However, back to business! Soon after 1994, things started
to change – very subtly. It took me a number of years to notice that it was not
business as usual. Whites started to battle financially in their businesses.
These were SMEs who had previously been great lifestyle businesses. Profit
margins kept shrinking and turnover was not growing in a controlled fashion.
Whereas in the 70’s and 80’s you could fairly accurately
predict your growth, now you could not! Then the anger began to set in. It was
all the fault of the new government. They did not know how or why it was their
fault, but it was.
The first event was a new democracy. The joining of the WTO
by South Africa was the second event that started the change. The third event
was not so much an event as a management approach. Labour was cheap and
plentiful, so it was used accordingly. It was easy to hire and fire, and unless
you were a habitual offender the Department of Labour was, if anything biased
towards the employer. This was highlighted for me when I visited Australia in
2000. I was simply visiting family, but I paid close attention to the SME
environment.
What I noticed in Australia was that most of the SMEs I saw
were literally one-man businesses. The best example to compare is the garden
service. A man with a truck arrives. He has a cherry picker and a bobcat on the
back. He offloads, gets the instruction from the client, does the job, and is
done in an hour maximum. Then he is off to the next job. He is literally a
one-man business - a highly mechanised and efficient SME.
Compare that to the South African model for garden services.
White guy with 10 labourers taking 3 or 4 hours to do the job. White guy shouts
instructions, and labour do the minimum work for minimum wage. I can provide a
host of examples, from professional to artisan. Or white guy sits in truck and
waits until they are done. This is termed management.
The nett result is that the white business owners began to
resent the new democratic government. However, they were in error. The real
enemy was not our government, but rather our new exposure to the real world of
open markets, globalisation and serious competition. Then there was the added
factor of the Internet. How many book shops went out of business because of
Amazon? I know a few myself!
White SME owners were just overwhelmed with change. No
Apartheid, black equality, new government, joined WTO, new competitors, the
Internet, globalisation and more. Engaging with white-owned SME owners has made
it quite clear that many have not realised the world in which they have to
compete is now a new world in many ways, and that they have to change – which
they cannot or have not done.
I am afraid chaps, the easy days are now a part of history,
and it is a true “only the fittest survive” scenario in play. Low margins are a
reality for many businesses. Ever-growing sales revenues are needed to stay
afloat. The Internet and its siblings such as social media, are all forcing
their ways into our lives. Is it yellow pages or Google words? I thought it was
Pieter Dirk Uys who said ”Adapt or die”, but the irony is that it was PW Botha
when he was Minister of Labour. It has never been more applicable to
white-owned SMEs than now. We must change to survive.
I have seen some of our better and best SME owners operate
and I know we are more than capable. The problem is we need more converts.
