value
Speaker 3: out of that. I mean, are you kind of at
Speaker 3: the end of what you can cut?
Speaker 4: We we We not at the end. I mean we
Speaker 4: will continue. Remember us we guide us through Capital Markets
Speaker 4: Day that in the next three years I mean across
Speaker 4: the whole group, we want to take out between ten
Speaker 4: to fifteen I mean billion rants I mean in our
Speaker 4: cost base. So so we will do that, which means
Speaker 4: we have to run ahead of inflation. So the continual
Speaker 4: focus on commercial and supply chain excellence that is going
Speaker 4: to continue. We were going to be at least ruthless
Speaker 4: in our focus on making sure that the WAA is
Speaker 4: I mean the course that we pay to our suppliers,
Speaker 4: that that is fire and it's a win win situation
Speaker 4: for both us and the suppliers.
Speaker 3: Your share price is up over twenty five percent over
Speaker 3: the last six months, and was up I think almost
Speaker 3: eleven just every eleven percent today, Simon, there is still
Speaker 3: quite a lot of ground to make up if you
Speaker 3: look at sort of what's happened over the last twelve months.
Speaker 3: Do you think invest are sold on your vision of
Speaker 3: the Sassle of the future. Do you think, I mean,
Speaker 3: you're the Capital Markets stay very well received, you've had
Speaker 3: today's results. Do you think a vest are sold, are
Speaker 3: buying what you're selling in terms of the vision?
Speaker 4: Yes. During Capital Markets Day, we clearly I mean demonstrated
Speaker 4: when we unvail our strategy that we understand I mean
Speaker 4: the challenges that the group faces. We have clear plans
Speaker 4: to address those challenges. We did give both medium and
Speaker 4: long term targets, and we've also shown how to measure
Speaker 4: those targets every year, so we've translated those targets into
Speaker 4: clear priorities. I did commit a Capital Markets there to
Speaker 4: give regular feedback on how we're taking and today was
Speaker 4: I mean one of those proof points where where we're
Speaker 4: showing that we're not where we need to be, because
Speaker 4: we did indicate that it's a journey, but we are
Speaker 4: on track with what we promised.
Speaker 3: There are many different changes that you're navigating at the
Speaker 3: moment in lots of different directions. Do you think the
Speaker 3: cessol of the twenty thirties is going to employ the
Speaker 3: same number of people as it does now? Or do
Speaker 3: you think that your your workforce is going to come
Speaker 3: down significantly.
Speaker 4: As the group grows I mean as I mean like
Speaker 4: any arabs, and as the group grows, you have to
Speaker 4: I mean make sure that your input costs are under
Speaker 4: street control. So so what we're going to do, I mean
Speaker 4: post twenty thirty, we have to make sure as we
Speaker 4: take advantages of technology, we take advantages of the changing landscape,
Speaker 4: I mean as we grow into I mean if you
Speaker 4: look at the energy transition, as that unfolds, we then
Speaker 4: have to make sure that we've got I mean optimum
Speaker 4: We've got the optimum number of people and technologies that
Speaker 4: we need to perform our activities. So so I'll say,
Speaker 4: I mean we've demonstrated over the last two years that
Speaker 4: we've kept I mean our labor total labor force, I
Speaker 4: mean under coming. You really look at it, results you
Speaker 4: to see that almost yea and yeah, for two years
Speaker 4: in a row we've kept our labor they say most
Speaker 4: likely decreased. So yeah, we will have to make sure
Speaker 4: that we keep I mean our libor cost under control
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: Simon Beloit, thank you so much, present and CEO at SASEL.
Speaker 3: Eighteen minutes now after six the money show with the
Speaker 3: education company Advertec reporting its revenue are by ten percent
Speaker 3: for the six months to the end of drone, driven
Speaker 3: mainly by its education division is growing very nicely. Across
Speaker 3: the rest of Africa. It's South African division growing too.
Speaker 3: Its operating profit was up fourteen percent, but not quite
Speaker 3: as strongly as the rest of our continent. Jeff White
Speaker 3: as the CEO at Advertec, Jeff, good evening. There's been
Speaker 3: and I'm sure you've seen this, there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of talk in the last couple of weeks about the
Speaker 3: declining purchasing power of the middle classes. What's happening with
Speaker 3: your schools in South Africa? You actually describe your enrollment figures.
Speaker 3: The word you used was robust.
Speaker 5: Yes, now listen, I think there's no doubt that the
Speaker 5: South African economy is under pressure and parents are feeling
Speaker 5: the strain economically. And I think from our point of view,
Speaker 5: we've been making investments into people's systems and facilities to
Speaker 5: deliver superior experiences and academic outcomes to our students. We
Speaker 5: think that's what's driving our enrollment growth and that provides
Speaker 5: us with a great base for the financial performance that
Speaker 5: we announced today.
Speaker 3: You refer to a focus on collection processes. Are some
Speaker 3: people battling to pay their fees? You have to spend
Speaker 3: a little bit more time getting your money collecting.
Speaker 5: Actually that's a reference to centralizing of debtor management and
Speaker 5: we're trying to make the process smoother and a better
Speaker 5: experience for parents. And the progress that we've made there,
Speaker 5: I think is driving that improved performance on the debtor's book.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you think there's still then you talking about
Speaker 3: your product, of course, but do you think there's still
Speaker 3: room for growth in the sort of independent school sector
Speaker 3: in South Africa despite the economy you described.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we're still seeing population growth. I think
Speaker 5: you're the tail wind of population growth on the headwind
Speaker 5: of economic growth. Overall South African schools enrollments who up
Speaker 5: four percent year on you. It's got a strong number
Speaker 5: of a big base, so we think there's still potential
Speaker 5: for growth. But you've got those two competing forces.
Speaker 3: Are some of the people, maybe some of the learners
Speaker 3: is it their first time in an independent school, or
Speaker 3: are they coming to you from other providers who reported
Speaker 3: last week that their enrollments are down slightly.
Speaker 5: You know, I think if you look at the published data,
Speaker 5: then we're definitely going market share, and that has to
Speaker 5: be coming from somewhere.
Speaker 3: Okay, Jeff, you're you're very polite. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: growth happening in the rest of Africa, obviously, I mean
Speaker 3: you're enrollment there was a much much more strongly clearly
Speaker 3: a lot of investment there and from what I can see,
Speaker 3: it must be doing quite nicely.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know, I think the underlying organic growth was
Speaker 5: strong in Africa, but we also benefited from the acquisition
Speaker 5: of the Flipper Schools Group in Ethiopia, which supported the numbers.
Speaker 5: But we've seen a very positive start to that ownership
Speaker 5: of the Flipper Schools Group since we acquired it in
Speaker 5: November of last year. In Roman's already grown by five percent,
Speaker 5: so that bodes well for the future. And mckeinney and
Speaker 5: Keny are doing very well. Crawford International and Keny you're
Speaker 5: doing very well. The Gaban International School was almost a capacity,
Speaker 5: so across our African schools we're seeing strong demand for
Speaker 5: well regarded brands, and our biggest challenge there is adding
Speaker 5: capacity to meet the demand for further enrollments.
Speaker 3: Do you think you're going to see I mean, clearly
Speaker 3: there's more room for growth in those markets than in
Speaker 3: our markets, and I imagine that's where you're going to
Speaker 3: be looking to for growth to an extent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think you've got high GDP growth
Speaker 5: in the markets that we're in the South Africa, which
Speaker 5: is a fairly low bar as we all know, and
Speaker 5: you've also got strong population growth and I think typically
Speaker 5: a less developed education sector. So I think for us
Speaker 5: with strong brands and to be able to support various
Speaker 5: functions from South Africa, that makes those African markets very attractive.
Speaker 3: You've finished your relocation of the Rosebank College in Cape Town,
Speaker 3: but I'm very interested in your new property in Grayston
Speaker 3: Drive and Sanson. What kind of vision do you have
Speaker 3: for that? I mean, you call it a sort of
Speaker 3: it's going to have nine thousand people on that campus.
Speaker 3: What are we going to be looking at you?
