Speaker 1: And now The Money Show with Stephen Credits on seven
Speaker 1: oh two.
Speaker 2: Let's walk little. The Money Show with Stephen Curtis is
Speaker 2: brought to you by Absence CIB, proud sponsor of the
Speaker 2: Sarah Rail Conference twenty twenty five Powering Progress, Connecting Economies.
Speaker 2: Good evening, eight minutes after six. I'm Stephen Curtis, Welcome
Speaker 2: to The Money Show. Well, a big results day as
Speaker 2: we have at this season, lots of results from companies
Speaker 2: who's financially ends at the end of June. So we
Speaker 2: will speak to the CEO of Advest in a few
Speaker 2: moments in pummiu Medisa will speak to the CEO, the
Speaker 2: chief financial officer rather at santem Vicas Uilafir. Also tonight
Speaker 2: we will hear from Paul Crookshank, the CEO of RCL Foods.
Speaker 2: Plenty of other news about as well in ours little mittal.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the most important does look now according to various
Speaker 2: reports today that their CEO has basically written to workers
Speaker 2: and said I'm sorry, but we are going to close
Speaker 2: up at their Newcastle business. And that's after and you
Speaker 2: heard it last week the Industrial Development Corporation giving them
Speaker 2: one point seven billion Rand and then money. We're reporting
Speaker 2: today that last week Nursa basically said to Escam you
Speaker 2: have to give Arsenal Mattel cheaper electricity. And Eskham said, well,
Speaker 2: that means that consumers they mean you when they say consumers,
Speaker 2: by the way, that consumers will have to pay more
Speaker 2: to subsidize that. Nurse I went, well, yes, we know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, a lot going on, and when you try
Speaker 2: and manage industrial policy like that, you want to intervene.
Speaker 2: I understand the pressure. You want to protect. You want
Speaker 2: to save jobs, you want to save livelihoods. In some cases,
Speaker 2: you want to save communities, dependence. There's a lot riding
Speaker 2: on it all, and yet you also kind of almost
Speaker 2: intervene in hope that the underlying problems, maybe the steel
Speaker 2: price will go up, or transmit will get attacked together
Speaker 2: or something, and it doesn't happen. At some point, you
Speaker 2: do have to cut your losses, you do have to
Speaker 2: stop just plowing money into something. Either way, though still,
Speaker 2: I think for a lot of people will be very,
Speaker 2: very sad. And I was listening back today. You may
Speaker 2: remember a conversation we had with Saul Levin about it
Speaker 2: a while ago. He suggested, actually our longer term industry
Speaker 2: won't be that bad the effected. We'll get another view
Speaker 2: on that tonight as well with David. With Donald McKay,
Speaker 2: he's the expert on trade, and just have a conversation
Speaker 2: with him about how government maybe could have done more,
Speaker 2: maybe should have done less, depending on how you view
Speaker 2: these things. So a very interesting conversation that'll be in
Speaker 2: about an hour's time. Also tonight, the latest on the
Speaker 2: situation around blue label telecoms. We know that they're going
Speaker 2: to list sel C. That'll mean that all four of
Speaker 2: our cell phone networks are finally and sort of suddenly
Speaker 2: listed on the JAC, but all sorts of issues around
Speaker 2: as cel C. There's a sort of strange kind of
Speaker 2: dynamic in cell phone networks. It's called the third operator.
Speaker 2: So the first two in our case we are Voticomon MTN,
Speaker 2: cel C was the third and Telcom was the fourth.
Speaker 2: And what happens in many other markets is what's happened here.
Speaker 2: The first and second of fine, they usually start together.
Speaker 2: The fourth is okay, something happens to the very complicated
Speaker 2: economic reasons behind it, as I understand it, But we'll
Speaker 2: get into that in about forty five minutes from now
Speaker 2: with Duncan McLeod from tech Central. I don't know how
Speaker 2: you feel about yourself a network. Do you love them,
Speaker 2: do you hate them? Do you not really care? Do
Speaker 2: you treat them as a bank? Do you try and
Speaker 2: avoid them and use Wi Fi to make voice calls? What'sapp?
Speaker 2: Cause wherever you can, I know you'll have a view
Speaker 2: on O double one double A three seven O two
Speaker 2: and two one four four six O five six seven,
Speaker 2: and also your thoughts on Arsenal Mittle and the kind
Speaker 2: of policies that we should be following. Voice notes tonight
Speaker 2: on seven two seven oh two one seven O two
Speaker 2: two is on the Money Shows six to eight pm. Well,
Speaker 2: the conglomerate Bidvest confirming today that while its revenue is
Speaker 2: up by five percent for the year to the end
Speaker 2: of June, it's profits are up by just one percent.
Speaker 2: It's been hit hard by a big decrease in bulk
Speaker 2: exports for its freight division. Its commercial units profits were
Speaker 2: also down, as were the contributions to the business from
Speaker 2: mistaken at Ingrament of course is about to be delisted. Well,
Speaker 2: the CEO at Bitvest is put me medcent, put me
Speaker 2: good evening, Thanks for your time, Good to talk to
Speaker 2: you again your freight division having an impact on your
Speaker 2: bottom line. You say there's a decline in bulk exports.
Speaker 2: What's leading to that change? Do you think?
Speaker 3: Good evening, Stephen, and thanks for the opportunity to just
Speaker 3: talk through the results. So yes, So, I mean we've
Speaker 3: seen a decline in bulk commodity volumes. It started in
Speaker 3: the first half of the year and has continued into
Speaker 3: the second half, and it's sitting in two places. So
Speaker 3: bulk grain volumes are down, They're down on average about
Speaker 3: eighty three percent, so that's significant for us. And then
Speaker 3: on the bulk commodity side, we're also seeing a decline
Speaker 3: in bulk commodity volumes, driven by pricing and also just
Speaker 3: some of the inefficiencies we have in the system in
Speaker 3: terms of being able to move product. We also saw
Speaker 3: that bulk commodity were were also down in Mozambique, so
Speaker 3: not just in South Africa, but in our Mozambique operations,
Speaker 3: and that contraction in freight is about ten percent, and
Speaker 3: freight is our second largest division. So when the freight
Speaker 3: division doesn't perform and you're seeing that kind of contraction,
Speaker 3: it does have a material impact overall.
Speaker 2: In the numbers grain, your grain sort of movements, your
Speaker 2: grain volumes that you were transporting with down eighty three percent,
Speaker 2: that people choose other options. I know the grain harvest
Speaker 2: was done, the next one's expected to be up dramatically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's primarily Mays and it's Mays export volumes,
Speaker 3: and the maze export program didn't materialize in the way
Speaker 3: that it normally does. We are going back to cyclicality
Speaker 3: that we've seen kind of in pre COVID times. But
Speaker 3: it's also just a function of demand, right, So the
Speaker 3: demand for our local maze just hasn't been there. And
Speaker 3: it's also a function of pricing, and there's always a
Speaker 3: window and timing in terms of when our maze export moves.
Speaker 3: The pricing must be right, the timing must be right,
Speaker 3: and the yield or the crop size must be right,
Speaker 3: and we just missed all of those and so there
Speaker 3: was just a significant amount of May. So the maze
Speaker 3: is there as the farmers are sitting with it. It's
Speaker 3: a storage, it's not moving and if it's not moving
Speaker 3: through the ports, we don't handle it, Stephen. And so
Speaker 3: if we don't handle it, the zero income coming through,
Speaker 3: and we've got a fixed infrastructure through our terminals.
Speaker 2: Sure, your commercial Products division revenues were also down there
Speaker 2: where is that suffering the most?
Speaker 3: So the main reason is in two areas. The first
Speaker 3: one is renewable product sales. During load shedding, we experienced
Speaker 3: a significant spike and renewable cells. So in around the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three financial year when we had significant load
Speaker 3: shedding and blackouts, the renewable cells just climbed significantly, and
Speaker 3: so that base is very high. We've got more consistent
Speaker 3: power today and we really just working through what has
Speaker 3: been an extremely high base. And so that contraction and
Speaker 3: volume plus a contraction and margin is where it impacted
Speaker 3: Commercial Products and the balance of the portfolio. You know, Steve,
Speaker 3: what I mean. We haven't had infrastructure spend in South
Speaker 3: Africa in our long time, and this division is reliant
Speaker 3: on infrastructure spend, construction, municipal spend and that kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: and we haven't seen it come through. So overall the
Speaker 3: market has been quite subdued, and we've also just seen
Speaker 3: a contraction in the balance of the portfolio. And so
Speaker 3: the Commercial Products is done quite significantly at around minus
Speaker 3: twenty eight percent, So that division did perform below expectation.
Speaker 2: Your Services South Africa apartment, do you report strong inbound
Speaker 2: leisure travel? You also sold a lot more coffee at
Speaker 2: airports on notist for me, are you seeing a lot
Speaker 2: more business from tourism? I mean, are those numbers picking
Speaker 2: up more people coming into South Africa one hundred percent?
Speaker 3: So in tourism is extremely buoyant. South Africa remains a
Speaker 3: destination that foreign travelers want to come to, and so
Speaker 3: when you see those volumes go up, we attach those
Speaker 3: volumes whether at the airport, in a hotel, at a restaurant,
Speaker 3: wherever that traveler may be. And so travel and tourism
Speaker 3: remains strong, and not just from a historical perspectives, even
Speaker 3: in terms of our if I twenty five results, but
Speaker 3: we can see the forward book about six months out
Speaker 3: and the forward bookings in terms of endbound travel also
Speaker 3: remain strong. So the travel and tourism industry is holding
Speaker 3: its own. It's one of the industries in South Africa
Speaker 3: that I would put up there in terms of economic growth.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you have this kind of level
Speaker 2: of detail to hand, but is it mostly going to
Speaker 2: Keeton or some other parts of the country getting some
Speaker 2: of that as well, I.
Speaker 3: Don't have it in that kind of granular detail, but
Speaker 3: I think you can make a couple of assumptions, right
Speaker 3: because it's leisure travels, So people would be going to
Speaker 3: the bush, they would definitely be going to Cape Town,
Speaker 3: they would definitely going to the Wineless, they would definitely
Speaker 3: be going to the beaches because it's leisure, right, So
Speaker 3: you could kind of make some assumptions around the spread,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't specifically say x percentage going to these
Speaker 3: parts of the country.
