SA weighs antidumping duties as Chinese, Indian car imports surge and a new African credit agency launched.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And now The Money Show with Stephen credits on seven
oh two.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Let's walk at all.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
The Money Show with Stephen Curtis is brought to you
by ABS of Corporate and Investment Banking, a Pan African
bank that's invested in your story because your story matter
is eight minutes after six. Good evening to you. Welcome
to the Money Show. I'm Stephen Crutis Gold again. The
big story events in the US, developments in the United
States again, the big story weakening the dollar. Of course,

(00:28):
we expect that decision by the US Federal Reserve tonight
and all of that having a big impact on us.
I have to say that the first of the retail
numbers coming through in Mister Price, they seem to be
quite chuffed with their numbers. Certainly, it seems out performing
the market, and that certainly would be quite important. And
this gives us the first indication really of what was

(00:49):
going on in the December period. We'll get more on
that with our market commentary with Chris Stewart in a
few moments. Looking forward to that conversation. Actually, there's really
quite a lot to get through. For the first time,
we're beginning to hear rumblings that government is going to
act and do something against the huge number of Chinese
and Indian imported cars that we're seeing on our roads. Now,

(01:12):
this goes in many directions. If you do impose tariffs, yes,
you might protect your car industry, would protect jobs. That's
a good thing. You also make cars more expensive. You
might be running a business, you need a car for
your business. Suddenly that cost goes up. So what is
the right thing to do? Lots of different ways to
look at that conversation. We'll hear from Aya bangakahere, the

(01:33):
Chief commission at the International Trade Deministration Commission, in a
moment about that. We hear also from Renee Mutilal, the
CEO of the National Association of Automotive Components and Allied
Manufacturers about that issue, I think is a very important issue.
Also at around six forty or so, we will talk
about the the erodes, the roads, the Richards Bay coal terminal.

(01:57):
They've hit a four year high. Now this is a
story with lots of different parts. It's not just about
the terminal. It's about the amount of coal flowing to
the terminal, which is about the number of trains that
TRANSNT is actually able to operate there, and that's what's
rarely changed is that they seem to be big improvements.
They're very important. Story more coming through as well about

(02:17):
the launch of the African Ratings Agency. We'll speak to
doctor s Viso Falala about that. I think that's going
to be an important conversation and before seven o'clock as well,
at least career she's an independent economist. Later salary data
suggesting that in fact things are looking at this year
and you should feel that you're going to get more

(02:38):
money in your pocket. On the issue around the Chinese
and Indian cars, would you like the prices to be
increased through tariffs to try and protect our jobs, particularly
in the Eastern Cape and the Victoria area, or do
you actually just think, well, we need to keep cars
as cheap as possible because of the benefit they give

(02:59):
to our economy. Your thoughts O double one double A
three oh seven O two two one four four six
five six seven and of course voice notes this evening
on seven two seven oh two one seven oh two
eleven minutes after.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Six The Lonely Show with Stephen Kruders live on ninety
two point seven and one six FM, streaming on the
Prime Media Plus.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
NAP and DStv channel eight five six. Well.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Parliament now being told Government is looking at bringing in
some kind of tariff to protect our car industry from
cheaper Chinese and Indian models and the car the National
Association of Automotive Components and Allied Manufacturers saying Government needs
to intervene urgently. We'll hear from them in a moment,
but first, Aya Bonkakawe is the commissioner at the International

(03:43):
Trade Administration. I asked him about an hour ago what
kind of tariffs are available for us to impose on
cheaper cars.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Good evening to you, Stephen, and to your listeners, and
thank you so so much for.

Speaker 5 (03:55):
Having us tonight.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
Always a pleasure catching up with you. And I think
a very good question there. What is the nature of
food that we have at our disposal to respond.

Speaker 5 (04:05):
To the very varied forms of I.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
Guess import competition. And I think the answer to that
would be determined by the extent and the nature of
the Hahn. Maybe if I may start, Stephen at just
a typical kind of general tariff, which is just the
import tax that one would see in the tariff schedule.
We had indicated to Parliament last night that in so

(04:28):
far as the concession South Africa signed on too in
the nineteen nineties to join the wto that South Africa
four fully built up passenger vehicles is able to place
its general customs duties the feeling days around fifty percent
what is called the boundarrate in trade talk. At the moment,

(04:50):
those duties are twenty five percent. If we go to
parts and accessories of vehicles which we also import at
the moment, those duties, depending on where the import he
is coming from, are anywhere between eighteen percent and twenty percent,
and so the bound rate in that instance is thirty percent.
So in both instances, whether it's the fully built up
vehicle or even the powers, you do have some policy

(05:13):
space to raise duties, and I think much of the
discourse has said we are already wanting to raise duties,
not at all. There's no investigation we are seized with
at the moment that is looking into this. But as
part of the discussion within the Automaster plan, it is
to say with that policy room that we have to
either increase terriffs on the balance of evidence. That is