Speaker 5: Well, we're relocating our Vaga Bordeaux and Varsity College Santsin
Speaker 5: campuses to the new site in Grayston. We're building actually
Speaker 5: a magnificent new university campus there which we'll have world
Speaker 5: class teaching and learning and recreational facilities. So work is
Speaker 5: happening puriously on that site, but I can't for the
Speaker 5: world to see it. It really is a beautiful project. It
Speaker 5: will double our current capacity in those two institutions in
Speaker 5: their current locations from four and a half thousand to
Speaker 5: nine thousand, but the ultimate capacity on that site is
Speaker 5: probably twelve or thirteen thousand, so we've also got lots
Speaker 5: of headroom for future growth.
Speaker 3: I mean, the real test of tertiary education now is
Speaker 3: will it get my kid a job?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And I think that's what parents of teenage children go
Speaker 3: to bed at night, thinking what's going to happen to
Speaker 3: them after school? Because that getting into a job is
Speaker 3: so tight. Does that mean you have to pay a
Speaker 3: bit more attention to what you're actually teaching? And Jeff,
Speaker 3: feel free to use the words AI if you need to.
Speaker 5: Listen. I think two things are critical. I think students
Speaker 5: want to know that they're going to be supported to
Speaker 5: finish their degree and the time is supposed to take,
Speaker 5: it's not going to take multiple years more. And they
Speaker 5: need to get a job at the end of it,
Speaker 5: and we're very focused on offering degrees that are linked
Speaker 5: to job market demands, but we also invest heavily in
Speaker 5: industry links to help students build those very important connections,
Speaker 5: and a significant time and effort goes into career services
Speaker 5: to help place students at the end of their degree.
Speaker 5: And we believe that our placement record is actually significantly
Speaker 5: better than the public sector, and that's a start that
Speaker 5: we're very proud of.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at population growth, the pressure
Speaker 3: just to get into universities, the difficulties that we see
Speaker 3: in our society, I mean, the scope for growth for
Speaker 3: a group like yours must be vasked.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think you know, you've got that
Speaker 5: demographic fill wind I touched on before in the tertiary sector.
Speaker 5: You've also got a significant impact of that imbalance of
Speaker 5: supplying demand in university places in the public sector. So
Speaker 5: you know, if we're in a positions where we can
Speaker 5: grow market share, which we believe we're doing in a
Speaker 5: growing market driven by demographics and that imbalance of supply
Speaker 5: and demand, that's a very exciting place for us to be.
Speaker 3: Jeff, Why, thanks very much. Indeed, the CEO at ADVID
Speaker 3: take you with the Money Show twenty five minutes after six.
Speaker 3: Your thoughts on what you want your young teenager or
Speaker 3: older teenager, your teenager to actually study, what's going to
Speaker 3: get them a job after school would be my question.
Speaker 3: O double one, double A three oh seven two two
Speaker 3: one four four six five sixty seven The Money Show,
Speaker 3: the market, Meryl Pecker's portfolio manager at Old Mutual Investments
Speaker 3: at Meryl. Good evening, Let's just pick up on advit
Speaker 3: tech very quickly. I mean, quite a strong update if
Speaker 3: you look at what Jeff White was saying.
Speaker 6: There, absolutely good evening and grieving to your listeners. I
Speaker 6: think interestingly though, to look at the growth in rest
Speaker 6: of Africa versus South Africa. You can see that at
Speaker 6: the moment, I mean, sixteenth cent elearning's growth is is
Speaker 6: quite something in this market, but a lot of that
Speaker 6: growth is coming outside of South Africa at this point,
Speaker 6: and the essay market becoming more competitive. But you know,
Speaker 6: I think if you look at VATCH for some time,
Speaker 6: this story was we've invested in schools, we need to
Speaker 6: move along the jacob as we saw those schools and
Speaker 6: they have delivered on that. The return on equity has
Speaker 6: increased in line with that switching their asset bates more.
Speaker 6: You know, the sixteen historic price to earning ratio. It's
Speaker 6: it's not cheap, but it has delivered quite solid earnings
Speaker 6: growth and improving returns for the last few years.
Speaker 3: It does seem to be onto something Sasol. You would
Speaker 3: have heard Simon Belloy earlier. Do you think investors have
Speaker 3: bought the vision of the kind of a new seil?
Speaker 3: Certainly that share price up very strongly today.
Speaker 6: It is up today quite strongly. I think you need
Speaker 6: to zoom out to see how low the bases.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: So so I think a year ago the market was
Speaker 6: pricing in the rights offer a better and sheets on
Speaker 6: a knife edge once again. But if we look at
Speaker 6: twenty nineteen and before the kind of sassile price versus
Speaker 6: the Brent rand brent oil price, that relationship has still
Speaker 6: got quite a long way to recover to historic norms.
Speaker 6: And I think systematically that the company is starting to
Speaker 6: address the reasons that could have caused that decoupling. Number One,
Speaker 6: the balance sheet, you know, the free cash for even
Speaker 6: if you take the transmit one source wind fall out,
Speaker 6: free cash flow was still up fifteen percent roughly in
Speaker 6: a year where the rand or price is actually down,
Speaker 6: so they did very well to keep costs going backwards.
Speaker 6: Actually in real time, they cut their costs tied to
Speaker 6: work in capital management and cost control at these difficult
Speaker 6: decisions about mossballing, cash burning and loss making assets. For sure,
Speaker 6: So from twenty nineteen things potativety couple because of more
Speaker 6: or scrutiny on climate change and how they would need
Speaker 6: to invest to address that. I think the capital markets
Speaker 6: say they've given the market certainty that or clarity that
Speaker 6: they're not going to invest on this is a return
Speaker 6: and they're going to be more pragmatic. They've taken action
Speaker 6: on some of this lost making stuff in the US
Speaker 6: and then the balance sheet. I think if they can
Speaker 6: get back to a position where they actually are paying
Speaker 6: dividends again, you know you could see more out of
Speaker 6: out of fattle, but they need to keep not delivering
Speaker 6: on the cost cutting on capital capics, spend discipline. So
Speaker 6: I think the market is starting to pay attention again.
Speaker 6: It's been vastly unloved.
Speaker 2: So it could be more.
Speaker 3: It's our tile kind of really telling us something. I
Speaker 3: think where you know their their profits weren't rarely up
Speaker 3: by match at all, and in fact their earnings weren't
Speaker 3: very strong. But they're still paying back a cash dividend.
Speaker 3: They're cash which but they're deciding. I mean, this seems
Speaker 3: to me to be a deliberate decision and possibly for shareholders,
Speaker 3: a responsible one. They've decided not to invest in the economy.
Speaker 6: Mm yeah, I mean, reading through the statement, it really
Speaker 6: is the definition of a management team that is trying
Speaker 6: to that is excelling at controlling what is in their control.
Speaker 6: You know, costs have gone backwards, not in realms, nominal terms,
Speaker 6: for actually such absolute costs. The working capital management was
Speaker 6: was very well controlled and hence cash generation continues. But
Speaker 6: they speak of that over capacity in manufacturing, the you know,
Speaker 6: imports without any protection where the neighboring countries are putting
Speaker 6: on protection. So basically they're saying the policy environment is
Speaker 6: not encouraging them to invest. Be it energy costs, be
Speaker 6: it kind of tariff and duty structures for municipal management
Speaker 6: and costs. And it's difficult to argue with that.
Speaker 3: Sure, Yeah, no it is. Meryl Peck, thank you so much,
Speaker 3: portfolio manager at the old Mutual Investment Group. But you're
Speaker 3: the Money show just gone seven point thirty.
Speaker 7: What have to.
Speaker 1: Stephens on seven two seven oh two one seven oh two.
Speaker 3: Twelve minutes to seven the time. Well, big profits for
Speaker 3: airport's companies South Africa. Their highest profits ever. That made
Speaker 3: one point one billion Rand for the financial year to
Speaker 3: the end of March. They're also planning a huge amount
Speaker 3: of spending over the next five years. And when I
Speaker 3: say a huge amount, I mean twenty one billion Rand.
Speaker 3: And put me in poortfo Is on the line for you.
Speaker 3: She is the CEO at Actor and put me good evening.
Speaker 3: Just a moment ago, I asked people for their thoughts
Speaker 3: their experiences of going through some of the airports. Let's
Speaker 3: listen to those quickly.
Speaker 7: Hey, this is John from Randberg. I'm so glad you're
Speaker 7: talking about this issue of the airports. I've been through
Speaker 7: job through our Timber International Airport a couple of times recently,
Speaker 7: and I have to say it's a horrible experience arriving
Speaker 7: in South Africa. Can't imagine what it must be like
Speaker 7: for tourists coming in and being faced with grumpy staff.