Speaker 2: Sure, at Cock Ingram, you're going to delist it. They've
Speaker 2: had a very poor year. Their second half was better
Speaker 2: than their first half. Is this the right time to
Speaker 2: sort of be delisting and going through that process taking
Speaker 2: much closer control of that company up as you?
Speaker 3: Yes, it is. I mean a delisted at Cock is
Speaker 3: much easier to manage, less regulatory obligations, bring it closer
Speaker 3: to home, and really run it the way that we
Speaker 3: run our as a subsidiaries. We're excited about the potential
Speaker 3: partner that we have in Antco Pharma. There are a
Speaker 3: large global pharmaceutical business. We think that they're going to
Speaker 3: bring a lot of value in terms of how we
Speaker 3: can kind of increase and spread our offering, particularly within
Speaker 3: our prescription division. So we're looking for forward to the expertise,
Speaker 3: the kind of direct farmer global expertise they'll be bringing in.
Speaker 3: Netcore also has ambitions for the continent more generally, so
Speaker 3: we will also be having a conversation around which areas
Speaker 3: does it make sense for Adcock to drive that continental
Speaker 3: growth versus Netco driving that continental growth thenselves directly, so
Speaker 3: great upside with having that kind of shareholder in the room.
Speaker 3: And then we still believe that there's probably more synergies
Speaker 3: to unlock just between the two businesses, between Bidwest and
Speaker 3: at Cock. So we are really looking forward to getting
Speaker 3: our hands around the business and running it in a delisted.
Speaker 2: Environment imputing MEDISA. Thanks so much, Sore Bidvest really do
Speaker 2: appreciate the time. Tonight's on The Money Show eighteen after six.
Speaker 1: The Money Show on seven OTO Monday till Friday, fixed
Speaker 1: to a PM.
Speaker 2: Big change is coming for the insurance group Suntum. They're
Speaker 2: setting up a syndicate with Lloyd's of London. It'll give
Speaker 2: them more international exposure obviously. Also strong earnings are today
Speaker 2: their earnings share up by nineteen percent in the six
Speaker 2: months to the end of June, because earlier here the
Speaker 2: chief financial officer at SUNTM good Evening. Obviously you'll move
Speaker 2: to Lloyd's in London. An important first step. What kind
Speaker 2: of insurance operation do you want to set up?
Speaker 4: Good Evening and good grieving to the business as well.
Speaker 4: So yes, Sir, Lloyds is a key part of our
Speaker 4: international growth and diversification strategy that we're driving. So at
Speaker 4: the moment we already do business outside of South Africa
Speaker 4: through our santam rebusiness as well as our special solutions business.
Speaker 4: So Lloyd's is really complementary to those two areas. But
Speaker 4: the focus will be on specialist lines of business including
Speaker 4: for example, property, corporate property, marine liability, et cetera. And
Speaker 4: also geographically focus at more globally and in other markets.
Speaker 4: And then we we operate today.
Speaker 2: We've seen other big South African companies do this in
Speaker 2: the past. It hasn't always ended so well because I mean,
Speaker 2: are you confident you have the expertise, the people, the
Speaker 2: share experience of those markets to make it work.
Speaker 4: Yes, definitely. So for us, it's important that we grow
Speaker 4: in areas where we've got the skill set. So within
Speaker 4: these specialist lines of business. We've got big market shas
Speaker 4: in Africa, in South Africa as well, and it's where
Speaker 4: we've really been successful over many many years. So for us,
Speaker 4: it's about exploring those areas that we know, growing where
Speaker 4: we know, and not into adventure into unknown areas for us,
Speaker 4: but been very important as well as to make sure
Speaker 4: that you also bring in very good skills. Set's also
Speaker 4: got London experience in specifically Lloyd's experience as well, so
Speaker 4: we are now focused on bringing in those skills because
Speaker 4: that will be very important for us to be successful
Speaker 4: within the Lloyds market.
Speaker 2: You say all parts of the business did well during
Speaker 2: the period, they all contributed alternative risk transfer, increased their
Speaker 2: profits by twenty eight percent. How does that business work?
Speaker 2: Why is it doing quite so well at the moment.
Speaker 4: So the alternative restaurants or businesses effectively what we call
Speaker 4: a sell insurance business. So that's effectively helping people that
Speaker 4: want to self insure first of all, the big corporates
Speaker 4: for multinational businesses that doesn't want to go through traditional
Speaker 4: insurance business but rather to do their own self insurance
Speaker 4: through a insurance sell. But then secondly we also do
Speaker 4: businesses with partners that's got an existing client base that's
Speaker 4: non insurance, but then want to sell insurance with into
Speaker 4: that base, and they will typically then also do at
Speaker 4: times those arrangements through a irt cell. And what we
Speaker 4: effectively from a revenue perspective and from that type of
Speaker 4: business is fee income based on the administration services that
Speaker 4: we provide for for them, and we also earn investment
Speaker 4: margin on the assets that we manage on behalf of clients.
Speaker 4: And then certainly in some cases we will also participate
Speaker 4: on the insurance business that they do right within those cells.
Speaker 4: So those are the kind of the three biggest revenue
Speaker 4: lines for for us within alternative risk transfer business.
Speaker 2: One of the main reasons here such a good year
Speaker 2: was that there were no weather catastrophes during the period,
Speaker 2: because are you changing your underwriting techniques to manage what
Speaker 2: does seem to be more extreme, whether more weather related
Speaker 2: catastrophes more often.
Speaker 4: Yes, definitely. So although the first off of this year
Speaker 4: we didn't see major weather e light catar trophic, it
Speaker 4: is something that we do expect to come through in future.
Speaker 4: We've seen weather conditions being much more vault out over
Speaker 4: the last number of years, so we are specifically focused
Speaker 4: on initiatives such as our dee coding initiative, which really
Speaker 4: looks at the specific location of each and every property
Speaker 4: that we ensure and what is specific risk exposures around
Speaker 4: that that property, including risk of flooding. Is it, for example,
Speaker 4: close to waterways, but also from a fire res perspective,
Speaker 4: to look at what are the specific risks and then
Speaker 4: based on that deciding whether we want to accept the
Speaker 4: risk or what is the appropriate pricing for from a
Speaker 4: premium perspective for that risk. We've also expanded our surveying
Speaker 4: which makes sure that from a client's perspective, they make
Speaker 4: sure that I've got the n necessary preventative measures in place,
Speaker 4: for example sprinter systems, and that those are also being
Speaker 4: being maintained. So all of those are just some of
Speaker 4: the examples of how we managed to increase risk associated
Speaker 4: with property in particular.
Speaker 2: So are there some places sort of in South Africa
Speaker 2: where you may just say we're not going to ensure
Speaker 2: that it's just not worth it. If you've had two
Speaker 2: floods in that part of cases, then in the last years,
Speaker 2: we're not going to ensure you.
Speaker 4: It's it's definitely the case of our regions or our
Speaker 4: region areas that way will be excluded is very much
Speaker 4: property specific. So we have property is located, for example,
Speaker 4: within the flood zone. There's been numerous floods and then
Speaker 4: there's really nothing that can be done from a risk
Speaker 4: mitigation perspective. We might decide not to write a business
Speaker 4: and in simpler case, if you can't charge enough premium
Speaker 4: to compensate for the risk. But those are really except
Speaker 4: and if I haven't at any case where we are
Speaker 4: had to exclude ah municipality area for example, to say
Speaker 4: that it's not insurable anymore, it's very much property and
Speaker 4: case by kay specific.
Speaker 2: Because Olivia thanks very much. Indeed, chief financial officer at
Speaker 2: some time, really do appreciate the time twenty five minutes
Speaker 2: now after six o'clock on the Money Show, the Money Show,
Speaker 2: the market Cerm Batters and investment analysts at the old
Speaker 2: mutual investment groups here, good evening as sometime results having
Speaker 2: some good weather helps.
Speaker 5: Good evening, Stephen most certainly really great results are today
Speaker 5: of the insurance they share. Prices largely sat slightly down,
Speaker 5: so it's not too bad. And I mean as an investor,
Speaker 5: you could effectively think of Sntown as South Africa's safety
Speaker 5: in it. You would have heard earlier. They don't necessarily
Speaker 5: sell your cars or houses, but they they protect them
Speaker 5: and sometime has reports some strong results headline earnings up
Speaker 5: about twenty percent as well as basic earnings up about
Speaker 5: nineteen percent. So really grateless out there. And the key
Speaker 5: job behind this was the conventional insurance underwriting margin which
Speaker 5: was at eleven percent, So this was way ahead of
Speaker 5: management chargeet range of five to ten percent and way
Speaker 5: ahead of market expectations as well. And the CLAMS ratio
Speaker 5: definitely did help, and that was driven by the nine
Speaker 5: weather events. So the calms rasia sets at about fifty six percent,
Speaker 5: and this is the best or the lowest calms rasia
Speaker 5: we've seen since I've been alive. So I won't give
Speaker 5: away my age, but it's it's been about thirty years roughly.
Speaker 5: And yeah, effectively less people are claiming, and when less
Speaker 5: people are claiming insurance collective opinions.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. Bidvest, What did you make of the
Speaker 2: conversation that we had with the CEO. I mean it
Speaker 2: seems to me that I mean, it's such a big
Speaker 2: sort of company. They do so many different things and
Speaker 2: yet there are one or two problems that maybe are
Speaker 2: outside their control, but certainly.
Speaker 5: As with most businesses, it is psychical though are exposed
Speaker 5: to elements within the economy. But what I love about business,
Speaker 5: it's a phenomenal business. It actually sits within.
Speaker 3: The better quality buckets. It's quite a diversified.
Speaker 5: Business model, and you can almost think of businates as
Speaker 5: the ultimate behind the scenes operators. So if you eat
Speaker 5: at a hospital canteen, there's a good.
Speaker 3: Chance that Bidvest caters to it.
Speaker 5: If you've been to a stadium, they typically are responsible
Speaker 5: for cleaning after the matches. Or if you've been to
Speaker 5: a car dealership and you've changed a spare part, most
Speaker 5: likely they've handled the logistics of those parts. So it's
Speaker 5: quite a diversified business model. So I think that's what
Speaker 5: that's that's been a great point. But if I look
Speaker 5: at the most recent results, the key thing there group
Speaker 5: earnings under pressure really driven by the contraction within freights,
Speaker 5: so that was about ten percent, and.
Speaker 3: Then within the commit social products.