(05:34):
one of the matters of a tax nature that is
on the table. The other forms of tools, Stephen by
way of duties we could consider is where there are
instances of unfair pricing that would be dumping. And also
in instances where you've got a deluge or a sudden
kind of a flurry of volumes of vehicles coming into
the country where a safeguard measure might be warranted. And

(05:58):
I think these three tools, an amendment to the general
customs duty, an anti dumping duty, or for a safeguard
do seem at the stage to be the tool that
we could marshal word these necessary. And of course that
is on the basis of the balance of evidence and
the balance of understanding what is the extent of injury,

(06:19):
if any and that is posed by some of these imports.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
I would a dumping case be quite difficult to make.
And let me just explain this. We drive on the
left hand side of the road, China drives on the
right hand side. That means any of the cars they
sell here are designed for export. It also means that
they're able to make cars for a particular price and
sell them in our market and make a profit. I

(06:44):
don't know if there's a dumping case, and as you
know better than I do, they're exporting. I think it's
six million cars this year. We're not all coming here,
they're going around the world, and clearly someone's making money.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
Well, Steve, I think a dumping case in the case
of China would be more difficult to prove for a
related reasons to the ones you've mentioned. I mean, whether
it is kind of left hand drive, right hand drive
or not. You do have a commonality of models that
one finds on Chinese roads that you also find here
in South Africa. But really the nub of the issue
on the dumping that would make the case difficult is
the extent of price depression in the automotive sector that

(07:19):
you've seen in China. The listener must recall that for dumping,
you need to prove that the price at which a
car is sold in China is much much higher than
the prices that that same car would be sold in
South Africa. That is highly unlikely if one looks at
the price war, the cut throat, a price competition, or

(07:40):
what the Chinese authorities are calling involution in the Chinese market, where,
for instance, an eves you've got about one hundred and
thirty or so auto manufacturers that are all clamoring and
competing for space, so that I think at a cursory
level would be much more difficult to prove than, say,

(08:00):
for instance, of safeguard, where I think it's quite clear
that the volumes you've seen coming in to South Africa
over the last while have really grown in spectacular fashion.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
They're the chief commissioner at the International Trade and Administration Commission,
I tach well listening to that is Renee Mutilau. She
is the CEO of the National Association of Automotive Components
and Allied Manufacturers. Renee, good evening to you. Tariffs is
one solution, but is that going to be enough even
if government is able to bring tariffs against these cars?

Speaker 6 (08:34):
Stephen, thanks for having me really interesting topic and of
course one that's extremely crucially in our industrial economy right now.
CAROLS is one of those issues that ourselves as the
component manufacturing sectors and I know definitely the vehicle manufacturing
or ems in South Africa are looking towards to give

(08:57):
some stability to the domestic market. There are other measures
that we believe can drive greater localization, greater economic opportunities
in the value chain, and that includes some level of
recalibration on how the APDP incentive program works, and also

(09:19):
greater coordination of purchasing opportunities across the supplier base. So
there's a range of industrial policy measures that we're looking at,
but I do think some level of intervention to regain
share of locally produced vehicles in the domestic market is
definitely a high priority.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
I mean, it is going to come at the cost
of higher vehicles, and there is surely an economic argument
to say that the more cheap cars and s are
that forgether better.

Speaker 6 (09:47):
There is that argument, but it's a little more nuanced
than that. And I'm going to start off by kind
of making the statement that as a country, with our
economic policies, we can't be half pregnant. We have for
a long time run an industrial policy to support automotive manufacturing,
and that has been anchored by running a tariff and
having OEMs produce vehicles in the country and earn a

(10:11):
set of duty rebates which allows them to offset those
tariffs for product coming in.

Speaker 7 (10:17):
The situation that we.

Speaker 6 (10:18):
Find ourselves sea stood right now is that for a
long time, the level of credit rebates that the domestic
OEMs have been earning have been selfless to their own
important needs, and these find their ways or find their
way through a trading mechanism to independent importers, including the

(10:39):
preforma of brands that we've seen coming to the market
over the last decade, which is, you know, you've got
great choice as a South African consumer, but we knocking
up job losses eavery few months, to the extent that
in the components space, we've closed thirteen plants over the

(11:00):
last two years and I'm away of another two coming up.
So yeah, I mean, the issue of consumer choice versus
domestic production is one that economies look at all over
the world. I am my organization are from advocates of
local industrialization for all the benefits it brings, and would
rotch much other choose from five less importainment systems and

(11:22):
have a few thousand more.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Jobs, No sure. At the same time, electric cars werether
made here or made somewhere else again to come in
and that they require, as I understand it, fewer, less
servicing and fewer spares. Your industry is about to change
entirely and it maybe we can raise tariffs on these
cars or do all sorts of other things, but I

(11:46):
fear rene We're going to lose jobs in the components
space no matter what.