Speaker 7: Often is the case. Often the immigration has a long
Speaker 7: queuemann by very few people. Then you get through security
Speaker 7: control and somebody wants you to give them a tip
Speaker 7: for cleaning the bathroom when actually the whole bathroom stinks
Speaker 7: of urine. And then going through customs this last time
Speaker 7: there was a massive delay, nobody explaining why there should
Speaker 7: be a delay through the green customs line. Managing all
Speaker 7: of this and creating a great experience for tourists, for
Speaker 7: business people, for people coming back home from holidays, et cetera,
Speaker 7: should be a top priority for us, and where I
Speaker 7: would spend the money.
Speaker 8: Hi, Stephen, it's anonymous here in Midrand. The airport look
Speaker 8: very s titty, especially all.
Speaker 9: Our time or internationally.
Speaker 8: It looks steaty, It looks worn out. It is in
Speaker 8: need of a serious refm. It's actually an embarrassment walking
Speaker 8: through the international side of the airport and seeing all
Speaker 8: of that. It just gives an impression that oil is
Speaker 8: not good and well in terms of accent managing the airport,
Speaker 8: it needs significant improvement.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, listening to your voice notes this evening
Speaker 3: and put me in pull through the CEO at access
Speaker 3: and put me good evening. You do mention operational headwinds
Speaker 3: in your results today, and I imagine that's sort of
Speaker 3: what you were talking about, there are one or two difficulties.
Speaker 9: Yes, No, absolutely, Stephen, and thank you very much. As
Speaker 9: we sit celebrating the achievement the one point one billion
Speaker 9: and the first time we're paying dividends or the second
Speaker 9: time we're paying dividends to our shareholders of three hundred
Speaker 9: and ten million, we reflect on the operational challenges and
Speaker 9: the headwind sase and part of that has been a
Speaker 9: deteriorating asset base and infrastructure to which we've committed twenty
Speaker 9: one billion for seventy percent of which, excuse me, is
Speaker 9: going to be spent on the rehabilitation and refurbishment that
Speaker 9: will address exactly some of the issues that are raised.
Speaker 9: And those issues are the issues that are within the
Speaker 9: control of AKSA, the condition of the building, lightning up,
Speaker 9: et cetera. But we normally say it seven. We run
Speaker 9: a very complex business and a complex environment. The parts
Speaker 9: of our timber, particularly there are not so bright. Duck
Speaker 9: and dingy. Actually, the old Chance match now I can't remember.
Speaker 9: I don't know how many people remember what Chancemark Airport
Speaker 9: was like then, because what's happened in the airport expansion
Speaker 9: is literally we've expanded from one part of the airport
Speaker 9: to the other developing newer elements. And that's what happens
Speaker 9: when you do a what's called a round field development.
Speaker 9: You increasingly are dealing with old parts of an airport
Speaker 9: starting to deteriorate, infrastructure, getting one out, even problems, operational
Speaker 9: problems emerging in those, and then you're expand into the
Speaker 9: newer parts which basically can sustain higher traffic, faster passenger efficiency, processing, etc.
Speaker 9: So the dedication we've made of the seventy percent of
Speaker 9: the twenty one pillion to that rehabilitation is really intended
Speaker 9: for those old parts of oatambo that basically will be
Speaker 9: brought up to modern high tech and similar to the
Speaker 9: other parts, but also similar to global practices. They may
Speaker 9: also indicate in terms of what the two callers have indicated,
Speaker 9: there are certain parts that are operated by ACCESS, so
Speaker 9: accessor company that's responsible for airport operations generally, but we
Speaker 9: are legislated to run the airport, but we are not
Speaker 9: legislated to do other parts that for which legislation exists.
Speaker 10: In other areas.
Speaker 9: So Immigration is the Department of hom Affairs function. We
Speaker 9: know that they establish a new organization called Border Management
Speaker 9: Authority and Border Management Authority has been challenged with low
Speaker 9: budgets until I don't know, maybe next year they do better,
Speaker 9: and they're still struggling with budgets to facilitate the deployment
Speaker 9: of more people on arrival. You see, there's an initiative
Speaker 9: in Cape Town where even the city is assisting with
Speaker 9: deploying immigration officers in order to alleviate the problem. And
Speaker 9: we hope that's going to expand by the Department of
Speaker 9: Roma Fairs to Oma, to our Tambo because that's where
Speaker 9: the biggest numbers are in effect, and hopefully that will
Speaker 9: then deal with the immigration problem. The others relate to
Speaker 9: customs as well. Customs is the functionary of SARS and
Speaker 9: the operations there as a legislative portion that is the
Speaker 9: responsibility AFAR. Our role is access to run the joint
Speaker 9: coordination arrangements with all of these multiple stakeholders. We call
Speaker 9: ourselves a functional ecosystem of multiple stakeholders that all play
Speaker 9: their legislative or even business responsibilities on our platform, and
Speaker 9: that coordination is actually quite critical to get all the
Speaker 9: parties working together delivering the on time performance that you
Speaker 9: see when an aircraft departs on time and the happiness
Speaker 9: and passenger facilitation. That means people I'm not rating on queues. However,
Speaker 9: the downside is that when those individual organizations are facing problems,
Speaker 9: we are very often not able to intervene as answer
Speaker 9: to solve those problems, such as the staffing of the
Speaker 9: immigration desks, because it's a legislated function of BMA and
Speaker 9: Department of Home Affans. It remains that and they must
Speaker 9: find a solution. We can coherse. In fact, that's what
Speaker 9: we do around the queuing. We help manage the queue
Speaker 9: with diverted the queues, make sure none visa people go
Speaker 9: fast on the one lane and others go slower because
Speaker 9: the process, etc. We produce interventions that try and ease
Speaker 9: the challenge. But if the challenge is primarily a stuffing
Speaker 9: issue at a newly established BMA, then those challenges, we
Speaker 9: hope are going to start disappearing. From the infrastructure perspective,
Speaker 9: we are making commitments to totally eradicated challenges that are
Speaker 9: related to the asset base, and that means that people
Speaker 9: move us. The lists, the escalators, the technology, the scanners,
Speaker 9: the security machines, all of that is up for renewal
Speaker 9: and will basically enable us to bring back a very
Speaker 9: perfect passenger experience through our airport. We're also going to
Speaker 9: deploy higher technology biometrics and facial recognition and other things
Speaker 9: that will of aid that process so that we can
Speaker 9: be similar to world class et. What's that we normally competed.
Speaker 3: And for me, I'm sure you've been talking all day,
Speaker 3: by the way, not at all. I know the feeling. Look,
Speaker 3: I fully accept quite a few things out of your control.
Speaker 3: Some of them are in your control. I mean one
Speaker 3: of them is travelators that you know carry you know,
Speaker 3: carry people. The other one would be toilets for example.
Speaker 3: I mean stuff like that. I realize, you know, if
Speaker 3: you go to an airport almost anywhere in the world
Speaker 3: late on a Friday night, you'll have a very different experience.
Speaker 3: And if you go at ten o'clock on a Monday morning.
Speaker 3: I do wonder though, if things are kind of just
Speaker 3: as clean and as quick and as slick. These are
Speaker 3: the things you control now that I'm talking about as they.
Speaker 2: Sort of used to be.
Speaker 9: Yet no, the one that we do controls, even as
Speaker 9: I indicated with made the commitment, part of it is
Speaker 9: also about the efficiency management of the airport. So just
Speaker 9: let's start on the infrastructure site. So the toilets are
Speaker 9: up for and you are all of them at all example,
Speaker 9: but they don't get renewed all at the same time.
Speaker 9: So when we do that, we m are shut it
Speaker 9: down and then open the others, and we know what
Speaker 9: our passenger throughput is and we don't necessarily at the
Speaker 9: pace at which we move may not be too pleasing
Speaker 9: to passengers because we've got to keep some open. But
Speaker 9: you'll see brand new toilets, modern design, nice brilliant facilities
Speaker 9: that will come with this investment of this twenty one pillion.