Speaker 5: But outside of that, despite the decline in earnings, you've
Speaker 5: got strong cash generation coming through, which I think the
Speaker 5: testament to the strength of the business as well as
Speaker 5: the management team and going forward, I think the focus
Speaker 5: is then on organic growth. So they've done quite a
Speaker 5: number of acquisitions within the last year and it's all
Speaker 5: about integrating those acquisitions and getting good dis synergies from those.
Speaker 5: So really a great business overalls.
Speaker 2: Some international and a statement out from them today they
Speaker 2: expect headline earnings to be up by nearly sixty percent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, quite substantial, So I think the key thing to
Speaker 5: differentiate there is basic earnings per share, so those they
Speaker 5: are expected to decline between about eight to eleven percent,
Speaker 5: and headline earning, so those are driven by one source
Speaker 5: or non cash items. But I think that the statement
Speaker 5: is a bit the training update rather was a bit vague,
Speaker 5: so we we didn't receive much detail on the drivers.
Speaker 5: But the important thing there that the balance sheet is stable,
Speaker 5: so they're currently edward in a half times debt to
Speaker 5: EBIT dark which is great because that's below the covenants.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I'm fully excited to see the results that
Speaker 5: are being released next with Monday.
Speaker 2: I mean Harmony the gold miner. They seem to be
Speaker 2: getting the go ahead from shareholders in Australia to buy
Speaker 2: the mine, the copper mine.
Speaker 5: Yes, so nothing new there, nothing, nothing.
Speaker 3: Too exciting.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so they've received an they've received approval for
Speaker 5: the sale of one hundred percent of the shared to
Speaker 5: Harmony Gold. And you know, we've already received regulatory approval
Speaker 5: from the SAAB which was in the fifth of August,
Speaker 5: as well as the Australian FIRB which is in the
Speaker 5: nineteenth of August. And so with way to the final
Speaker 5: court sanction which is to be heard on the ninth
Speaker 5: of October, and hopefully this is computed by the end
Speaker 5: of October this year what was expected to be computed
Speaker 5: by the yeah, October. And I think what's interesting about
Speaker 5: the asset, it's really a high grade, long life underground
Speaker 5: copper operation. And the great thing about it is that
Speaker 5: it's casual, positive from day one, so in needed contribution
Speaker 5: to group earning. It's high grade, low costs, and I
Speaker 5: think it plays in with the theme around decarbonization. The
Speaker 5: nd transition really diversifying Harney Goldf's portfolio, shifting away from
Speaker 5: the volatility of gold towards.
Speaker 2: Copper, Siera and Baruta. Thanks very much, indeed, investment analyst
Speaker 2: at the old Neutral Investment Group, bringing the time on
Speaker 2: the money show to six point thirty All.
Speaker 1: The Laney Show with Stephen Cruds Live on ninety two
Speaker 1: point seven and one six FM, streaming on the Prime
Speaker 1: Media Plus NAP and DStv channel eight five six.
Speaker 2: Seventeen minutes to seven the time on the Money Show.
Speaker 2: Good Evening. Our CL Food's reporting today their headline earnings
Speaker 2: up by nearly twenty nine percent in the year to
Speaker 2: the end of June, despite their revenue from continuing operations
Speaker 2: up by only one point eight percent. The baking division
Speaker 2: seems to have made a strong turnaround. Still issues though,
Speaker 2: around the price of sugar and the impact of sugar imports.
Speaker 2: Paul Crookshank is the CEO at RCL Foods. Paul, good Evening,
Speaker 2: Your baking business increased revenue but just one point eight percent,
Speaker 2: But your underlying ebadar of that business was it nearly
Speaker 2: fifty five percent. How were you able to do that?
Speaker 6: Evening, Stephen, And thanks for having me again this evening.
Speaker 6: And yeah, it's been a very good use for baking
Speaker 6: And please for the team because they put a lot
Speaker 6: of effort in the last eighteen months to prepare for
Speaker 6: this financial year. And you write revenues are very muted.
Speaker 6: Volume is under pressure in most categories. There are some
Speaker 6: areas within baking which volume has improved, But we've focused
Speaker 6: very much in the last twelve months on costs and
Speaker 6: that are in our control and really managed to eke
Speaker 6: out across the whole of baking some significant cost savings
Speaker 6: through a number of initiatives across all our facilities.
Speaker 2: Was some of that finding a way to get out
Speaker 2: of eskim, I mean, are you using other forms of electricity?
Speaker 2: I presume you need quite a lot of it.
Speaker 6: We do need a lot of it, so we you know,
Speaker 6: in our sugar business we produce power, but unfortunately quant
Speaker 6: wheel it all the way through to our plants in
Speaker 6: the heartfelt so no, some of the cost savings that
Speaker 6: came through would have been lower amounts of diesel as
Speaker 6: a consequence of less floationing that's before, But the bulk
Speaker 6: of it would be in initiatives which we which we've
Speaker 6: done ourselves, but we don't generate our own power at
Speaker 6: many of the facilities.
Speaker 2: In the cutting some of your baking product volumes grew.
Speaker 2: You say, are people buying more of your product? Is
Speaker 2: that because other food might be more expensive? Could you
Speaker 2: maybe rather be taking market share from some of your competitors.
Speaker 6: So in the areas in which we volumes improved in bakings,
Speaker 6: mainly in our powers and specialty operating operating units, and
Speaker 6: it's difficult to measure marketing there. We sell most of
Speaker 6: our paths into four courts and specialty service most of
Speaker 6: warwis products, so we saw some last volume upticks there,
Speaker 6: and bread remains a challenge market We certainly not stealing
Speaker 6: share from anybody, and pricing parity in bread is actually
Speaker 6: an issue and remain so. Although the bread part of
Speaker 6: the business did improve over the prior year, but we
Speaker 6: comfortable that our market shares are remaining pretty much intact
Speaker 6: across most of the business. One or two areas where
Speaker 6: we'll be under pressure, but overall peace with the shareholding up.
Speaker 2: Your sugar business revenue was down slightly, I mean by slightly,
Speaker 2: I mean by less than one percent, so a tiny fraction.
Speaker 2: But is your business is that section of your business
Speaker 2: under a little bit of pressure? Is there a lot
Speaker 2: of important sugar coming in?
Speaker 6: So Stephen, let me starts with that business that performed
Speaker 6: brilliantly in the last few years, record results four years
Speaker 6: in a row, and even this result is still a
Speaker 6: very hard result. I think it's the fourth highest in
Speaker 6: the business of history. So very peace of the performance
Speaker 6: is imports. There's no question. Imports started to come in
Speaker 6: in the last quarter of our financial year and continue
Speaker 6: to come in now, and it's all linked to the
Speaker 6: dollar based reference price and tariff that's in place, which
Speaker 6: is now not strong enough to protect the imports from
Speaker 6: coming in, and we do see some risk and headwinds there.
Speaker 6: Our tackle busy reviewing that tariff and we hope that
Speaker 6: in the next six to maybe eight or nine months
Speaker 6: that this is resolved and some additional protection is brought in.
Speaker 7: Otherwise there will.
Speaker 6: Be some risks to the sugar industry, and it's been
Speaker 6: through quite a time in the last five or six years,
Speaker 6: so we don't need any any more pressure. But back
Speaker 6: to your question, we still peaceful with our sugar performance.
Speaker 6: We think that they've performed well. And in sugar, what
Speaker 6: we really focus on is what we can control, which
Speaker 6: is costs and making sure that we crush our cane
Speaker 6: and get our production as sharp as we can.
Speaker 2: Where's the sugar coming from that's coming into the country.
Speaker 2: Obviously it's quite a lot of it for you to
Speaker 2: to go to itach.
Speaker 6: Not one hundred percential war. It's coming from probably probably Brazil,
Speaker 6: big sugar producer, and some of it can come out
Speaker 6: of India. You know, the international market and sugar is
Speaker 6: very buoyant, So most countries are protected, their local industries
Speaker 6: are protected and then the x the the the surplus
Speaker 6: production is then dumped onto the onto the intovarious international markets.
Speaker 6: Some of the countries convert some of their sugar into
Speaker 6: ethanol and depending on that praft, they will they will
Speaker 6: play the game.
Speaker 4: Of produce ethanol, produce sugar.
Speaker 6: So so if you if you take a relative scale
Speaker 6: the imports that have come in in the financial view
Speaker 6: on materially up on the prior and you know, the
Speaker 6: last few years that protection has actually worked very well
Speaker 6: for us, and so something for us to keep our
Speaker 6: eye on. In the next financial view.
Speaker 2: You grew your pet division and you've been focusing on
Speaker 2: premium brands, and we see some of the big retailers
Speaker 2: now going quite aggressively into pet food ped accessories. They're
Speaker 2: investing in that space, they're setting up their own sort
Speaker 2: of pets. Is that good for you to have a
Speaker 2: little bit of interest in that market.
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely. And we have a wide portfolio of brands
Speaker 6: that can play in various market segments and to the
Speaker 6: move into and we're very strong in retail. So there
Speaker 6: is there is some some risk to our business going forward,
Speaker 6: which we busy busy working through. But most important thing
Speaker 6: is the brand portfolio that we have that can play
Speaker 6: in those segments. So so retailer is moving into the
Speaker 6: into the speciality to what we call the speciality PET
Speaker 6: channel is a positive thing. They will certainly drive the
Speaker 6: category hard, which is what we're looking for from a
Speaker 6: growth perspective. But we quite well positioned in pet to
Speaker 6: pick up some of that additional volume should the category
Speaker 6: start to grow.
Speaker 2: I mean, our society, like others, has sort of changed
Speaker 2: the way it deals with sea spets in some households,
Speaker 2: I mean almost completely from sort of you know, dogs
Speaker 2: being fed scraps outside. I mean that still happens in many,
Speaker 2: many cases in South Africa to some you know literally
Speaker 2: easilyeping on a bed. There's a lot of opportunity there
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, and we were very strong in certain parts,
Speaker 6: particularly dry dog and cat is where we strong in
Speaker 6: the market. And it's quite a diverse market there. There's
Speaker 6: there's there's webbed food which is growing and big which
Speaker 6: which which we're in but very small in and and
Speaker 6: that's that. That's a part of the portfolio which we
Speaker 6: plan to grow out in the future.