Speaker 6 (11:51):
Yeah, I mean, we've been losing it already and we'd
only have electric vehicle production here in South Africa as
we speak. I do think we do have a reasonable
strategy on how to transition the local sector into various
elements of electric vehicle production and don't want to be
stuck on the battery only discussion. There's opportunities in some

(12:13):
of the high voltage components linked to electric vehicles, some
of the hydrid production possibilities in the hydrogen space, so
there's different opportunities. I think the quicker we get into
a space where we stabilize the domestic manufacturing value chain,

(12:34):
we ensure that we're not losing suppliers at the same
time we're looking to transition into technologies. We should be
able to take advantage of whatever the technology is. Interestingly,
the incentive mechanism in South Africa is technology neutral. What
is effectively needed for a greater transition to EV is

(12:56):
some level of consumer support and to create the domestic
EV ecosystem that allows manufacturers to bully level of a
product for those technologies.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
There's so many different things happening all at the same
time in your industry, and obviously agility is a big thing.
Government needs to be involved in that, and clearly from
the previous conversation that's happening. I would like to presume
that there are people in your industry who are planning
for this and moving really very quickly.

Speaker 6 (13:28):
Yeah, I think so. It's not a new topic. I mean,
if you're talking specifically about electric vehicle production from an
industrial policy space, it's something we've been talking about for
several years, to the extent that the DTIC put out
a white paper and EV manufacturing about two years ago
with a range of implementation measures, including how incentives can

(13:51):
be changed for that. In the component manufacturing space, I
assure you that although there's no domestic vehicle or producer
of electric vehicles, component companies in South Africa are already
supplying EV components into global platforms. So the transition is happening,
and at least from a supplier perspective, we are ready.

(14:16):
When announcements are made about EV platforms in South Africa.
I'm very confident that the supplier base will respond accordingly.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
The sort of massive number of cars, particularly from China
one million cars they exported five years ago there due
to export six million this year. It's caught so many
people by surprise. This is happening to car industries around
the world, whether it be Poland or South Africa or wherever.
I would think that lots of other countries are looking

(14:45):
for alternatives too. They're looking for solutions to this problem.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
Absolutely, and that is why we need to be on
our tours, and we.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Need to.

Speaker 6 (14:56):
Again recognize that we've got a domestic manufacturing industry and
we shouldn't be So that's you can I don't know
if you know this, Stephen. We've got either the highest
amongst the highest per capita choice of vehicles on our roads.
At the same time we're trying to grow auto's manufacturing,

(15:16):
and now you've got a situation where particularly entry level
vehicles in coming both out of India and Chinese factories,
low cost destinations of production with significant levels of government
supporting those economies now finding their way into our domestic market.
And cartlees recovered last year. I mean they were had

(15:41):
gone up to are you looking to close?

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, Renee, I'm so sorry. I do have to leave
it there. I do apologize at to interrupt you there
Renee Motilal is the sea of the National Association of
Automotive Components and Allied Manufacturers. Twenty three minutes after six.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
The Money Show with Stephens seven two seven o two.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Finally, after a long period of discussion, the launch this
week of a new African ratings agency. I've been strong
comments from our finance Minster in many others that the
three big international ratings agencies discriminate against African economies. Doctor
Sofiso Falala is the president of the African Credit Rating
Association at Doctor Falala, Good evening to you. From what

(16:22):
I can see, the main difference between this new ratings
agency and other agencies is that this will be or
should be more transparent. How big are these differences going
to be?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Good evenings. It's very important to.

Speaker 8 (16:42):
Mention that we are an association of ratings agencies across
the continent and because of that, the difference will be
occasioned by our understanding of the economic imperatives and the
investment climate on the continent, and certainly the performance of

(17:03):
the various sovereigns in relation to their ability to repay
data that they owe. So we think that there will
be a massive difference occasioned by an introduction of fairer
measures and more objective assessment of the performance of the
various African countries as far as credit worthiness is concerned.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
As I understand it, with the sort of Big three
ratings agencies, the methodology is quite transparent, the actual decision
making is not. I'm presuming your methodology will be transparent
as well.

Speaker 8 (17:40):
Absolutely, we actually are you scale. That means that we
actually cover ninety percent of.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
What they.

Speaker 8 (17:53):
Detail, because as you know, with a lot of these
rating actions, when financial information is collective, it is subject
to being weighted, in other words, allocated a score that
is a ceiling in one direction or in another direction.
And the ceiling might be occasioned, for example, by a region,

(18:15):
by the types of neighbors that the economy has. And
even if an African economy, for instance, is growing at
an exceptional rate is happening in places like Ghana and
a Kenya for instances, at the moment, you may find
that notwithstanding that fact, this may not be reflected in
the ratings.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
So one of the things that happens with the other
agencies is that there's no right of appeal, So that
could give South Africa a rating, and we just have
to accept that all we can do is complain about
it publicly. Will there be any kind of appeal mechanism here?

Speaker 5 (18:53):
Certainly?

Speaker 8 (18:53):
I think the association is therefore that reason steven as
an association and we provide a number of services, one
of which is to try and standardize the quality and
objectivity of the methodologies that are being used. The other
one is to actually be open to receiving comments and

(19:15):
analyzing them at an association level, so that there's an
open interrogation of the methods that we use, all of
which are published on our various websites.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Each of the individual entities has a website.