Speaker 9: The others is about the management of staff, which invariably
Speaker 9: includes efficiency of the contract management, because we have contract
Speaker 9: companies that are cleaning and penalties for those who want
Speaker 9: to perform so that in fact when they do, if
Speaker 9: cleaners are not in the cleaning positions on time, doing
Speaker 9: what they need to be doing, then we take disciplinary
Speaker 9: action against them. Steven. We act against people who come
Speaker 9: to our time. We're thinking they've just come to roam
Speaker 9: around in a city and find economic opportunities, rather than
Speaker 9: executing the duties that they are there to actually do
Speaker 9: on behalf of company, but also in terms of providing
Speaker 9: improved passenger service for our customers. So there's a lot
Speaker 9: of discipline and a lot of work that is done
Speaker 9: around those that don't perform as they should. Contracts are terminated,
Speaker 9: the conditions of contracts are reviewed, the penalties are paid
Speaker 9: for companies that don't deliver as they should. But as
Speaker 9: we move to the future, we really are committed. We've
Speaker 9: got an inficiency factor that we measure again, we're committed
Speaker 9: to achieving that.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you, but we
Speaker 3: are going to run out of time, and I do
Speaker 3: want to put something else to you. One of the
Speaker 3: other things you can't control is air traffic navigation services.
Speaker 3: That's the separate entity of the Department of Transport. They've
Speaker 3: had some problems. In fact, some of your airports weren't
Speaker 3: able to take flights for safety reasons because of those issues.
Speaker 3: That must be very frustrating for you. The Minister's sort
Speaker 3: of intervened. Do you expect that process, that situation to
Speaker 3: be resolved, and it's quite a difficult problem to resolve.
Speaker 9: Well, our understanding is that a lot of that is
Speaker 9: now behind us, with the issues that have been resolved
Speaker 9: around making show that the procedures that we're outstanding and
Speaker 9: are updated approved by SARKA, and that it is unnecessary
Speaker 9: for some of the airports now to still be operating
Speaker 9: without them. So a lot of progress as we made,
Speaker 9: we understand a lot of the procedures are now approved,
Speaker 9: and that was here. The second rollers is although on
Speaker 9: infrastructure that would also support the AT and S operations,
Speaker 9: and all of that is also being rolled out to
Speaker 9: make sure that it basically is operating efficiently. It normally
Speaker 9: affects us in bad weather because in a sense, if
Speaker 9: the procedure is not clear, the airlines can't take the
Speaker 9: risk of landing in a particular airport. If either the
Speaker 9: instrumentation or the procedures aren clear, effectively they are bought
Speaker 9: the trip and they divert to a different place. What
Speaker 9: we've been able to do, though is access is to
Speaker 9: assist them. So in cases, for instance, where JOBAT to
Speaker 9: its London flight. This London is a very problematic one
Speaker 9: for in terms of the weather and its location, we
Speaker 9: then divert them, say to Chief David steal my pe
Speaker 9: and we as as our facilitate and pay for their
Speaker 9: passing up back to is London. So we've been also
Speaker 9: very helpful in the process. We've not just stood by
Speaker 9: and watched at and s struggle through some of these things.
Speaker 9: We've assisted passengers, we've put out money, and we've been
Speaker 9: sure that the journey is actually pleasant. We've also spoken
Speaker 9: to the airlines about alternative route and basically manage the
Speaker 9: situation jointly with them in as much as we could.
Speaker 9: But yes, the improvement in.
Speaker 3: That area as well and put me and for Fard
Speaker 3: do you have to leave it there? Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Indeed I do appreciate the time the CEO at Airport's
Speaker 3: Company South Africa.
Speaker 1: And now The Money Show with Stephen Credits on seven
Speaker 1: O two network.
Speaker 3: Little The Money Show with Stephen Curtis has brought to
Speaker 3: you by absinue c IB, proud sponsor of the Sarah
Speaker 3: Rail Conference twenty twenty five Powering Progress, Connecting economies, Good evening,
Speaker 3: have plenty to come. In the next little while, we'll
Speaker 3: talk to Mark Wacksburger, the CEO at Capital Hotel sells
Speaker 3: an Apartment's been watching that little fracard debate, dispute argument.
Speaker 3: I don't know is it a fight yet between Patricia
Speaker 3: de Lille, the Tourism Minister and the board of essay tourism,
Speaker 3: which she dissolved.
Speaker 2: She did head back today.
Speaker 3: Finally, Ronin Williams has been looking at a book about
Speaker 3: your digital identity. It's a book called The Future Review,
Speaker 3: and in fact it's quite a strange thing. How do
Speaker 3: people know who you are?
Speaker 10: What?
Speaker 3: In an age where you don't really meet people, How
Speaker 3: would you know who somebody is? How do you even
Speaker 3: know if they're alive? There's I mean, it's science fiction y,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of happening. And then I'm really excited
Speaker 3: to confirm to you that we'll be speaking to and
Speaker 3: Druso Macattini, the pianist, the composer, the music academic. He'll
Speaker 3: be with you from seven thirty. Really looking forward to
Speaker 3: that conversation this evening The.
Speaker 2: Money Show on seven O two Monday to Friday, six
Speaker 2: to a pm.
Speaker 3: Oh double one double A three oh seven, O two
Speaker 3: and O two one four four six, O five six seven.
Speaker 3: You heard your experiences of our airports a few moments ago.
Speaker 3: We heard the response from them, pulling and poor for
Speaker 3: the CEO at airport's company say, and yes, they did
Speaker 3: announce our record profits today, so they do deserve a
Speaker 3: pat on the back for that, but the experience of airports.
Speaker 3: Let's very quickly hear from sort of the airline perspective.
Speaker 3: London Birds is managing that. Lindon Burns is the managing
Speaker 3: director at plane talking to London. Good evening, thanks for
Speaker 3: getting in touch. I mean, what do you make of
Speaker 3: the state of our airports when ACCE is announcing and
Speaker 3: I mean, well done to them, record profits.
Speaker 11: Hi Stephen, then Twobon listening tonight. Yeah, look, no one
Speaker 11: but grudge as a well run business turning a profit.
Speaker 11: I think as tax players, you know it sounds great.
Speaker 11: We don't have another in sociable bulbatross around our neck.
Speaker 11: But that's the picture they want to paint. I think
Speaker 11: it's not necessarily the one was seeing. And I think
Speaker 11: your listeners have pointed out you know, these buildings have
Speaker 11: seen better times and even as you know, the airlines
Speaker 11: will point out. And before I came on, I checked
Speaker 11: today's noteams. By the way, these are the notices published
Speaker 11: to pilots, notices to airmen, and there's a long shopping
Speaker 11: list of items that have remained unserviceable at our airports
Speaker 11: for months. Runway lighting, taxiway lighting, airfield navigation signage, that's
Speaker 11: not serviceable at the three main airports. Things like that,
Speaker 11: the contact air bridges, not all of them have been
Speaker 11: returned to services COVID. That's five years ago. Now, okay,
Speaker 11: we've got airports like Kimberly where you still can't land
Speaker 11: or take off in the dark because acts haven't yet
Speaker 11: re employed all the firemen and don't run a fire
Speaker 11: and rescue service after dark. So business travelers who want
Speaker 11: to travel to and from the Diamond City a more
Speaker 11: convenient times can't do that. So you know, and where
Speaker 11: is this handsome profit coming from. Revenue comes from aeronautical charges.
Speaker 11: These are statutory charges that it commands for aircraft, landing,
Speaker 11: parking and passenger service fees. But it's doubled its profit.
Speaker 11: And under the International Civil Aviation Organization principles for airport charge,
Speaker 11: you only meant to charge for services you provide. So
Speaker 11: where's the money going to and this dividend, what's happening
Speaker 11: to it. It's not being ring fenced for reinvestment in aviation.
Speaker 11: It's actually going to the central fiscus. So really it's
Speaker 11: a statutory charge. This, I guess we're at tax this
Speaker 11: masquerading as a statutory user charge. So there are lots
Speaker 11: of questions that really need to be answered, and it's
Speaker 11: I think, you know a lot of people in the
Speaker 11: industry are going to look at this and go hang on.
Speaker 11: You know, you plead poverty every time you come up
Speaker 11: for a tariff review. You just did a seventeen and
Speaker 11: a half percent tariffing reachs last year and a similar
Speaker 11: amount of the year before. We've not seen any sod
Speaker 11: turning on all of these massive capet projects you're talking
Speaker 11: about and that you've an now, so we're still bedeviled
Speaker 11: by things like broken fuel pumps. And by the way,
Speaker 11: the AT and S thing, thank you for asking and
Speaker 11: proving about that. She clearly hasn't read the motowns because
Speaker 11: there are still hundreds of those procedures that remain suspended
Speaker 11: and they affect all of our airports and they affect
Speaker 11: access ability to maintain the schedule that airlines operate to.