Speaker 2: Poll Crookshank thanks very much. Indeed, the CEO at r
Speaker 2: CL Foods really appreciate the chat. I'm fascinated by how
Speaker 2: much money people spend on animals nowadays, and you do
Speaker 2: see it in all sorts of ways accessories. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 2: if you spend any time on social media, you'll probably
Speaker 2: see a cat video, but you'll probably also see someone
Speaker 2: being ridiculous with a you know, a dog and an
Speaker 2: aeroplane and first class travel or something like that. I'm
Speaker 2: not really talking about that. I'm talking about, you know,
Speaker 2: the special cushion or the specials or the special vat.
Speaker 2: Is there something you've brought your pet just because you
Speaker 2: know you'll like it, well, the pet will like it
Speaker 2: at the cat or the dog, and maybe something your
Speaker 2: parents or the generation before you would never have dreamed
Speaker 2: of doing. He still one of those who think that
Speaker 2: dogs need to sleep outside. Double one, double A three
Speaker 2: oh seven oh two two one four four six five
Speaker 2: sixty seven.
Speaker 8: The Money Show, Stephen Kuetit is brought to you by
Speaker 8: appsir cib Cloud, sponsor of the Sarah Rail Conference twenty
Speaker 8: twenty five, Powering Progress, Connecting Economies.
Speaker 2: Well seven minutes now to seven the time. Blue Label
Speaker 2: Telecoms confirming today some of the technical details about how
Speaker 2: it's going to list sel C on the JC. There's
Speaker 2: debt of course to deal with, and all sorts of
Speaker 2: other issues as well. Duncan McLeod is the founder and
Speaker 2: editor at tech Central Dot s dot today at Duncan,
Speaker 2: good evening. I mean, some of it is very sort
Speaker 2: of technically financial. I suppose the bigger point is that
Speaker 2: selc's going to join the other cell phone networks on
Speaker 2: the JC.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's actually quite exciting, Stephen. We haven't it's quite
Speaker 7: a rare things don't have a major listing on the JFC,
Speaker 7: and even rareer still I think to have one in
Speaker 7: the tech sector. So it's quite exciting to have a
Speaker 7: tech listing coming up and one of this magnitude.
Speaker 2: This is a very difficult question, but is SELC a
Speaker 2: good investment at the moment? I mean, when it came
Speaker 2: into the market, was the third operator promised big things
Speaker 2: struggled for a little while. I remember Ellen not Craig
Speaker 2: of all people, took it over for a while and
Speaker 2: made some big changes, made some big noise. I still
Speaker 2: remember there sort of five gigabytes special which seemed amazing
Speaker 2: at the time. Then it seemed to sort of run
Speaker 2: into a bit of trouble again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it did.
Speaker 7: The problem SELCA has had since its sounding really is
Speaker 7: that was a later entrant to the market. It launched
Speaker 7: about six or seven years after Votcom and MTN had
Speaker 7: already established themselves in the market and built national networks.
Speaker 7: So it came along as a late comer, and I
Speaker 7: didn't have the deep pockets of its larger rivals, and
Speaker 7: so it struggled to compete on infrastructure and to deploy
Speaker 7: infrastructure across the country at the sort of scale of
Speaker 7: Voticon and MTN. And it's always struggled in that in
Speaker 7: that regard and tried to compete, but in trying it
Speaker 7: got itself into huge debt, tens of billions of random
Speaker 7: a hole it dug for itself, and it's had to
Speaker 7: go through a number of recapitalizations over the years to
Speaker 7: prevent it from going going to the wall. It's actually
Speaker 7: Amicable's business is still around, given the difficulties it's been
Speaker 7: through over the years, and I think it probably just
Speaker 7: shows the tenacity of the Levi brothers who run Blue Label,
Speaker 7: that they have actually saved this thing. It's you know
Speaker 7: that that death problem has been a noose around its
Speaker 7: neck for decades. And I think what we're seeing here
Speaker 7: with the proposed restructuring and these transactions that we're announced today,
Speaker 7: if they go ahead, they will once and for all,
Speaker 7: it seems, finally deal with self siise balance sheet, and
Speaker 7: that will put it in a much stronger position and
Speaker 7: make it a lot more attractive to potential investors ahead
Speaker 7: of the listing, So we could we could see an
Speaker 7: interesting listing here.
Speaker 2: I mean what that would mean then is suddenly it
Speaker 2: would be able to almost compete with both hands, the
Speaker 2: way the albatross around his neck will be gone. And
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think it could then start to
Speaker 2: challenge We had a very interesting time in the telecom space.
Speaker 7: We are indeed, and you know, they've got a new
Speaker 7: operating model which is very interesting. They're doing something no
Speaker 7: one else in the market is doing, and that's that
Speaker 7: they don't operate their own radio access network anymore. That
Speaker 7: means they don't own the sort of the network that
Speaker 7: connects the base stations to the customers. They've outsourced that
Speaker 7: to their network partner's empty and voticoms. It's an interesting
Speaker 7: sort of coopetition model. They've got strong agreements in place
Speaker 7: with both empt and and verticom and so they adopted
Speaker 7: what they call a capex light model, so they no
Speaker 7: longer have to invest the billions around every year to
Speaker 7: try and keep up with VOTCOMY and EMPTN and deploying
Speaker 7: four G and five G and later sixteen networks. They
Speaker 7: can ride all f that infrastructure using their own spectrum
Speaker 7: from Ecasystare. But it's a new model, which is capex light,
Speaker 7: and which should prevent them, hopefully from getting into the
Speaker 7: sort of debt problems that they've experienced in the past.
Speaker 7: So this is a very different business to the selfia
Speaker 7: we've seen historically, and this should position it well if
Speaker 7: they If they're smart in the way they package their
Speaker 7: products and come to market with well priced and good
Speaker 7: products that consumers are interested in, they could indeed carve
Speaker 7: out a good niche for themselves. I think they've got
Speaker 7: a probably about ten or twelve percent of the market
Speaker 7: at the moment, and we could see that expanding in
Speaker 7: the coming years if they box cleverly against the empty
Speaker 7: and Voticom and Telcom. But of course those are also
Speaker 7: very strong competitors and they're not going to want self
Speaker 7: coming along and eating their lunch. But SELFI is run
Speaker 7: by George Mendes now the CEO, and he's expert COOM.
Speaker 7: He's got a lot of experience in the TLCO space,
Speaker 7: and the management team is strong, So I think I
Speaker 7: think this business is actually looking quite.
Speaker 2: Good the future obviously for cell phones as data. I mean,
Speaker 2: so many people don't make any ordinary phone calls anymore,
Speaker 2: they just use WhatsApp. Does it make sense? I mean,
Speaker 2: is there an opportunity for someone in celse's position to
Speaker 2: just give up voice calls and concentrate on data.
Speaker 7: They're a full service polcos. I think they'll continue to
Speaker 7: offer voice, but there's no doubt that voices is in
Speaker 7: structural decline and has been for years. Many people and
Speaker 7: now make phone calls over WhatsApp because the data network
Speaker 7: is good enough for that.
Speaker 2: I mean that fact.
Speaker 7: We've seen some of the operators now offering very low
Speaker 7: cost plans where you can get you know, one thousand
Speaker 7: minutes of calls for one hundred and ninety nine or
Speaker 7: two hundred and ninety nine round a month, which was
Speaker 7: unheard of five years ago. So I think that just
Speaker 7: shows that voices become a commodity and that indeed is
Speaker 7: there's data that these operators are selling. They've tried over
Speaker 7: the years to offer complementary service, and I think we
Speaker 7: see that more from your bigger players like MPT and
Speaker 7: vertcoms branched out into things like fintech, mobile money, et cetera,
Speaker 7: et cetera. Selfie has tried some of those things before,
Speaker 7: such as in the media space where they tried to
Speaker 7: launch a streaming media player Selsey Black was a failure,
Speaker 7: and I think they're just focusing on their core business now,
Speaker 7: which is selling air time, selling data, and that's probably
Speaker 7: be the right strategy for the moment. And of course
Speaker 7: they've got a strong partner in Blue Label, so then
Speaker 7: we may see some opportunity for the two companies to
Speaker 7: work more closely together going forward, especially now that it
Speaker 7: looks like the transaction is going to go ahead where
Speaker 7: Blue Label is going to take full control of of Selse,
Speaker 7: so it will allow the management team a Blue label
Speaker 7: to work much more closely with Selfie than they have
Speaker 7: in the past, so we could see some interesting propositions
Speaker 7: coming forward, but they haven't spoken in detail about what
Speaker 7: some of those propositions might look like. But I'm sure
Speaker 7: they're thinking carefully about thinking beyond just selling data bundles
Speaker 7: and offering complementary services, but we don't have an insight
Speaker 7: into what that might be yet.
Speaker 2: And Duncan mclop thanks so much, really appreciated, founder and
Speaker 2: editor at tech Central dot dot CD. Lot's going on
Speaker 2: in the telecoms business, obviously, and just the idea of
Speaker 2: moving away from voice calls only to WhatsApp calls, and
Speaker 2: I think it is happening astonishingly quickly that transition. If
Speaker 2: you think about it, I mean, probably five years ago
Speaker 2: you'd never have made a WhatsApp call in your life.
Speaker 2: Now suddenly it's pretty much all the time. It's very
Speaker 2: interesting to see how quickly that is changing. And then
Speaker 2: who's going to be left on voice phone networks, on
Speaker 2: normal old fashioned voice networks. Well, i'll tell you who
Speaker 2: It'll be the spamers. They'll be the one still using
Speaker 2: the old system and they won't be using WhatsApp because
Speaker 2: WhatsApp hopefully won't allow them to all Right, lots to come.
Speaker 2: We'll find out more about arsenal Mittal and their decision
Speaker 2: to basically close down their Newcastle operation. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: lifting up the transformative power of support of leadership. And
Speaker 2: don't forget Desre Marcraft, the film and television producer, should
Speaker 2: be talking to you about her career, one of the
Speaker 2: big minds behind Shaka Elendi. You at the Money Show
Speaker 2: at seven o'clock The.
Speaker 1: Lonely Show with Stephen Kruis Live on ninety two point
Speaker 1: seven and one six FM, streaming on the Prime Media
Speaker 1: Plus NAP and DStv channel eight five six.