Speaker 8 (19:32):
And you've got to remember also that the rating actions
that we undertake in Africa and throughout the world are regulated.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
We operate within a.

Speaker 8 (19:41):
Regulated industry, meaning that we have an obligation to be transparent.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
The crucial test, I suppose, is not going to be
whether countries or companies are happy with their ratings, but
whether investors use these ratings in conjunction with other ratings
or not, whether they have the same credibility as the
ratings of the other agencies. Do you believe that they will.

Speaker 8 (20:08):
At the formation of the At the launch the African
Credit Ratings Association ACRA yesterday, the issue of credibility was discussed.
We had several academics that work at a very high
level that contribute papers to the academics space, and we

(20:29):
noted that the issue of credibility around anything sourced from
Africa does tend to be pervasive and at the best
of times, is not always objective, and we have devised
measures and pathways to ensure that where there is a

(20:50):
decision that there's a lack of credibility, that decision should
be substantiated. And importantly, Stephen, one of the most interesting
in merging trends that we are seeing is that we
do have African investors as well, so it's not the
case that all investors come from overseas.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
And the first aim of the African Credit.

Speaker 8 (21:14):
Ratings Association is to ensure that we have rapport and
good bilaterals with African investors, including institutional investors, various corporates
and others that have the capacity to invest. And based
on what we saw yesterday, there is excitement. There's an

(21:34):
emerging excitement about a new look at African credibility, a
new look at African professionalism and African competence, and that starts.
The conclusion that we reached was that that starts with
Africans themselves. And once we have finished our process where
we are communicating with various institutions that are involved in

(21:58):
cashlow management in terms of investing internally and externally within
the continent, I think we will have a better understanding
of their appetite for investing in Africa and also paying
objective attention to ratings that emerge from the continent.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Doctor Savisa Falala, thank you so much, President of the
African Credit Rating Association.

Speaker 7 (22:19):
The Money Show, the Market.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Chris Stewart is Portcolio manager at ninety one Chris Good Evening,
first of our retailers reporting on the festive season. Mister
Price has seemed quite a beat.

Speaker 9 (22:30):
Should they be, Well, you know, if you look at
the sales number, steven, it's not a particularly great sales number,
three point six percent, a little bit I think below
what the market was expecting. Also indicating a little bit
of gross margin pressure down about twenty basis points odd

(22:51):
on the court. And I think under normal circumstances, mister
Price probably wouldn't receive that kind of news very well,
but it is a tough trading environment, and it does
look as though they are still gaining apparel market share,
at least against their physical or listed competitors, rather than
the online competitors that we've spent some time talking about.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
So not great, but remember where the shares coming from.

Speaker 9 (23:18):
It sold off twenty five percent in the last quarter,
largely on the back of the NKD deal that they
announced to the market that they're acquiring an offshore retailer
across Germany and Eastern Europe, which the market is absolutely
hated and punished the stop for quite materially. So you know,
not great news today, but not a complete disaster. A

(23:40):
little bit better in January, making some positive statements about
the perspective outlook, and as a result of that, the
market taking it okay today, not great, but okay.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
And then expectations of the US FED most of the
money i've seen seems to be on a hold.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, we've got lots going on in the US tonight.

Speaker 9 (24:00):
We've got Microsoft reporting, We've got Meta reporting, We've got
Tesla reporting, so you know, some of the big tech
giants will be reporting. We've got the all important FED
rate decision and a duvish hold, I guess is probably
the consensus view right now, no doubt in the event
that there is a hold, and that it does appear
as though the Federal Reserve is fairly unanimous in that view,

(24:22):
we will get Trump out on his social media channels
talking about, you know, what a terrible job Jerome pal
is doing, and how he can't wait for him to
leave in May so that he can replace him with
somebody who is going to I guess cut rates aggressively,
all of which you know, will continue to raise the
specter of further dollar weakness, and I guess raised the

(24:45):
spector of can the FED maintain independence under pressure from
the United States present?

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Christian, thanks so much, portfolio manager at ninety one, just
after six thirty, what.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Stephen on seven two seven oh two one seven two, Well.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
I've sort of been twenty four report today and obviously
they've tried nothing correctly so to try and get some
sort of reaction from the mobile phone industry about the
new data role over rules that came out of IKARSA
this week. We spoke to AKASA. Basically, if you have
a mobile data bundle and you don't use all of
the data tester roll over at least once. That's only

(25:22):
coming in from the beginning of next year, and from
what I could see, basically the cell phone industry complaining
that they weren't listened to, which is a bit like
saying to someone we think you've made lots of money,
we want you to make less money. It really doesn't
matter what you say to them, how much you listen
to them, they're always going to come back and say that.
What we don't have yet is any clarity on whether

(25:44):
they're actually going to go to court to stop it.
And I suspect, being I'm afraid to say slightly cynical
about business organizations, that we might have to wait a
little while and it might be just before they're actually
brought in so towards the end of the year that
we actually find out whether or not there's going to
be a case. I'd watch that one closely. Oh seven

(26:05):
two seven oh two one seven oh two two with.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Email him on Stephen at seven oh two dot co dotz.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Thirteen minutes to seven time on News Today. The amount
of coal exported through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal last
year was up by eleven percent. That's still significantly below
the figure recorded back in twenty seventeen, but it's also
a massive improvement. Professor Young Haavena is a professor of
logistics at the University of Stellenbosch and director of the

(26:38):
GAIN Group. Young good evening, we've seen so many more
trains going on that Transnett route. What's really changed to
allow this to happen?