Speaker 3: Linden Burns. Thank you, thank you very much. Indeed, very
Speaker 3: comprehensive list of issues there. The managing director at Plane
Speaker 3: talking there's a lot going on, and look, I'll be
Speaker 3: the first to admit, as Pumi and Porfu said that
Speaker 3: it's a complex business and a lot of things she
Speaker 3: can't control, but there are things that acts can control.
Speaker 3: So I found that very interesting. Linden Burns, thanks very much. Indeed,
Speaker 3: your views tonight are a double one three seven two
Speaker 3: and two to one four four six O five sixty seven.
Speaker 1: The Lanely Show with Stephen crutis live on ninety two
Speaker 1: point seven and one six FM, streaming on the Prime
Speaker 1: Media Plus NAP and TSTV channel eight five six.
Speaker 3: Well, finally, quite a strong response from the Tourism min
Speaker 3: Sir Patricia Delil Today to accusations she's protecting the suspended
Speaker 3: CEO of Tourism s. Numblello Gillieway. Last week you may
Speaker 3: recur several members of the Board of s Tourism of
Speaker 3: the former board said she had dissolved them after they
Speaker 3: suspended Galiway after the Orders to General had made findings
Speaker 3: about her contact. Now, delil Today, denying defending Galiwa, says
Speaker 3: the board had long running procedural flaws when convening convening meetings,
Speaker 3: saying she won't allow the lord to be undermined. Well,
Speaker 3: Mark Wacksberger is the CEO at Capitol Hotels and Apartments,
Speaker 3: someone I think you can safely assume has a great
Speaker 3: interest in tourists coming to South Africa a market evening.
Speaker 3: I mean, from your vantage point right in the sort
Speaker 3: of middle of the industry, how worried are you about
Speaker 3: what's going on here? I mean, do you know what
Speaker 3: is going on here?
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 10: Look to be honest with you, we're not worried. And
Speaker 10: while we're not worried, is that we're used to this unfortunately,
Speaker 10: is what I can say. You know, it's been years
Speaker 10: and years of the tourism industry leadership being kind of
Speaker 10: up and down and left and right, and yet we
Speaker 10: are so resilient, and yet we're performing very well. So
Speaker 10: it's one of those things where imagine, if they got
Speaker 10: it right, it could be absolutely amazing. It could lead
Speaker 10: to development of amazing things. But as it stands right now,
Speaker 10: it's kind of priced in, if you will, the fact
Speaker 10: that it is always going to be a bit topsy turvy.
Speaker 3: I mean, do you think I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you'd take a stand on which side do you support?
Speaker 3: Do you think the minister's actions are harming tourism.
Speaker 10: I don't have enough information.
Speaker 4: I did see the release.
Speaker 10: From Sasset today it's you know, as a body that
Speaker 10: really supported Patricia.
Speaker 4: Delat as I did.
Speaker 10: They've taken a stance now with I'm sure more information
Speaker 10: than I can have, which is that the minister is
Speaker 10: wrong in all of this, But I don't know myself.
Speaker 10: It's very difficult to know. But it was quite interesting
Speaker 10: to hear how they're reporting now and we are hearing
Speaker 10: murmurs in the industry about our conferences are not being
Speaker 10: attended internationally and so that actually does have an implication.
Speaker 10: As an example, the golf conference that was happening internationally,
Speaker 10: now we don't have represent representation from South Africa, but
Speaker 10: yet it's a very competitive market and you know, these
Speaker 10: golfers then land up going to other countries that are
Speaker 10: that are competing. So you know, what's going on. I'm
Speaker 10: not sure, but the implications on the ground are definitely there.
Speaker 10: Are they passive and material. I don't know if it's
Speaker 10: absolutely catastrophic at this point.
Speaker 3: There are other things unfortunately working against tourism at the moment,
Speaker 3: and we've seen so much commentary about the decline of
Speaker 3: services and let me be blunt here in places outside
Speaker 3: the Western Cape Mark, I just wonder and I completely
Speaker 3: understand it. I suffer from the decline of those services too.
Speaker 3: That does make it a lot harder to sell South
Speaker 3: Africa as a tourism destination. It's quite hard to say,
Speaker 3: come to South Africa when everyone's grumbling about South Africa.
Speaker 10: No question about it. And that's why no material number
Speaker 10: of new hotels have been built since the twenty ten
Speaker 10: World Cup, when things were going swimmingly. Infrastructure was strong
Speaker 10: and we had obviously the boom to the twenty ten
Speaker 10: World Cup. And since then, you know, fast forward over
Speaker 10: fifteen years and we as the Capital Hotels have built
Speaker 10: something like twenty five percent.
Speaker 4: Of all new hotel development.
Speaker 10: And the reason why we've done it is because we
Speaker 10: put in our own infrastructure. We try not to rely
Speaker 10: on the infrastructure that is provided because it just is unreliable.
Speaker 2: Are there.
Speaker 3: I mean if you were given a magic wand and
Speaker 3: we're told, okay, fixed tourism, I mean, what would you
Speaker 3: do first?
Speaker 10: Well, the issue has always stemmed first and foremost with
Speaker 10: the visa issues, which the Home Affairs Offer seems to
Speaker 10: be making great progress on. That was probably the single
Speaker 10: biggest issue. But then beyond that, you know, you see
Speaker 10: companies that rely very much on these big events we're
Speaker 10: talking about, like you'll see in Vegas as an example,
Speaker 10: the sellout of a Vegas convention and then all of
Speaker 10: a sudden, all the hotels are full. That's generally how
Speaker 10: the hotel industry has been built worldwide. In South Africa,
Speaker 10: we rely much more on kind of you know, killing
Speaker 10: our own fish. Sure, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 10: if that's the right word to use, but we don't
Speaker 10: rely on the industry per se in so many ways.
Speaker 10: Whereas if the industry did perform and when some of
Speaker 10: those huge conferences, then we would all absolutely benefit and
Speaker 10: it would be our pricing would then adjust, and obviously
Speaker 10: that would lead downstream to the GDP multiplier effect which
Speaker 10: the industry has, you know, on labor and on spending power.
Speaker 10: So right now rates are almost you might quite low
Speaker 10: because of the lack of that tourism performance. And like
Speaker 10: I said to you, you know, imagine it came right
Speaker 10: absolutely astonishingly wonderful because it's the most wonderful country with
Speaker 10: the most wonderful people.
Speaker 3: Well, I remember so clearly tit Terumber when any finance
Speaker 3: ministers he then was and publishing a very important Economic
Speaker 3: Document to growth the economy and the two things he
Speaker 3: said that we could do very well we're tourism and agriculture.
Speaker 3: And in both cases what's important about them is that
Speaker 3: people who've sort of been portrayed by education system can
Speaker 3: work in those sectors. You don't need to bring cheaper
Speaker 3: manufacturing jobs here, for example. There are lots of things
Speaker 3: you can do. And unfortunately, despite promises and at one
Speaker 3: point I think optimism in your industry, we still just
Speaker 3: don't see it.
Speaker 10: Yes, the fair effect is unbelievable in terms of job
Speaker 10: creation and tourism and agriculture, as you say, and it
Speaker 10: is a pity that there aren't many, many more hospitality
Speaker 10: institutions under construction that yeah, like I said, were as
Speaker 10: the Capital, we kind of making our own plan and
Speaker 10: building anyway, like we're building in Quebec at the moment.