Speaker 2: Well ten minutes after seven confirmation Today arsenalal Mittal essay
Speaker 2: writing to its workers telling them the company will be
Speaker 2: closing its long steel business. Three and a half thousand
Speaker 2: direct jobs go as a result, as you know, a
Speaker 2: long drawn out process. Here the IDC, as you heard
Speaker 2: from their CEO last week, giving arsenal Mettel one point
Speaker 2: seven billion rand in the last financial year and money
Speaker 2: we're reboarding this morning. That Eskimo was a fish was
Speaker 2: essentially told by nurser. It had to give arsenal Mittal
Speaker 2: cheaper electricity, which basically meant other consumers. I mean you
Speaker 2: would have had to pay for it. Donald mckaye's director
Speaker 2: at XA International Trade Advisors, Donald good Evening. I mean,
Speaker 2: underneath all of this week steel prices and week steel demand,
Speaker 2: But is government policy to an extent responsible for the situation.
Speaker 2: They've thrown a lot of money at it, and it's
Speaker 2: going to close anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 9: I never thought it was a wise idea for so
Speaker 9: much money to be given for such a short amount
Speaker 9: of time. Yeah, I think there is an element of it.
Speaker 9: I mean, you've at the heart of this, you've got
Speaker 9: a conflicting policy between Arslal Mittel as a as a
Speaker 9: steel producer from iron ore versus the minimals which produce
Speaker 9: steel out of scrap metal, and they get something around
Speaker 9: a thirty percent price advantage, and that at some point
Speaker 9: feeds into their prices, which then ends up undercuting Mittel.
Speaker 9: So we've kind of what we've done is we've incentivized
Speaker 9: and subsidized at a time when there's too much steel
Speaker 9: in the market, so there's too much coming out of China,
Speaker 9: and then we're bringing more and more steel online in
Speaker 9: South Africa and that's that's simply a recipe for something
Speaker 9: to fall over.
Speaker 2: The minimals if they've got a thirty percent price advantage.
Speaker 2: And as I understand that, one of the reasons is
Speaker 2: that scrap metal has a lower melting point so requires
Speaker 2: less electricity. I mean, you can't compete with that. There's
Speaker 2: no point in trying to subsidize that kind of competition.
Speaker 9: Well, so the mini males also get a subsidy because
Speaker 9: of cheap finance out of the IBC, So there's lots
Speaker 9: of money flowing out of the IBC and on their
Speaker 9: raw material, so they purchasing their scrap at a thirty
Speaker 9: percent discount to the global market, and that kind of
Speaker 9: combination is a perfect storm. Yeah, it's a problem.
Speaker 2: We've seen, I mean all sorts of interventions. Should we
Speaker 2: not have bothered?
Speaker 1: Or was it?
Speaker 2: And isn't this what always happens whence a company like
Speaker 2: Arsenal Missel runs into trouble. At first, you want to
Speaker 2: help with your government, and I understand that, and then
Speaker 2: you kind of get caught up in it, and it
Speaker 2: goes on and on and on, and you might wait
Speaker 2: for the weather to change, but it never does, and
Speaker 2: suddenly you've lost one point seven billion round.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean that is a risk.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 9: Also, governments find it very easy to spend our money
Speaker 9: which wouldn't have in any other environment, So there is
Speaker 9: an element of that. But the reality is there's also
Speaker 9: a global steel market which is problematic. There's simply too
Speaker 9: much steel everywhere, and of course the demand in South
Speaker 9: Africa remain suppressed. Think of all the infrastructure projects we've
Speaker 9: been promised for years and years that never happen. Those
Speaker 9: are steel hungry projects which are not executing. And then
Speaker 9: think of all of the manufacturing businesses that are failing
Speaker 9: because of municipalities that don't work, es, com et cetera.
Speaker 9: And you can very quickly see that the local demand
Speaker 9: that would normally sustain these businesses is just horribly and
Speaker 9: artificially suppressed because the government is not executing properly on
Speaker 9: lots of what they should be doing.
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, if we wanted to, I
Speaker 2: don't know, help transnitt with new railway lines or better
Speaker 2: railway lines or new improved railway lines, you would need
Speaker 2: a lot of steel. I imagine. I'm no export, but
Speaker 2: I presume.
Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, in fact, somewhat darkly ironically on
Speaker 9: the railway line front, we do not produce the railway
Speaker 9: line to the standard that is required by transnet and passer.
Speaker 9: So the rail we do produce is going into things
Speaker 9: like the mines, et cetera. But we do not produce
Speaker 9: to the standard set for the rail industry, which is
Speaker 9: in itself just a ridiculous situation to be in.
Speaker 2: There are also perverse consequences or perverse outcomes. So in
Speaker 2: this case, one of them, and I presume it was
Speaker 2: an unintended outcome, was that two of the competitors to
Speaker 2: ars Little Mittel went to the Competition Commission and suggested,
Speaker 2: I haven't read their documents yet, but suggested they were
Speaker 2: basically arsenal metal. We're using the government sort of bailout
Speaker 2: the one point seven billion round to undercut their product.
Speaker 2: I mean, something like that was almost inevitable if you
Speaker 2: look at the nature of our market.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean that's just such a bizarre case
Speaker 9: because they of course themselves have product that is artificially
Speaker 9: cheap because of the subsidies. So it's kind of a
Speaker 9: battle between one part of the IBC and another funding
Speaker 9: each other. So it's yeah, I mean, that's just that's
Speaker 9: a very peculiar situation.
Speaker 2: What's the best thing to do. Let Arslt Mettel go
Speaker 2: to the war, do what you can for the people
Speaker 2: of Newcastle and get on with the minimal policy. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know, and I know there can be different
Speaker 2: views on this. I don't know what the long term
Speaker 2: consequences will be of the closure of Arsenal Mattel. I
Speaker 2: understand that some of their very specialized products can't be
Speaker 2: made by mini mills. I don't know how much that
Speaker 2: will affect the economy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean that's above my pay grade to answer
Speaker 9: if we should let them go or not. But what
Speaker 9: I will say is you can't say of everyone. So
Speaker 9: the downstream fabricating steel sector has already lost over two
Speaker 9: hundred thousand jobs in the last decade, so you know
Speaker 9: the jobs are going to be lost somewhere. What government
Speaker 9: has to do is make a decision. What you can't
Speaker 9: do is try to protect every single company. At that point,
Speaker 9: I believe you cause more harm than good. So whatever
Speaker 9: the decision is, they need to make it and move
Speaker 9: on with it and then leave the market to adjust.
Speaker 9: At that point.
Speaker 2: A lot of commentary about the sort of role all
Speaker 2: of the DT. I see the Minister parks tow quite
Speaker 2: a lot on his plate at the moment with the
Speaker 2: US and everything else that you and I have been
Speaker 2: talking about and everyone else over the last few months.
Speaker 2: Do you get a sense that the that the Department
Speaker 2: of Trade, Industry and Competitions actually on top of things.
Speaker 2: It can sometimes feel that they respond that they're reactive,
Speaker 2: but I mean that is also the nature of their game. Unfortunately.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think most of the problems that Mattel are
Speaker 9: dealing with have nothing at all to do with the DT.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 9: You know you still cannot get iron Ore properly out
Speaker 9: of the Northern Cape to Newcastle because of the railway situation. Yes,
Speaker 9: you do have the conflicting policies, which sits with Minister too,
Speaker 9: but you you have a whole host of issues which
Speaker 9: which Quibus Pasta has identified as problems, and almost all
Speaker 9: of those problems sit somewhere else, so you know, somewhere
Speaker 9: else has got to come right. It's you can't fix
Speaker 9: this by subsidizing your way out of the failed municipality,
Speaker 9: and you can't subsidize the fact that there's not functional
Speaker 9: railway lines. So that's just that's a problem that has
Speaker 9: to be fixed its source, and I'm still a little
Speaker 9: cynical around whether that's actually going to happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, someone's going to write a few I'm sure
Speaker 2: there'll be a one or two pH d theses on
Speaker 2: the whole issue of arsenal mittil. Are there lessons here
Speaker 2: for how to intervene or not to intervene next time?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think our problem is not in the interventions,
Speaker 9: but in not doing the things that you're supposed to
Speaker 9: be doing all the time. So we should never there
Speaker 9: should never have been a position where TRANSNETT got to
Speaker 9: the state that it is in in the same way
Speaker 9: that should we should never have been in a position
Speaker 9: where ESCOM collapsed to the point it did before we
Speaker 9: started doing something. It's simply unforgivable that we have almost
Speaker 9: no functional municipalities in Africa, So those things have to
Speaker 9: get fixed. I think the interventions on noble. I understand
Speaker 9: why the DTIC has the instinct they have, but I'm
Speaker 9: afraid you cannot subsidize or protect your way out of
Speaker 9: the fundamentals of our economy which do not work, and
Speaker 9: they've got to get fixed.
Speaker 2: Donald mackay, thanks very much. Indeed director at XA International
Speaker 2: Trade Advisors, really appreciate the time. I mean, there's so
Speaker 2: much going on with this, and yeah, I find it
Speaker 2: difficult to disagree with Donald. I don't know what our
Speaker 2: government can do except fix all of the things that
Speaker 2: we actually need to take responsibility for, including municipalities, politics,
Speaker 2: the way we manage money, and fixing things like trans
Speaker 2: net in the railway system. Nineteen minutes now after seven.
Speaker 1: The Money Show with devenuited.
Speaker 2: On the next Money Show, Peter Engelbrecht, the CEO of
Speaker 2: the Shopwright Group, will take you through the retailers financial
Speaker 2: results and the state of the retail sector. Personal finance
Speaker 2: expert co founder of Galileo Capital, war On Ingram. We'll
Speaker 2: talk to you about the reasons why some high income
Speaker 2: earners are often financially fragile and go broke. You can
Speaker 2: earn a lot of money and still not save. Also
Speaker 2: analysis of all the top business news of the day.
Speaker 2: Stephen has gone ax at at Stephen Well. Later on Friday,
Speaker 2: US appeals court rule that most of the tariffs that
Speaker 2: have been imposed by the US President Donald Trump were
Speaker 2: now illegal, and he of course is now appealing and
Speaker 2: off we go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court but generally has sort of backed Trump. Although this
Speaker 2: is an issue around the limits of power, and I'm
Speaker 2: of presidential power, and our imagine I'll want to look
Speaker 2: at the law are very very carefully, and I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be surprised if we get to a situation in the
Speaker 2: States in the US where even the Supreme Court says, actually,
Speaker 2: we need to sort of find a way to send
Speaker 2: a message to the president. I mean, who knows how
Speaker 2: this is all going to play out. It did strike
Speaker 2: me though, that one of the problems for many of
Speaker 2: the US trading partners is the uncertainty, and a court
Speaker 2: ruling like this actually just makes the uncertainty worse. It
Speaker 2: doesn't help because you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: All it means is that you now can't make a
Speaker 2: decision until the Supreme Court rules. That's all it means.