Speaker 5 (26:49):
I think the most thanksfu Evice, I think the most
important change you refer back to a few years is
a very low point that we've got to run about
twenty twenty two. I remember correctly, sadly at the point
when the cold crist is very high because of the
Ukrainian War. Since then, a few things has happened. Initially
it was Mining Council, it was the people from business

(27:13):
approaching the president and the Nationalistics Crisis Committee being formed,
and some work being done from the private sector to
really help. I think what really changes is was the
new leadership. To translate, they've been in Charles now for
a little bit less than two years. I think Michelle
Phillips as the Sea and then obviously Russell Biks as

(27:33):
the head of the railways, and they've done significant improvements
since then. And then one must remember. I mean, if
you talk about numbers, they need to get tough about
seventy five million tons A dropped to fifty used to
be seventy five. We dropped to fifty million tons. I
lost a third for the biggest cash card of the
owayad and you must remember. Clawing back from there it

(27:54):
requires quite a few things, and they've done the obvious things.
Initially I thought, okay, you're doing all the things these days.
They're doing really interesting and clever stuff. But they're still
doing all of this without the major maintenance backlocks, the
investment that is required to make that work. They've not
been able to do that yet for lots of reasons.

(28:15):
But I've got it out from fifty to over sixty
million pounds the rate that they're running at at the moment,
another firsteing or so to go, and for that some
major works can be required.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
I mean, one of the big problems was cable theft,
I mean simple kind of criminality or sabotage. Now, I
don't expect trans Nett to tell us about everything they've
done to bring that down, but whatever they're doing on
those routes, it's working well.

Speaker 5 (28:42):
It's all of the areas. And one of the things
that you talk about, the previous management of TRANSNS literally
hit behind the locomotive problem. But you can break the
problem up into a few areas apart from the big
maintenance works that still hasn't been done. And in order
to get their independence, assessment was done. And I think
there's negotiations going on the team transmit and big business

(29:05):
about the artists is going to be funded. These are Yeah,
we're talking about big transactions that sort of borders on
VISPSP top of transaction. But for the rest it's locomotives
is maybe twenty percent of the problem. Safety and vandalism
was another twenty percent of so of the problem. But
then it was normal inability to run an eutroad, which
the previous management below rooting and scheduling, the way we

(29:28):
staff is deployed. And for all of these things, RASNA
strands some really creative solutions. And I learned something today
that I didn't know. I thought I knew everything about that.
About that goal line. You know, we run three hundred
wagon trains on iron on line and two hundred dagon
trains on the goal line. They are secretly in the
last few months started running three under plane. They've done

(29:51):
all the tests, they made it work, and running three
hundred wagon trains on that go line, so it's not
only more trains, but as area trains, and that is
great engineering and that's hard work. So I hope they
can't give the next step. Now we're just required to
get this done. And that is the major investment in
a maintenance that sell behind that transmit cannot fund from

(30:11):
the redallianceships.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
So we've got those improvements. I'm presuming these will whatever's
working there will work on the other trans net lines
as well, or certainly the major ones. Could this be
the air when our economy starts to really feel the
impact of improved trans neitt logistics and improved railway system.

Speaker 5 (30:31):
You touching on a better sweet, better sweet element of
this of this thing. Transmit for obvious reasons, immediately jumped
in and work on the two cashcows, which is the
goal line and iron on line. And I have to
say also different work around manganese. A lot of people
miss the major medicle of manganese. You've seen numbers so

(30:52):
that twenty years ago two million times now in a
region of twelve million times, and that is fantastic improvement.
The solution for the general faith business of transmit. I'm
afraid that should be on the rail and our two
major corridors, especially the Capitone corridor and the Hotel corridor.
I'm not seeing that yet. I'm not seeing improvement. I'm

(31:13):
not seeing equipment in numbers. We know what needs to
be done, but it's much more complex and a lot
of people need to come to the party to make
this work. The one aspect that will make it work
as private sector access and I think the attractions of
the world, the grinds of the world. It's going to
bring us trains. We know the traction this is made
in our major investment inam running stock, et cetera. But

(31:36):
and the big part is the infrastructure is broken and
there we haven't got a specific solution yet. I'm not
saying people are not working on it, but I've not
seen the solution that's going to give us the railway
that we should have, and we should start pushing for that.
We know it can be done. The solution as such
as not on the table yet. The minute has gone

(31:56):
out on PSP request as we know, we've not seen
out of that yet. How this is going to work.
I know that they're working hard on it, but as
should have in general, we've not seen it that it's
going to work, and we really need to push that
the genda now.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Professor, thank you so much. Professor anhavan Achaz, Professor of
Logistics at the University of Sembosch, Director of the Gain Group.