Speaker 3: In Port Elizabeth Mark Waxberger, thanks so much. See at
Speaker 3: Capital Hotels and Apartments, good money show with Deep I
Speaker 3: saw over the weekend Barnie Patiana stepping down as chair
Speaker 3: of the National Lotteries Commissioner. I don't quite know yet
Speaker 3: why he's decided to do that. He's been there, I
Speaker 3: think three years now he has two years left sort
Speaker 3: of in his term. I remember listening to him on
Speaker 3: Bongani Bengui's show on seven or two a couple of
Speaker 3: months ago, and he was talking about trying to reform
Speaker 3: the National Lotteries Commission, and as we all know, this
Speaker 3: was a commission that just became hopelessly corrupt. Rarely is
Speaker 3: the only word, the only words that describe it. And
Speaker 3: we've seen the SIU investigate, We've seen Raymond Joseph's astonishingly
Speaker 3: impressive journalism for ground Up, you know, with story after
Speaker 3: story about it. I know Barney Patiana is of a
Speaker 3: certain age. I think he's eighty now or nearly, but
Speaker 3: I was still just sad to see him go. And
Speaker 3: I was reminded, and we see this in institutions everywhere
Speaker 3: of the huge fight back against his efforts to try
Speaker 3: and clean it up, and how difficult the job actually is,
Speaker 3: and what I hope is not the case. I'm hoping
Speaker 3: he didn't just throw in the targets you'd had enough
Speaker 3: and decided it couldn't be done. I mean, I hope
Speaker 3: that's not why. I mean, someone who's played an immense
Speaker 3: role in our society over many, many years and would
Speaker 3: sort of deserve better. But I just I'm sometimes astonished
Speaker 3: by the fight back that we see when people come
Speaker 3: in and try and clean things up. And I can't
Speaker 3: help but wonder if the National Lottery's Commission is an
Speaker 3: example of that kind of fight back. If you've maybe
Speaker 3: got some insight into that, good to hear from you
Speaker 3: on oh seven two seven two one seven o two.
Speaker 2: The My show Business books.
Speaker 3: So this may be a strange question. How do you
Speaker 3: know who you are? And how do you prove who
Speaker 3: you are? I can see Teco Fights and Taquiso in
Speaker 3: front of me. They both know me when they see me.
Speaker 3: They know that I am Stephen Krutters.
Speaker 10: I know they're.
Speaker 2: Tekoa t Quiso.
Speaker 3: But it may not be that simple going forward, because
Speaker 3: our relationships may or be entirely virtual. Ronnon Williams is
Speaker 3: the trend translator and future financed specialist with Flux Trends.
Speaker 3: Bron On you good evening. You've been looking at the
Speaker 3: book The Future of You. Can your identity survive twenty
Speaker 3: first century technology? The implications are actually quite frightening.
Speaker 12: Yes, absolutely so. This is a marvelous book. It's written
Speaker 12: by one of my favorite featurists, Tracy follows. She initially
Speaker 12: studied philosophy, then worked in advertising, and it's now a
Speaker 12: business strategists and consultants and featurists to many organizations that
Speaker 12: will hold the household names. So she's been around the
Speaker 12: block for a while. She actually wrote this book towards
Speaker 12: the last crazy days of our COVID sort of blooked
Speaker 12: in society. So it's a couple of years old now,
Speaker 12: but I thought i'd bring into your attention, and for
Speaker 12: seasons we haven't covered it on the show because so
Speaker 12: much of what she was talking about just a couple
Speaker 12: of short years ago that was deemed to be quite
Speaker 12: out there at Atlandos just you know, in twenty twenty
Speaker 12: two is now very much students I be grappling with
Speaker 12: as business, at societies, as individuals at the moment. Basically,
Speaker 12: the advent of all things AI have really proved a
Speaker 12: lot of the issues that Tracy was talking about back
Speaker 12: then to be things you're really doing to be paying
Speaker 12: attention to. You raised one of them, of course, this
Speaker 12: ability to identify whether someone is a dog, a cat,
Speaker 12: a terrorist, or who they say they are on the
Speaker 12: other end of the screen with you. But kids who
Speaker 12: are playing on roadblocks. For example, you might be interested
Speaker 12: to know who those avatars are that you're interacting with.
Speaker 12: If you are a company, of course, you want to
Speaker 12: know that you're interacting with suppliers and customers who are
Speaker 12: real people who are actually going to pay you or
Speaker 12: deliver the goods that you've actually proachased rights. This whole
Speaker 12: issue of verifiable identity one of the things Tracy talks about,
Speaker 12: and of course those sort of security issues that come
Speaker 12: from not being able to verify that, but she also
Speaker 12: times have been into a sort of philosophy of who
Speaker 12: we actually are, which is also interesting from a brand perspective,
Speaker 12: because a lot of traits you were speaking about there
Speaker 12: is around how our identities are becoming fragmented. Even in
Speaker 12: our own heads. We have these different compartments as to
Speaker 12: what we say online versus what we say on this
Speaker 12: platform or that platform. And I love that to do
Speaker 12: with reputational kind of engineering or hedging your reputational beats,
Speaker 12: as I like to say, like you do your financial investments.
Speaker 12: Because taking your reputation on a platform that could deplatform
Speaker 12: you or in a community that could cancel you our risks.
Speaker 12: So we spreading ourselves and how we present ourselves based
Speaker 12: on our perception of how that will land and what
Speaker 12: that will do to our social credit and those sorts
Speaker 12: of things, which means, if you're a brand or a business,
Speaker 12: you don't necessarily know that the metadata of the people
Speaker 12: that you're targeting, as much as we have access to
Speaker 12: all of everybody's information at the moment, is really who
Speaker 12: that person is or it's just a sort of constructed
Speaker 12: version of themselves that your customer is giving to you,
Speaker 12: which is which leads to all sorts of implications. I'm
Speaker 12: wasted advertising budgets in more prosaic sense. The mental existential
Speaker 12: crises on a more philosophical end.
Speaker 10: Of the scale.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that there's so much to it,
Speaker 3: So I mean one of the examples would be a
Speaker 3: sort of virtual legacy. So I mean, I mean, I
Speaker 3: remember reading science fiction. I think Peter of Hamilton, written
Speaker 3: not that long ago, by the way, the late nineties
Speaker 3: of you know a character who sort of existed after
Speaker 3: they died. Now I can just imagine the arguments we're
Speaker 3: going to have about this person's rights. Can they cill
Speaker 3: trate on the stock market? Can they do this? Can
Speaker 3: they do that? Can they clone their brain. I mean
Speaker 3: it goes on and on and on, and frankly, I
Speaker 3: mean I enjoyed it as fiction. I'm not ready for
Speaker 3: it as fact.
Speaker 12: A new chair it is, I mean as trophy. I
Speaker 12: think she tweeted because she still uses that platform for
Speaker 12: what do we call it? X fuesdays About the case
Speaker 12: in the UK or the US at the moment where
Speaker 12: just a couple of weeks ago, one of the victims
Speaker 12: of the school shooting was called up to do an
Speaker 12: interview with the journe List. His parents basically gave permission
Speaker 12: to use his online legacy to act in bear witness
Speaker 12: to the crime that he was a victim of, which
Speaker 12: is again a huge amount of an ethical can of
Speaker 12: worms as to how legal systems are going to work.
Speaker 12: Can the dead bear witness of their own trials? For example,
Speaker 12: we've also had cases of the Seas victims showing up
Speaker 12: in courts right and their AI history, a version of themselves,
Speaker 12: an unconscious consciousness is now being used to manipulate the
Speaker 12: great legal system that US individuals and corporates are going
Speaker 12: to have to navigate, which is a huge ethical mindfield because,
Speaker 12: of course, is that AI footprint sort of regurgitated from
Speaker 12: your past social media and blog history, rarely a representation
Speaker 12: of what you really think, or is it, as I
Speaker 12: just said, a slice of yourself that you were willing
Speaker 12: to share the public, which is not what you really
Speaker 12: thought about. And of course the digital copyright, so what
Speaker 12: you leave behind, who gets access to your digital legacy,
Speaker 12: and who gets to profit off it? All sorts of
Speaker 12: things that Tracy spoke about you.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's there are plenty of movies, you know,
Speaker 3: where you wake up and nobody recognizes you, right, and
Speaker 3: you try to sort of prove where you can't find
Speaker 3: your family or whatever it is, and that seems so
Speaker 3: incredibly far fetched, can't ever have happened, et cetera. But
Speaker 3: in a virtual era, it absolutely can because someone could
Speaker 3: wipe away all memory of you and there's really nothing
Speaker 3: you could do about it. I mean, it's incredibly frightening.
Speaker 12: Yes, exactly. One of the personal anecdotes Tracy uses in
Speaker 12: the book is how she was lucked out of her
Speaker 12: Facebook account, which does kind of give your way or
Speaker 12: age and all bit that you staw using a platform.