Speaker 2: And even then you don't really know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: Because Trump has shown, particularly on issues around tariffs, that
Speaker 2: he can change his mind and change it quite often,
Speaker 2: and changes in a way that you don't really expect.
Speaker 2: So all of those things. Normally, you think a court
Speaker 2: challenge good we get a proper airing of the views
Speaker 2: and a final decision. Here, I'm afraid to say I'm
Speaker 2: not quite so sure. My show for business books well
Speaker 2: twenty one minutes after seven. They are about a million
Speaker 2: leadership books, and from time to time I do become
Speaker 2: a little cynical about them. I think Ian Man's about
Speaker 2: to tell me to stop that, but I must admit
Speaker 2: to me, it does seem that leadership has become more
Speaker 2: complex and more difficult. It's not just that things are
Speaker 2: speeding up. It's that there's more to navigate, and the
Speaker 2: people you are leading come from more diverse parts of
Speaker 2: our societies, and that means that you maybe have to
Speaker 2: think a little bit more deeply about how you lead.
Speaker 2: I find it. I find some of it very very interesting.
Speaker 2: Ian Man's our regular book review and MD at Gateways
Speaker 2: Business Consultancy and good evening. Thanks so much for coming in.
Speaker 2: I know you're a kinder person than I. Lifting up
Speaker 2: The Transformative Power of Supportive Leadership by Jen Mah Is
Speaker 2: it any different from all the others? Yes, it is not.
Speaker 10: Why I think it's actually very practical, and I think
Speaker 10: that's why it's very useful. The fact is that if
Speaker 10: you look at employee equity, and there's been quite a
Speaker 10: lot of work done. Gallup polls done work on prey
Speaker 10: equity regularly and often, and what they've come up with
Speaker 10: this is that the most important person in employees being
Speaker 10: employees being engaged, not equity, sorry, engagement, proy engagement. Most
Speaker 10: important thing in employee engagement is management more than anything else,
Speaker 10: and that the most important manager. The most important thing
Speaker 10: a manager can be is to be supportive, to be
Speaker 10: a supportive manager.
Speaker 2: And the good news is.
Speaker 10: That that supportive management isn't a natural tray. It's something
Speaker 10: that can be learned, and that what this book does
Speaker 10: is it basically gives you a way to understand what
Speaker 10: you need to do and then how to do it.
Speaker 10: And I think in that sense it's very valuable. But
Speaker 10: if we look at what's going on in the world today,
Speaker 10: I think that we probably suffering from more mental illnesses,
Speaker 10: more mental challenges than we've ever done before, everything from
Speaker 10: from the anxiety disorders all the way through to depression
Speaker 10: and to burn out. I think that that is so
Speaker 10: common in the workplace today, and it's got to do
Speaker 10: with all of the fact that we're living under such
Speaker 10: pressure and the world is not getting any easier, and
Speaker 10: if certain parts of the world are more difficult, we
Speaker 10: are as very difficult. And under those circumstances, the role
Speaker 10: of the manager, and the Gallup poll showed this. The
Speaker 10: manager is the most significant person in your life, probably
Speaker 10: equal to cointterstats, equal to that of a partner. So
Speaker 10: if you had a bad day with a partner, it'll
Speaker 10: mess up your ability to function for a little while.
Speaker 10: Exactly the same thing happens as the manager, except that
Speaker 10: you probably spend more time with the manager, or you
Speaker 10: could be spending more time with the manager than do
Speaker 10: with your partner. So it becomes terribly important that we
Speaker 10: know what to do. In addition to which we're starting
Speaker 10: to engage employee gen Z's gen Z's those are people
Speaker 10: born after nineteen ninety eight. About those people are the
Speaker 10: most different people we've ever had as our children or
Speaker 10: our employees.
Speaker 2: Really, that's a big thing to say.
Speaker 10: They're the only generation that grew up with a cell
Speaker 10: phone in the hand. When we meet next time, I'll
Speaker 10: be able to share with you the impact of social
Speaker 10: media on everything, just the way we perceive reality. Now
Speaker 10: those people are suffering as well, and they by the way,
Speaker 10: they've got much higher and we don't understand them. We
Speaker 10: really don't understand them. Now if you look at the
Speaker 10: the the what what the supportive leader can possibly do
Speaker 10: or should be doing? The Probably the best example is
Speaker 10: this the woman who founded the hospice movement. She she
Speaker 10: was She used to communicate the quotation she used to
Speaker 10: communicate people that you matter because you're you, and you'll
Speaker 10: matter because you're you until you pass away.
Speaker 2: And that said that.
Speaker 10: The people said of her that that was a message
Speaker 10: you got from her, incredibly strong message, and that was very,
Speaker 10: very affirming. I think we have to do the same
Speaker 10: sort of thing with out with our staff, except ob
Speaker 10: a different level. But the point of noticing people, I
Speaker 10: notice you as a person. The key issues to make
Speaker 10: it happen is to notice to a firm and to
Speaker 10: let people know you need them. What we don't do
Speaker 10: much of is we don't notice people well, how they're doing,
Speaker 10: how they're feeling, what they're thinking, what issues are they
Speaker 10: dealing with. We don't affirm them by saying them you
Speaker 10: know that their presentation you died. I can really see
Speaker 10: the effort you put in just that much and or
Speaker 10: what you did your your presentation really helped us without
Speaker 10: to close the deal. The reason we don't do that
Speaker 10: is because we go into what they call the awkward zone.
Speaker 10: And the awkward zone is the gap between our compassion
Speaker 10: and our ability to act. And often we're stuck in
Speaker 10: the awkward zone because we simply don't know what to do.
Speaker 10: And you have staff issues, which could be anything from
Speaker 10: colleagues are colleagues not you can't get on with colleagues,
Speaker 10: Or you've got family issues, you've got work issues, you've
Speaker 10: got you just complainers with those solutions. All those sorts
Speaker 10: of things happen in the workplace and you have to
Speaker 10: respond to them. The way most people respond is that
Speaker 10: either try to be the fixer. Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 10: you're getting advorced. You should know when I was getting
Speaker 10: advorced and the person looks at you and says, your
Speaker 10: divorce has got nothing with me and it's not the same,
Speaker 10: or you or you try, or you get other people
Speaker 10: who aren't fixers but are deflectors. So when you tell
Speaker 10: me that something's really going wrong in your life or
Speaker 10: your or your workplace, I just deflect. I'll talk about
Speaker 10: anything else except that, or or I'll ignore you, which
Speaker 10: just makes it worse. Well, well, either I'll try and
Speaker 10: take sort out your play. The fact is, and she
Speaker 10: gives a fabulous example which I just captures absolutely everything.
Speaker 10: She believes that that you we don't need verbs, so
Speaker 10: we don't need nouns when when somebody's in trouble, I
Speaker 10: don't need to empathize with you. Empathy is a noun.
Speaker 10: I need a verb. She describes she moved into a
Speaker 10: new village, and before she moved in, somebody said, to
Speaker 10: our kids are going to be the same age when
Speaker 10: you move into the village. Let us know whatever carpool
Speaker 10: she said. The first day she moved in, the woman
Speaker 10: said to have you have you how's it going? Said,
Speaker 10: that's terrible. I've got all those things. Still know I'm
Speaker 10: not coping, and the and the woman instead of saying
Speaker 10: I really feel for you, I know where there must
Speaker 10: be like women said to do you have food in
Speaker 10: your fridge? And she said no, and there was a
Speaker 10: said the woman came back by an hour later with
Speaker 10: all so you could possibly need for breakfast the next day,
Speaker 10: and a bottle of wine. We don't need. And this
Speaker 10: is this is a very very important point. If you're
Speaker 10: not somebody who's naturally empathetic, that's naturally supportive. We don't
Speaker 10: need that.
Speaker 2: Just verb, just just verb.
Speaker 10: People, things are going wrong? Do you need any help?
Speaker 10: Is there any way in which I can connect you
Speaker 10: with the counselor is anyway that I can have a
Speaker 10: conversation with you and your colleague? We need to respond
Speaker 10: to ourselves first. We need to notice, we need to,
Speaker 10: we need to firm them, we need to take action,
Speaker 10: and we need to we need to.
Speaker 2: Use verbs and man Thank you very much indeed, our
Speaker 2: regular book reviewer and managing director at Gateways Business Consultants.
Speaker 2: The book is lifting up the transformative power of support
Speaker 2: of leadership. The author is Jen Mark. Twenty eight minutes
Speaker 2: after seven.
Speaker 1: Her Money Show, How I Make My Money.
Speaker 2: Twenty four minutes now to eighth the time. Well, from
Speaker 2: time to time you'll see and hear something that you
Speaker 2: know is going to be a cultural event. Think for
Speaker 2: a moment, the first time you knew that there was
Speaker 2: a movie coming about Black Panther, or if your memory
Speaker 2: goes back far enough to the nineteen eighties, the series
Speaker 2: sharka zulu that people spoke about all the time and
Speaker 2: still strangely watch and perhaps the closest we've come to
Speaker 2: that kind of dramatic event here in South Africa in
Speaker 2: the last few years, a piece of culture which has
Speaker 2: been created and become an event, something that people talk
Speaker 2: about and watch again and compare and sort of staff
Speaker 2: the Monday Morning conversation about is the TV series sharka
Speaker 2: iLembe Well. One of the people who's the co executive
Speaker 2: producer of sharka Elemba is doesre Marcraft, and I should
Speaker 2: say she's had a very long career before that doing
Speaker 2: all sorts of very interesting things, often related to our
Speaker 2: history and our culture. Desree, good evening, and thank you
Speaker 2: so much for taking some time tonight to explain how
Speaker 2: you've made your money, how your career has been over
Speaker 2: the years.
Speaker 11: Hi, good evening, Thank you very much, and thank you
Speaker 11: for having me on the show.
Speaker 2: You've made in other interviews, you've spoken and commented about
Speaker 2: the fact you were growing up during the Aparte eight
Speaker 2: era and in a way that's probably shaped a lot
Speaker 2: of the culture that you've been working in ever since.