Speaker 10 (32:18):
The Money Show with Stephen Kuetz is brought to you
by ABS as cib a Pan African bank invested in
your story and the potential it can unlock because your
story matters as as the rest of the FSP Well.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
More evidence today that we might, let me just say,
might start to feel our economy is turning around. This
year the Paying Net Salary Index, showing that people earning
between five thousand and one hundred thousand rand a month
did get an increase in real terms last year of
half a percent. It's the second year of proper income growth.

(32:52):
Elise Krueger is an independent economist who looks at these
numbers put them together at least good evening, How have
salaries been moving over the last few months. I mean
we see all of the sort of good economic news
things see in the line and a good aligned in
a good direction. That doesn't always mean we feel richer.

Speaker 11 (33:12):
Good Evening Stevens. Yes, you know, if you look at
a lot of part of last year salaries that flattened
somewhat compared to early in the years. So if you
look at the first half, you know, salary increases were
in the order phenomenal terms of about four point seven percent,
and then the full years numbers came out about three
point seven. So we have seen a bit of flattening

(33:34):
out of the end of the year. But you know,
typically for celeary data, it's good to look at an
annual average rather than to look at quarters or even
whole twelve years. So the three point seven compared to
four point six percent in the previous years, so somewhat
of a moderation.

Speaker 12 (33:49):
But also a continuation.

Speaker 11 (33:50):
Of growth in salaries.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
I mean, obviously, what I suppose you're looking at is
average salary growth and average inflation. And the Reserve Bank
now wants to limit inflation expectations. They want us to
presume and assume that inflation will remain low. And that
doesn't that then feed into what buses will give workers.

(34:13):
They will give them smaller increases.

Speaker 12 (34:16):
Yes, absolutely, and if we can manage to get.

Speaker 11 (34:19):
CPI to say a three percent you know, a long
term and you know, sort of target at that level
and it realizes, then one could say, you know, it
is fair and would expect in a three percent plus
some form of a real increase, you know, on top
of that, just to to get your employees to at
least keep up with it puts in power and I

(34:41):
think we will see that at the time, Steven, But
it will take time for experise.

Speaker 5 (34:46):
Mon.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
That's quite al right, is welcome on the Money Show.

Speaker 12 (34:50):
It's will take time, you know, for us to see.

Speaker 11 (34:53):
That declining trend in white settlements, especially given that you've
got quite a few multi year ways agree immens that
are still you know, running and we will see the
year two, three and four and someone still coming through
at quite high levels compete to a year ago. We
competed at three percent targeted in net orders say that.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
I mean, I suppose a big part of this is
around what skills you have. We have millions unfortunately, millions
of people who don't have jobs in South Africa can't
get jobs. If you have skills, I presume that it's
much easier to argue for a bigger than inflation increase
if there's a shortage of those skills in your sector,
and if we start to see that happening, that suggests

(35:35):
that things are moving in certain sectors of our economy.

Speaker 11 (35:39):
That is definitely true. As Stephen, I think we are
seeing a lot of that, and leeds a lot of folds.
They talk about skill shortage and the impact on wage
settlements and wage negotiations, and also the whole theme of
retention of talent. So once you've got your workers with
that are highly skilled, you with like to keep things.

Speaker 12 (36:01):
Therefore, it becomes.

Speaker 6 (36:02):
Quite an important.

Speaker 11 (36:03):
Negotiating you know, aspect for workers if they do have
a skill skill that they know the company needs and
companies are willing to pay for that.

Speaker 12 (36:13):
So I think it will be really stick to specific.

Speaker 11 (36:16):
Therefore, you looking at looking at an average is almost
like a dipstick for the whole economy. But there will
be different segments that will fear better compete to others.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
I suppose if you consider that for quite a long time,
salaries haven't really improved in real terms for most people.
Even if things do look up, there's still so much
sort of recovery to do. I mean GDP per capital,
the amount that each person earned in a year, and
South hasn't really increased for a very long time.

Speaker 11 (36:45):
Yeah, indeed true. And we also have quite an erosion
of our salaries in the in the years twenty two
twenty three, you know, after COVID, and we are still
if you compete to those levels in built and we
are still playing catch up. So yes, you know, it's
great if we can ad consecutive years of real increases
in wages, but we are still if you could do

(37:06):
comparisons to a couple of years ago, we are still lagging.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Eliz Kruger, thanks so much. Independent economists puts those numbers together,
Ready to appreciate that so much to talk about when
it comes to your salary and how much it's worth
in real terms. In a moment, we will be looking
at business unusual and why it is that so many
of us could get all the tools we need on
our phone or on a relatively cheap device, and yet

(37:31):
very few of us are using all of those tools
that are available. Suppose if you wanted to put a
headline to it, it would be why a behavior is
becoming more important than technology? Technology? We all have it's
in your pocket with the money show seven o'clock.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
And now The Money Show with Stephens on seven o two.