Speaker 12: But the point is she was unable to prove successfully
Speaker 12: to Facebook because she is who she actually is, because
Speaker 12: you know, a computer says no, And that of course
Speaker 12: brings up a whole issue of how we defend who
Speaker 12: you are on the instet, how you defend your intellectual property,
Speaker 12: how you even defend your own identity. If a system
Speaker 12: is saying that's not you. It reminds me. We have
Speaker 12: course cases of like people in India who have been
Speaker 12: depersoned because some government computers as they deceased, even though
Speaker 12: they're perfectly alive. The one man actually through a parade
Speaker 12: to prove that he was alive. And has it worked
Speaker 12: or not. But you know, these are the sorts of
Speaker 12: things that are taking place when the digital versus the
Speaker 12: real sort of interacting in terms of the loops to
Speaker 12: determine what truth is. And you can be screaming, I
Speaker 12: am me, I am the truth. But if the systems
Speaker 12: are saying otherwise, you can get locked out of your
Speaker 12: bank accounts, you can get locked out of your like
Speaker 12: that man in India, your access to social welfare, entitlements
Speaker 12: and all sorts of things. And I suppose the other
Speaker 12: issue that you have to man sure if you're talking
Speaker 12: about Tracy's book, which is again popping on to the
Speaker 12: radar right now it's the idea of neuroprivacy, which was
Speaker 12: a very early speaker on which sounded like science fiction
Speaker 12: just two years ago. But now with out increasing advances
Speaker 12: and very literally brain reading technology that can pull us
Speaker 12: allts oude of your head as to who has the
Speaker 12: right to that, to advertisers have the rights to what's
Speaker 12: going on in your he with increasing applications of things
Speaker 12: like effective advertising, do governments have access to that? With
Speaker 12: increasing pushes towards predictive policing, which again just a couple
Speaker 12: of years ago was a total science fiction conspiracy, very craziness,
Speaker 12: but it's now something that's being debated by policy makers
Speaker 12: and being implemented on the streets of places.
Speaker 10: Like the UK.
Speaker 3: Ronwyin Williams, thank you so much. Frightening interesting, we are frightening.
Speaker 3: Let me just use that word again. Ron Williams is
Speaker 3: the trend translator in future finance specialist Flags Trends. The
Speaker 3: book is the future of you Can your Identity Survive?
Speaker 3: Twenty first century technology? The author I highly recommend it
Speaker 3: is Tracy Follows, really does just explain how quickly things
Speaker 3: are changing. Make sure the people around you know that
Speaker 3: you are you stay in the physical world. Why don't
Speaker 3: you just gone seven thirty on The Money Show.
Speaker 2: Her Money Show, How I Make My Money?
Speaker 3: Well, I have to tell you it's a great pleasure
Speaker 3: tonight to well come someone who's been able to make
Speaker 3: a living channeling our emotions for us, able to channel
Speaker 3: them to something quite rare. And I'm talking about the musician,
Speaker 3: the jazz musician from Qua zul Ntel and Duzo Macatini,
Speaker 3: someone who's made a career performing creating music, creating it live,
Speaker 3: but also through studying it. In fact, he as a
Speaker 3: PhD on the subject. And let's just take thirty seconds
Speaker 3: to just hear a little bit about the kind of
Speaker 3: genius that I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Gonna ge like I am Gonnagal, like I are ConA villa.
Speaker 3: The sounds there of Indiduzi Macatini Indu Also, good evening,
Speaker 3: And thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 3: speak to us on how I make my money this
Speaker 3: Monday evening on the Money Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I know you're very very far away from home, and
Speaker 3: I think when we hear that music, we kind of
Speaker 3: feel we're at home. It's quite a quite a strange thing.
Speaker 3: You're right, your your love affair with music, I mean
Speaker 3: it comes from your family, right, I mean it comes
Speaker 3: from the people who came.
Speaker 2: Before you in your family, right it does. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean naturally being born in the.
Speaker 13: It's so called rural areas in South Africa during our party,
Speaker 13: there had to be kind of there was a necessity
Speaker 13: or even an aurgency for alternative modalities of being in
Speaker 13: the world in a sense that there was so much
Speaker 13: catastrophe going on, and maybe in those moments, song presented
Speaker 13: a kind of break.
Speaker 2: So I come from not only a family that.
Speaker 13: Sang, but also a village a people, but also you know,
Speaker 13: I think there was just music all around, and there
Speaker 13: was a certain attachment to music back then, of course,
Speaker 13: which was every ritual was kind of signified by certain repertoires,
Speaker 13: which would mean eventually that repertoires were speaking to ways
Speaker 13: of being in the world, also calendar events and making
Speaker 13: very important times. So I kind of came from those
Speaker 13: traditions and I tried to advocate for that both in
Speaker 13: my scholarly interventions but also just as a as an
Speaker 13: artist that has the stages.
Speaker 2: All around the world. So that's that's really the background.
Speaker 3: I noticed your your website, which which maybe is just
Speaker 3: for a sort of international audience, because I described you
Speaker 3: as a as a Zulu healer, which is not a
Speaker 3: word we would use in South Africa, I don't think,
Speaker 3: but I thought maybe it did contain an important word,
Speaker 3: because there's does music play a role for you and healing,
Speaker 3: I mean healing of our soul, healing of our wounds.
Speaker 13: Right, I guess there is some kind of truth in
Speaker 13: that in a sense that I am initiated as a sangle,
Speaker 13: so we should translate as a shaman or a healer
Speaker 13: in in you know, in kind of global contexts. But
Speaker 13: also I think it's just an intrinsic kind of ingredients
Speaker 13: or even a property in the sounds of South African
Speaker 13: or African music, where if we speak about a word
Speaker 13: such as goma, it's very telling of the idea of healing,
Speaker 13: that of song, that of prophetic knowledge, that of definition,
Speaker 13: and you know, all of these things kind of holding
Speaker 13: into a kind of wholeness. So whereas in the West,
Speaker 13: for instance, music is understood as a branch of esthetic,
Speaker 13: in Africa, and without exoticizing, this is definitely a much
Speaker 13: more expanded notion of musiking, which has to do with
Speaker 13: healing practices and prophetically traditions. So it's definitely a thing
Speaker 13: that's it's kind of a bad job, perhaps even a
Speaker 13: framework for my work. It really enunciates with this vision
Speaker 13: for opening, you know, healing potency at least for people
Speaker 13: to access their own healing powers.
Speaker 3: I wonder sometimes when you when you when I was
Speaker 3: thinking of the concept today of music healing, if one
Speaker 3: of the reasons South Africa produces such amazing musicians and
Speaker 3: such kind of interesting sounds is because we're actually such
Speaker 3: a tough society.
Speaker 13: Definitely, I guess there is something to be said about that.
Speaker 13: It's in a sense that even outside of Africa, black
Speaker 13: asthetic has always been a kind of fugitive aesthetic in
Speaker 13: a sense that it's a It has to do with
Speaker 13: the fact that the Black biography is something that we
Speaker 13: cannot transcend in making the music. In other words, the
Speaker 13: body and what the body has experienced through generational catastrophes
Speaker 13: and things that our forefathers and foremothers have experienced is
Speaker 13: not something that.
Speaker 2: We trying to escape when we make music today.
Speaker 13: So healing is really a pre occupation that hunts our
Speaker 13: sound in a sense that our sounds cannot really focus
Speaker 13: on entertainment that much, so, you know, because there is
Speaker 13: just so much that we need to speak to that
Speaker 13: healing is no longer just like a buzzword or a
Speaker 13: thing that we speak about, but it's the actual praxice
Speaker 13: of music making that we come to, the sound seeking
Speaker 13: modalities of transcendence anyway, and healing being a kind of
Speaker 13: harmonizing these broken parts of ourselves, whether we think of
Speaker 13: ourselves through the Middle Passage or through transatlantic problems and
Speaker 13: slave trade, or whether we think about color reality. There
Speaker 13: has always been this necessity to claim our dignity. So
Speaker 13: when other parts dignity becomes a default thing, it's a
Speaker 13: bad ride that particular people assume certain kinds of you know,
Speaker 13: protocols that are kind of accessed by.
Speaker 2: Being born as a black body.
Speaker 13: These things are not so obvious, and so there's an
Speaker 13: urgency for our sounds to speak to how do we
Speaker 13: activate our collective memory and how do we bring these
Speaker 13: broken parts of our biography together and so that one
Speaker 13: day we'll tell our grandkids a more coherent story of
Speaker 13: who we are. I'm so healing here understood that a
Speaker 13: much deeper level of collective memory.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm listening to you. Do you speak, and I'm
Speaker 3: I'm bad to imagine you as a child in a
Speaker 3: school wearing the kind of I think still a sort
Speaker 3: of colonial uniform. And I'm trying to trying to imagine
Speaker 3: you understanding as the world as you express it to
Speaker 3: us now, and imagining you also going through what you
Speaker 3: know children are now and our institutions go through, which
Speaker 3: is the sort of the wearing of the uniform. The maths.