Speaker 2: What kind of community were you were you growing up in?
Speaker 11: You know, I grew up with my mother. My father
Speaker 11: and my mother had separated very early and I grew
Speaker 11: up in a I guess a lower income, middle class
Speaker 11: white household with a single mother. We grew up in
Speaker 11: the Johannesburg area in Jetty's Belgravia and went to a
Speaker 11: boarding school there. So I think I had a pretty normal,
Speaker 11: sort of Joeberg chwihood in the seventies.
Speaker 2: Like the way you put that, I mean, what's normal
Speaker 2: now and what's normal then now about sixteen different things.
Speaker 2: At the time, information about what was really going on
Speaker 2: was quite hard to get. You would have to go
Speaker 2: and search for it. Were you aware then, and maybe
Speaker 2: as a sort of young adult how strange our society
Speaker 2: that society was compared to other societies. Did you have
Speaker 2: a sense of what was sort of going on?
Speaker 1: No, I did.
Speaker 11: I was fortunate enough that my mother was quite politically aware.
Speaker 11: She was active to some extent through the church that
Speaker 11: she worked at, the Swedish Church at the time, and
Speaker 11: so I was aware in my early childhood about the
Speaker 11: abnormal society that we lived in. And certainly I was
Speaker 11: aware of the huge disparities between growing up as a
Speaker 11: young white person and as a young black person. But
Speaker 11: I would say that I really only got an awakening
Speaker 11: I think properly in my twenties when I started working,
Speaker 11: and I was fortunate enough to have started working in
Speaker 11: the film industry quite young as a runner and some
Speaker 11: myself working in Soweto, and that was, you know, just
Speaker 11: a massive awakening to me on I think the kind
Speaker 11: of privilege that I felt that I had grown up
Speaker 11: with because I've sort of grown up thinking, well, you know,
Speaker 11: we were a poor white family and it was just
Speaker 11: me and my mom. But when I sort of opened
Speaker 11: my eyes and saw a bigger world around me, I
Speaker 11: realized that was not the case at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think for some people to come to
Speaker 2: sort of leave where they've come from and go into
Speaker 2: Soweto at the time he would have been one of
Speaker 2: very few white people would have been quite a shock
Speaker 2: to a lot of people.
Speaker 11: I have to say it was the best time of
Speaker 11: my life. I learned so much. I felt that I grew.
Speaker 11: One of the things that as a child, I remember
Speaker 11: my mother saying to me, and I don't think I
Speaker 11: quite understood it at the time, was that she felt
Speaker 11: that we lived in an extremely superficial society because we
Speaker 11: weren't really talking about what was going on around us.
Speaker 11: And I think that had a lot to do with
Speaker 11: white guilt and white shame, and people really couldn't talk
Speaker 11: about serious issues. And so for the first time I
Speaker 11: found in my twenties that I was talking to people
Speaker 11: about real things and experiencing real life around me. So
Speaker 11: it didn't feel strange to me at all. And I
Speaker 11: made a lot of wonderful friends, friends that I have today,
Speaker 11: and I think it's you know, I'm grateful it conscientised
Speaker 11: me in a way that, yeah, I wouldn't have got otherwise.
Speaker 2: I think did it inform that that clearly that period
Speaker 2: informed a lot of what you did afterwards. I mean
Speaker 2: quite a bit of your work has sort of been
Speaker 2: about that. You did a lot at the Aparthech Museum,
Speaker 2: for example. I mean you must have you know, that
Speaker 2: obviously set you on a road.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I suppose so in a way. I mean, I
Speaker 11: think that the one thing was that I was particularly
Speaker 11: interested that mainstream media, television, radio, you know, so ignored
Speaker 11: black life in a cultural way, and that the little
Speaker 11: bits and pieces that one saw on radio and television
Speaker 11: were extremely curated, and so it was something that intrigued me.
Speaker 11: And it really wasn't until I met with my partners.
Speaker 11: You know that I've had all these years since then
Speaker 11: that I suddenly realized, well, you know, this is really
Speaker 11: what I would like to focus my energy on, is
Speaker 11: telling these stories that I felt hadn't been told at
Speaker 11: the time. Of course, now television and radio and everything
Speaker 11: has changed, but it wasn't like that in the early eighties.
Speaker 2: So how did you move through the field? I mean often,
Speaker 2: I mean I know very little about television production, but
Speaker 2: I presume it kind of goes project by project, and
Speaker 2: if you do well on one small project, maybe get
Speaker 2: a slightly bigger role on a second small project, and
Speaker 2: then maybe a slightly bigger role on a third sort
Speaker 2: of bigger project. How was that progression?
Speaker 11: Yeah, pretty much like that. I mean I think when
Speaker 11: I started, you know, I went through the industry first
Speaker 11: as a runner, and then you know, getting various jobs
Speaker 11: and growing and learning and becoming a production manager and
Speaker 11: starting to work with money and understanding the dynamics of money.
Speaker 11: And I then started a very small, little production company
Speaker 11: of my own, and I thought I'd focus on doing
Speaker 11: corporate videos where I could learn my craft without being
Speaker 11: in the public eye. If I made a mistake, so
Speaker 11: to speak, and you know, the corporate training market actually
Speaker 11: in the early eighties is extremely vibrant and buoyant. You know,
Speaker 11: South Africa was changing. There was this massive push to
Speaker 11: educate around change of policies in businesses about affirmative action.
Speaker 11: So it was a quite exciting time for the training space.
Speaker 11: And so that's what I started cut my teeth on.
Speaker 11: And but my heart had always really been in drama
Speaker 11: and telling stories. And then of course in the late
Speaker 11: early nineties I had met with Angus Gibson and Tobacco
Speaker 11: Matlatzi and you know we started working together and our
Speaker 11: first pitch that we really got had been to develop
Speaker 11: what then became us Years.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I've spoken to Angus Gibson once or twice,
Speaker 2: and I mean he rarely. I mean that the group,
Speaker 2: what you were doing at the time rarely set popular
Speaker 2: culture for generations of people in South African yeas Or
Speaker 2: Yezor was a big part of that.
Speaker 11: Yes, it was such an exciting time, Stephen. I mean,
Speaker 11: you know, if we were sort of on this exciting
Speaker 11: moment with the end of Aparthet and South Africa felt
Speaker 11: so absolutely full of possibility, and it was the first
Speaker 11: time that we were able to really tell stories that
Speaker 11: felt like it really reflected you know, the whole of
Speaker 11: our population and in a very open way. We were
Speaker 11: able to explore what the challenges were that we're facing
Speaker 11: us as a society. And of course User User was
Speaker 11: a story that was looking at what was after effects
Speaker 11: of you know, liberation, before education. Our schools were struggling
Speaker 11: and there was a big push by the Department of Education,
Speaker 11: government stakeholders, et cetera to really try and get education
Speaker 11: back on track, and not just for a small group.
Speaker 3: Of the population, but for the whole population.
Speaker 11: So it was an exciting project and it was you know,
Speaker 11: at the explosion of Quito, just there was so much
Speaker 11: energy in South Africa at the time, and it was
Speaker 11: a very exciting project to work on. And we had
Speaker 11: no idea that the project was going to be the
Speaker 11: success that it was. I mean, there was no benchmark
Speaker 11: for it really, and I don't think it was financially
Speaker 11: successful in the beginning. I think, you know, advertisers were
Speaker 11: extremely scared of us because it was a show that
Speaker 11: was quite different, a little bit wild. It certainly you know, showed.
Speaker 9: Us warts and all.
Speaker 11: So it took a while before the money followed. The
Speaker 11: excitement that the show generated.
Speaker 2: I find as a journalist working here, this country is
Speaker 2: the most interesting stories. I mean, to be a journalist
Speaker 2: in South Africa's to sort of have a really close
Speaker 2: seat to dynamics and stories and people's lives can change
Speaker 2: in ways that are just unimaginable in other countries. Does
Speaker 2: that help you? Do you think the fact that South
Speaker 2: Africa is such a rich canvas there are so many
Speaker 2: I mean to say interesting people sound ridiculous, but there
Speaker 2: are so many stories that I don't think you get
Speaker 2: in other places.
Speaker 11: Now one hundred percent I agree with that. I mean,
Speaker 11: I think that we have such an incredibly diverse society
Speaker 11: thrust together. You know, we did a show after years
Speaker 11: or we did a show for the SABC called Zone
Speaker 11: fourteen and in a way it really you know, captured
Speaker 11: this very well that in one block, in one street,
Speaker 11: you could have so many different people living next brought
Speaker 11: each other, a school teacher, a millionaire, bank robber, a
Speaker 11: taxi driver, and it makes for such an exciting society.
Speaker 11: And I think that we've got so many complex stories
Speaker 11: that we've shared, and you know, the human condition, aside
Speaker 11: from all the complexities of race in South Africa, that
Speaker 11: we've had to overcome, that we've had to grapple with,
Speaker 11: that we keep grappling with every day. I mean, it's here,
Speaker 11: present all the time. I think just makes a society
Speaker 11: that talks about interesting things. We are interesting.
Speaker 2: I think you're with. I think I agree, I think
Speaker 2: we are You're with. The Money Show is fourteen minutes
Speaker 2: now to eight o'clock and we're speaking to Israel Marcraft,
Speaker 2: an executive producer and someone who's had a very interesting
Speaker 2: career in TV. I would like to talk to you
Speaker 2: a little bit about Sharka Elemba. Israel. Let me just
Speaker 2: explain where I come from. And I'm just old enough
Speaker 2: to have been allowed to stay up as a kid
Speaker 2: to watch the nineteen eighties production of shark A Zulu
Speaker 2: when it was shown on TV at the time, and
Speaker 2: I'm always a man how it still has such power today.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've come across young people who actually believe
Speaker 2: the image of Sharka is the image of Henry Clearlier,
Speaker 2: the actor who played him. At the time, he was
Speaker 2: a footballer before that. Was there something about that series
Speaker 2: that maybe made you want to make Sharka Limba to
Speaker 2: kind of move away from that because that version, in
Speaker 2: my mind, at least the eighties version now is highly problematic.
Speaker 11: Well, you know, it wasn't that series that inspired us
Speaker 11: to make the current one, but certainly, of course that
Speaker 11: series lives big in our imagination, and Henry clearly was
Speaker 11: a fantastic Sharka. And as you say, there are many
Speaker 11: things that are problematic with that series in the eighties.