Speaker 7 (37:53):
Let's walk little.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
The Money Show with Stephen Curtis has brought to you
by abs of corporates and investment banking, a Pan African
bank that's an invested in your story because your story
matter is good. Evening seven minutes after seven the time
will be speaking to Richard Mulholland, the founder of the
AI Agency Too Many Robots, about this quite simple idea
in a way that almost everything you need to do

(38:17):
you could probably do with your cell phone. If it's
above a certain standard, and so many of them are,
you could probably do almost everything. You wouldn't need the
very expensive device to use Google software, free software whatever
from the cloud and off you go. So why do
so few of us do it? It's a question I
think that's going to get to the heart of so
many companies. Wendy Nola, your consumer Ninja, has refused to

(38:40):
tell me much about what we're talking about tonight, but
she says it is about the fact that the Money
Show that'll be us helped someone to buy a house. Now,
I'm hoping that it works out as a good investment,
but clearly there's a very interesting story she has to tell,
So I will hear the story along with you in
about ten minutes. And then if I look behind me,

(39:02):
there is Vernustacky is the CEO of a Stubber and
the co founder of the company Jenny Internet. He'll be
on your radio in about twenty minutes. Time. He got
started early. You know, some shape shifters I've noticed start
sort of mid career. Some start early. He started while
he was at school and did some very interesting things.
So we'll hear about that. Looking forward to that conversation

(39:24):
and that story from seven point thirty.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
The Money Show with Stephen krudis live on ninety two
point seven and one six FM, streaming on the Prime
Media Plus.

Speaker 7 (39:35):
NAP and DStv channel eight five six.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
I had to smile a little bit this morning. I
don't know if you recall. I started the show yesterday
talking about the major supply chain problems that Starbucks in
the US has head not Starbucks here, but Starbucks in
the US, and how it is they have too many suppliers,
so too many small suppliers and not enough big ones.
They battle literally to get the right kind of lid

(39:59):
for some of the coffee, they're not getting enough milk.
Sometimes they're too much of this sandwich and not enough
of that one, all of those kind of problems. And
I was asking you on O seven two seven oh
two one seven oh two, what kind of supply chain
problems you've seen? You know, and you can't get what
you expected to get, and how do you feel about it? Well,
I saw today that the Gianna Cooppolis family, they're quite

(40:21):
a well known family in parts of Quasil until I understand.
I don't think I've ever spoken to a member of
the family, but what they sort of famous for in
some ways is that they own quite a large number
of SPA outlets. So SPA franchises in the way SPA
works is unlike say Pick and Pay or Checkers, which
owns most of their outlets. Those chains own most of

(40:41):
their outlets. SPA works on a more of a franchise model.
You have to buy I think it's eighty or ninety
percent of everything you sell at the zoop market from SPA,
and the Gena Cooppolis family are suing them for one
hundred and seventy million rand because of supply chain problems,
And it just shows you what the steaks are. Their
point is that everything was sort of working until a

(41:02):
brand new SAP system. Where have we heard this story before?
A new IT system was brought in and suddenly they
couldn't get anything that they needed. As a result, they
lost a huge amount of sales. And you can imagine
how that can happen. At some point we need to
speak to some supply chain specialists and just get a
deeper understanding of how it works. How difficult is it

(41:24):
to get that bottle of pepsi and that can of
coke to the right place at the right time. What
happens if a branch of McDonald's only gets the bottoms
of the burgers but not the tops all of that
kind of thing. You know, what does burger king do?
I think there's going to be some very interesting conversations
that come out of it. If you have any experience,
or some people you'd suggest we talked to, won't you

(41:46):
get in touch please on O seven two seven oh
two one seven oh two, eleven minutes after seven.

Speaker 7 (41:51):
Money show business unusual.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Well, I suppose one of the things that's so interesting
about the way the world is now is that you can,
I'm sure use chat GPT on your phone. In fact,
I know you can because even I have. And yet
so few of us are using all of the things
that are available for us. So why is that? Richard
Mulfolland is the founder of the AI agency Too Many
Robot's the author of the book Relentless Relevant. How's it? Richard?

(42:18):
Has been a long time, So good evening, Good to
talk again. We all have kind of most of what
we need in our pocket, and we have internet access,
we have AI, and yet we're not actually using it
to anything like the full potential. Oh, very few of
us are.

Speaker 13 (42:36):
Yeah, student, I'm also grit schat you again. I think
you're absolutely right. So there was a William Gibson quote
that I recently kind of appeared up for me again
a few weeks ago, and it was the future is
already here. It's just not very evenly distributed. And that
quote has been in the prevailing wisdom for so long
that we've always just kind of accepted it as always

(42:57):
been true.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Now.