Speaker 3: I mean, I imagine you you probably had to learn Afrikaans,
Speaker 3: for example. I know it was quite as I did.
Speaker 2: I'm part of that generation, and I can't imagine what that.
Speaker 4: Was like for you who.
Speaker 2: Has the soul that you do. There, let me put
Speaker 2: it like that, right right man?
Speaker 13: Of course, like what you're painting is definitely a back
Speaker 13: job for any child born in the early eighties. You know,
Speaker 13: Afrikaansas the second language, English as the first language, show
Speaker 13: home the mother tongue, completely excluded from curriculum, and even
Speaker 13: more Africaans, you know, at the backdrop of nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 13: way the previous generations had to think about mathematics, physics,
Speaker 13: biology inside of a foreign language. So these of course
Speaker 13: these problems that we inherit as people that come after.
Speaker 13: I think that's partly why maybe scholarship became a thing
Speaker 13: for me. I remember when I went to study music,
Speaker 13: and part of what I thought was really at a
Speaker 13: kind of fresh repertoire of songs and songs having to
Speaker 13: do with cosmological happenings was in the university scene as
Speaker 13: being musical illitate, So in other words, it was rendered
Speaker 13: outside of the center that had geermany.
Speaker 2: It was peripherial.
Speaker 13: So as a result, I had to do what they
Speaker 13: called a foundation here or a bridging course for people
Speaker 13: that had no musical background. So you can see already
Speaker 13: from that moment that the kinds of violence that come
Speaker 13: with curriculum, and curriculum.
Speaker 2: That ignores other types of knowing in the world.
Speaker 13: So I think, of course, by extension, this is why
Speaker 13: I would later consider doing my PhD and being in
Speaker 13: the university. Since two thousand and six, I've always been there,
Speaker 13: not for the university actually, but that there is a
Speaker 13: necessity to protest such a system, and we've been doing
Speaker 13: that by way of presence and being there in the
Speaker 13: university and kind of pushing what we might think of
Speaker 13: as a university, which is maybe a future concept for
Speaker 13: thinking about a university that listens. So for instance, you
Speaker 13: find a university just at the back of Umkombine in Deben,
Speaker 13: but that has no connection to the epistemologies of the
Speaker 13: people in un Combine. So a puriversity as an intervention
Speaker 13: will be maybe a future university or a future poliversity
Speaker 13: that will understand that there are multiple ways of thinking
Speaker 13: about truth and get away from this singularity of truth
Speaker 13: and this notion of the universal as a Eurocentric paradigm
Speaker 13: by extension in forming curriculum. So part of why we
Speaker 13: are in the university is because of all of those
Speaker 13: sufferings and feeling that there is nothing said about my
Speaker 13: people in curriculum or even in the history and our
Speaker 13: history of cousin South Africa in those years we're studying
Speaker 13: from the arrival of Janfandrik in the Cape sixteen fifty two.
Speaker 13: So that's already problematic because it suggests that our history
Speaker 13: starts from when it gets hijacked. So these are some
Speaker 13: of the things that are you know, not explicitly music
Speaker 13: how but that the music is taying to speak to Actually.
Speaker 3: We are speaking to Indiduzu Makatini this evening, the pianist
Speaker 3: and composer and academic So many more questions to come intodus,
Speaker 3: especially about your thesis at eight minute state the.
Speaker 14: Money Show, Stephen Kuetas is brought to you by absurs
Speaker 14: cib Cloud, sponsor of the Sarah Rail Conference twenty twenty
Speaker 14: five Powering Progress, Connecting Economies.
Speaker 3: We're speaking tonight, Induduzual Macatini, the pianist and composer and
Speaker 3: academic introduser.
Speaker 2: You're a PhD.
Speaker 3: The title is breaking into sound this dash locating or
Speaker 3: this forward slash dislocating in true cosmology and improvisation in
Speaker 3: South African Jazz. And I just wondered if I could ask,
Speaker 3: maybe if we remove some of the academic language, what
Speaker 3: you were actually examining.
Speaker 13: Right well, in the simplest way, the argument is that
Speaker 13: there isn't a way of reaching sound without consulting the
Speaker 13: very worldview or cosmology as it were, in which the
Speaker 13: peasant kind of imagines.
Speaker 2: So in the end, my argument was that.
Speaker 13: The current readings of music, or current readings of jazz
Speaker 13: in particular, have always kind of ignored a much broader
Speaker 13: paradigm of thought, that is, the Badu people the GUNI
Speaker 13: people as a kind of place of departure for thinking
Speaker 13: about sound as a result.
Speaker 2: Of being in the world.
Speaker 13: So essentially, yeah, I kind of bring forward this idea
Speaker 13: that when I was growing up, we did not call
Speaker 13: it music making, but we called it breaking into sound.
Speaker 13: And if we call it breaking into sound, there is
Speaker 13: a thinking about the break. A break is something that releases,
Speaker 13: so in other words, sound as as as in this
Speaker 13: way understood as a manifestation of something that's already there.
Speaker 2: So you're breaking into something that's already there.
Speaker 13: So that's like kind of a very kind of summarized
Speaker 13: way of it and trying to think, like you said,
Speaker 13: outside of academics, non of theory and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I grew up listening to rock music
Speaker 3: and so so that you know, if I hear Elvis
Speaker 3: that lands in a particular way, and maybe you're describing
Speaker 3: that with different words precisely, Yeah, I want to I
Speaker 3: want to ask when you perform, you the way in
Speaker 3: which you think and speak in English about music is
Speaker 3: one thing. When you perform your music and music, I
Speaker 3: don't I mean, you're using different terms, right, Like it's
Speaker 3: a different thing. It's not the kind of formal way
Speaker 3: in which you're describing it. Now you're you're you're feeling
Speaker 3: it differently, right.
Speaker 2: Well precisely.
Speaker 13: I think it's you know, the world doesn't know enough
Speaker 13: about how critical African languages are already, So in a sense,
Speaker 13: I think it's very critical, just not in the register
Speaker 13: that has hegemonized what critical thought is. So for instance,
Speaker 13: if we listen to Wapa chemisty or mam Muslimshongo, who
Speaker 13: would be understood as like kind of maskandapen artists, there's
Speaker 13: so much critical thoughts that's happening there. It's just happening
Speaker 13: in seazuol uh and and it's for me, it's it's
Speaker 13: kind of strange how we don't associate indigenous ness and intellectualism.
Speaker 2: It's a thing that I'm grappling with every day.
Speaker 13: But I am trying to say that even without the
Speaker 13: English language, these things are still critical.
Speaker 2: They produce a way for inquiry and me kind of protesting.
Speaker 13: The singing in English is one of those ways to
Speaker 13: say that when these things are explained in English, they
Speaker 13: are mystery presented and they are kind of richusd actually,
Speaker 13: and there's a lot of violence of translation.
Speaker 2: So these are some of the things.
Speaker 13: So playing that music and singing that language already as
Speaker 13: a modality for protest, we've.
Speaker 3: Got literally twenty seconds. It must be different when you
Speaker 3: performing your music overseas in front of audiences that are
Speaker 3: in South Africa.
Speaker 2: It is definitely different.
Speaker 13: I've been thinking more and more about how the music
Speaker 13: itself is a relation of philopresis. What it means is
Speaker 13: that the music looks into cosmological premodial systems, which means
Speaker 13: they go beyond race. For instance, these are things that
Speaker 13: humanity should remember. What I've been thinking.
Speaker 2: About more and more is that the end of the
Speaker 2: world won't.
Speaker 13: Be destruction of buildings and all of that, but the
Speaker 13: end of the world will be when humanity stops sensing
Speaker 13: and we're seeing that a lot and a lot more.
Speaker 13: And I mean to that point, I've just put out
Speaker 13: like a tiny concept that really speaks about these things.
Speaker 13: So if people want to hear more of these I
Speaker 13: have a reflection on that tiny desk concept.
Speaker 2: People can go and watch that.
Speaker 3: Interdusio Marcatini, thank you so much. It's been a wonderful
Speaker 3: time with you this evening.