Speaker 11: But let's go back to the eighties and remember that
Speaker 11: at that moment, that series was incredible to have on
Speaker 11: local television. It was the first time that we had
Speaker 11: seen such a powerful representation of a black South African
Speaker 11: hero of a king, and in many ways forgetting many
Speaker 11: of the inaccuracy or political things that make us uncomfortable
Speaker 11: about that particular telling, which was through a white lens
Speaker 11: and a foreign gaze. It still was a series that
Speaker 11: held the character of Sharka up in high regard. But
Speaker 11: really our story came from a totally different space. I mean,
Speaker 11: you know, it came from me being a mother and
Speaker 11: having mixed race children and wondering, you know, what shows
Speaker 11: and what are we talking about? What are our kids
Speaker 11: watching on TV? Our kids are all growing up with Americans,
Speaker 11: you know, Hannah Montana and Ben ten But who are
Speaker 11: our heroes? And so many of our heroes that we
Speaker 11: see and speak about have been particularly formed around the
Speaker 11: liberation struggle. But you know, colonial history is only a
Speaker 11: few hundred years. There's been thousands of years of pre
Speaker 11: colonial history with kings and queens and rulers and complex societies,
Speaker 11: and those stories have never been told. And so when
Speaker 11: we started researching, you know, I was sort of interested
Speaker 11: in the notion of telling stories when we were kings.
Speaker 11: And when I started researching, I realized that there's just
Speaker 11: nothing visually available for young people of today to find
Speaker 11: to read to excite them about African history. And so,
Speaker 11: you know, we went about trying to put the show together,
Speaker 11: and Sharkho, of course, is one of the most exciting
Speaker 11: African leaders, I mean, you know, just across the continent,
Speaker 11: and he's a worldwide recognized figure. So it felt like, well,
Speaker 11: if we're going to start, let's start there, and let's
Speaker 11: start telling that story first from an African lens. And
Speaker 11: so our you know, launch pad was to go and
Speaker 11: find out to find out who who this man was
Speaker 11: and what society did he live in.
Speaker 2: I Mean, there's a wonderful book called Shark a myth
Speaker 2: of ie which goes back many years, and it was
Speaker 2: by Dan Wiley that sort of explains all of that
Speaker 2: and what sort of triest you mean, very complicated. Did
Speaker 2: it spark the debates that you wanted? It had a
Speaker 2: huge It had a huge impression. I mean everywhere where
Speaker 2: I was working, people were talking about it. Did it
Speaker 2: start the debates? Do you think that you wanted? Do
Speaker 2: you think it had the kind of and then's very hard,
Speaker 2: you know, in a multi channel world. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very hard to make any kind of pressure impression
Speaker 2: at all. It certainly made one. Did it do what
Speaker 2: you wanted us to do in terms of what we're
Speaker 2: talking about?
Speaker 11: Yes, I think so, And I think that it's a
Speaker 11: slow burner that it will continue doing it because you know,
Speaker 11: what we wanted to do was get people starting to
Speaker 11: talk about South African history and the people who you know,
Speaker 11: populated this continent and in a way that getting people impested,
Speaker 11: getting people starting to look at their own history, their
Speaker 11: own ancestry. And you know, we spent a lot of
Speaker 11: time meeting with people, meeting with descendants, meeting with members
Speaker 11: of the royal family, meeting with oral custodiums, meeting with
Speaker 11: praise singers, so that our telling was not just the
Speaker 11: telling that was in history books, but also trying to
Speaker 11: really understand the cultural nuances in which this story felt
Speaker 11: like it should be told. And I think that the
Speaker 11: time taken to do that has resonated. You know, we've
Speaker 11: had an incredible team with us in Plantlam Tucker, who's
Speaker 11: you know, my co executive producer, has just been an
Speaker 11: absolute brand of information and meeting so many people, of
Speaker 11: course meeting you know, our previous king Azuelatini and the
Speaker 11: current king, missus Zulu, but also you know, just the
Speaker 11: richness of this history that was surfaced. And so we
Speaker 11: hope that we were so excited of course that people
Speaker 11: have embraced the show so well. But really what we
Speaker 11: want to do is that this is the door that
Speaker 11: we're simply opening to much bigger telling and many more
Speaker 11: tellings of you know, African history.
Speaker 2: Speak to dere Marcraft, the co executive producer of Sharka
Speaker 2: a Lemba. She's with us for another eight minutes. It's
Speaker 2: eight minutes now to eight o'clock. It's six minutes now
Speaker 2: to eight o'clock. We speak to Desreel Markcraft how she
Speaker 2: makes her money. She's a film and television producer at Desre.
Speaker 2: The people who do work in TV that I know
Speaker 2: and in film will or tell me one thing. It's
Speaker 2: long hours and lots of unbelievably hard work. If you
Speaker 2: don't want to work twelve hours a day, don't bother.
Speaker 11: It's one hundred to say. True. It's a very hard
Speaker 11: you know, But it's also a sort of lifestyle. I guess.
Speaker 11: You know, once you get addicted to storytelling, somehow those
Speaker 11: long hours don't feel so long because you're excited about
Speaker 11: the work that you're doing and you're crafting and creating.
Speaker 11: But yes, so very long hours and very early.
Speaker 2: Morning, and I imagine a lot of teamwork as well.
Speaker 2: You actually need to get on you You get it
Speaker 2: through a lot of fat talking, a lot of nonsense
Speaker 2: to each other while you're waiting for the next shot
Speaker 2: or for the sun to be just so.
Speaker 11: Yes, there's a lot of teamwork. There isn't really that
Speaker 11: much time for talking nonsense, to be honest, because you know,
Speaker 11: you sort of have to be ready. Each department has
Speaker 11: to be ready for when it's their turn to be on,
Speaker 11: so to speak. But you know, the other thing about
Speaker 11: it is that on a show like Shark Lemba, for example,
Speaker 11: it has this sort of massive ability for employment. You know,
Speaker 11: in the last season we employed close to twenty thousand people,
Speaker 11: and of course many of those are background extras, so
Speaker 11: they're there for a day only, or two or three days.
Speaker 11: But even there, you know, you find on a set
Speaker 11: there'll be four or five hundred of us there there's
Speaker 11: a real camaraderie that happens because we're all there for
Speaker 11: the same reason, and you know, on a show like
Speaker 11: Shark Lember, of course we all feel very strongly about
Speaker 11: what we're doing and the importance of the sort of
Speaker 11: legacy of what we're doing. So yeah, there's camaraderie in
Speaker 11: long hours, but you know, often a very good energy
Speaker 11: in those spaces. So you come away after a three
Speaker 11: or four month shoot feeling like you've made family and
Speaker 11: you've built something together, and then suddenly the family is disbanded,
Speaker 11: which of course, you know, leaves you feeling a little
Speaker 11: empty for a few weeks afterwards.
Speaker 2: No, I'm sure the way in which we entertain ourselves
Speaker 2: is changing. And I mentioned earlier that SHARKI Lember landed
Speaker 2: in very much a multi channel world, by which I
Speaker 2: mean hundreds of channels, everybody watching things at different times,
Speaker 2: very different from say, watching TV in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Do you think the demand for content like that, I'm
Speaker 2: talking about episodic series or what's it forty six minutes
Speaker 2: or so, maybe an hour maybe in some cases an
Speaker 2: hour and a half. If you look at something like Yellowstone,
Speaker 2: do you think that demand for that is going to continue?
Speaker 11: You know, I think that good storytelling will change its
Speaker 11: forms a little bit in different ways. But yes, I
Speaker 11: do think that that demand will continue. And I think
Speaker 11: that is about in a way, these big television drama
Speaker 11: series is the new book. You know, we reading at
Speaker 11: the moment little bat sized things on our phone, and
Speaker 11: so much information is coming flying at us in batsized moments,
Speaker 11: And there is something about just sitting down with a
Speaker 11: cup of tea or a glass of wine and enjoying
Speaker 11: a good story for an hour. And so I do
Speaker 11: think that there's, you know, still a lot of life
Speaker 11: left in this form of storytelling.
Speaker 2: I mean, you say it's the new book. It's also
Speaker 2: kind of the new fire, isn't it. You know, you
Speaker 2: sit around and tell a story about that, you know,
Speaker 2: around the fire kind of thing. When you start to
Speaker 2: look now for new productions, new things to film, do
Speaker 2: you get, you know, thousands of ideas being flung at
Speaker 2: you from various places, or is it quite difficult to
Speaker 2: actually know this is what we're going to make a
Speaker 2: story of, this is the story that we're going to tell.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many stories in South Africa. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think people would watch a Steve Picco mini series,
Speaker 2: you know, and there was a Solomon Mahlangu movie a
Speaker 2: few years ago. Of course, I think people would watch
Speaker 2: something about maybe a rain Queen might be kind of
Speaker 2: a good moment for that. There are lots of different stories.
Speaker 11: Yes, I mean I think, you know, stories come to
Speaker 11: people in different ways and set me in our company,
Speaker 11: stories have come to us largely because we sort of
Speaker 11: feel that we are constantly trying to tap into what
Speaker 11: is the zeitgeist of the moment, What is it that people.
Speaker 3: Are feeling, What do we feel like, you know, will
Speaker 3: be that.
Speaker 11: Piece of entertainment that will resonate in a particular moment.
Speaker 11: So you know, perhaps, as I said, you know, in
Speaker 11: the nineties when we made Use the User, we were
Speaker 11: full of optimism and we could see something that was
Speaker 11: a little tougher about ourselves. Now here we are and
Speaker 11: we're feeling maybe a little The world is tough, and
Speaker 11: you know, the rosy, the rose printed glasses on South
Speaker 11: Africa are not there so much anymore. And that's why
Speaker 11: it felt like it was good to tell a story
Speaker 11: that said, hold on a second, let's remember where we
Speaker 11: come from. Let's remember the dignity of the history that
Speaker 11: has come before. We're not who we are today. And
Speaker 11: I think just tapping into the zodcast of any moment
Speaker 11: does help give you an indication of what kind of
Speaker 11: content is. And of course it's all the streaming platforms.
Speaker 11: Sure you know, anything works, you're going to find your
Speaker 11: audience Israel Marcraft.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. She is
Speaker 2: the film and television producer in one of the mines
Speaker 2: behind Sharka Elembe