Speaker 13 (42:59):
I believe it was true in ninety nine when he
said it, but I absolutely don't think that it's true now.
You know, like the billionaires in the world don't have
better phones in their pockets than we do. And the
phones we have in our pockets now are better, you know,
by an order of magnitude than they create supercomputers that
were available twenty years ago, and yet people are still

(43:19):
using them to you know, scroll TikTok, and not nearly
to the potential that they can. And it's not just
cell phones, it's three D printers, it's vibe coding tools.
I just don't think that we have realized that the
future is more evenly distributed than ever before, and I
don't think we're embracing that.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Why do you think that happens? I mean, is it
because we're too busy doing other things, by which I
mean kind of twentieth century things. Is it because we
just never get time to play? Is it because don't
you dare I'm too old?

Speaker 7 (43:54):
Yeah, it's I think it's all of those.

Speaker 11 (43:56):
You know.

Speaker 13 (43:56):
On my first book, legac Side, I spoke about the
fact that legacy thinking is the silent killer progress. It's
the idea that we solve a problem in our brain
and then we check it off and we move on
to new things, but we never go back to those
old things to say are they still relevant? And so,
you know, for me, the technological barrier has been removed,

(44:19):
but not the psychological one, So starting something is still scary.
Now people don't feel because they can't build anymore, but
they fail because they're waiting to be ready, or to
be perfect, or for permission. And ironically, now execution is cheap,
but excuses are expensive, and I think that people are
using excuses far too much for not doing things. And

(44:42):
I just think that a lot of people don't realize
they can do it.

Speaker 9 (44:44):
Yet.

Speaker 13 (44:45):
People are still paying software subscriptions to a lot of
software as a service tools that they could quite easily
create an under a day a version that would work
very well for themselves, and they just don't quite mind
blowing to me.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
Okay, So if everyone has access to everything, what skills
kind of matter? I mean, what what suddenly becomes your
competitive age as a person trying to sort of stay
employed in this environment?

Speaker 14 (45:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 13 (45:17):
I think that's really interesting, right, because if everybody can
make anything, then all of a sudden, the most important
choice is.

Speaker 7 (45:26):
Is judgment, Like what is worth building?

Speaker 9 (45:29):
No?

Speaker 7 (45:29):
You know what's good? And I think the most important.

Speaker 13 (45:32):
Tool that we have is curiosity, And I think that
people aren't curious enough they're not seeing themselves as makers.
I also believe by the way that in the future
we're entering into every single human should have multiple income streams.
The idea of being reliant on a single source of
income in the next two years it seems like a really, really,
really dangerous idea. And we now have these tools that

(45:54):
can allow people to have, you know, four or five
six different income streams. Potentially, some of them might be
to be smaller than they're getting from their salary. But
if they are not curious enough to explore them, and
if they don't have the judgment to try and think
about interesting, cool ideas, then then they'll lose potentially. But
I think that the tools are out there and people

(46:15):
are just not embracing them, isn't there.

Speaker 7 (46:18):
I mean, also, yeah, I think they have to have
a bias for action.

Speaker 13 (46:21):
So sorry, I think people have to have a bias
towards action. They have to realize that they have to
be makers, and I believe that a lot of people
and entrepreneurs are just not doing that.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
At the same time, I mean, so all of that
must be true. I think people are sometimes consumed by
their day, you know, they just don't have time to
get into it. And I suppose that takes us back
to something many people have said, is that you do
need to give yourself an hour a week or an
hour a day to do new things and play new things,
especially if you're running a small business.

Speaker 13 (46:53):
One hundred percent agree with you. You know, last night,
I finished work, I went to a jiu jitsu class.
I came home and I sat and I was vibe
couding a new tool that I'm looking.

Speaker 7 (47:02):
At creating for professional speakers.

Speaker 13 (47:04):
Now, obviously I was building a tool that I would
want to use, but I had so much fun.

Speaker 7 (47:09):
It doesn't feel like work. This new technology.

Speaker 13 (47:11):
Is it's like a fear ground, and when you dig
into it and you realize what's absolutely possible, it really
is a super fun way to spend an evening. But
I find that people aren't doing it because they think
of it as work and they think that, you know,
they don't want to switch over at the end of
the day.

Speaker 7 (47:28):
They want to switch off.

Speaker 13 (47:30):
And I do believe that we need to have the
mindset that you know, at five o'clock switch over and
doom squalling doesn't feel like a reasonable use of time.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Oh sure, are they particular practical steps that a business
owner could take to sort of, you know, try and
act on the future in a way.

Speaker 9 (47:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (47:49):
Absolutely, Now everybody, every business owner I know currently uses
you know, an LM of some sorts, Gemini, CHTBT, things
like that. Really really good way to start, and in fact,
the way I start every single one of these projects
that I'm working on is I just have a really
reasonable conversation about a point of view about my industry
with one of these tools, and in each instance they

(48:12):
will write you the starting code that you can take
into another service like Claude or Replets.

Speaker 7 (48:18):
You know, you'd be able to.

Speaker 13 (48:20):
Literally get started with the tool in under an hour
and all you have to do is have a conversation
with your LLM around your industry, around the problems that
you're facing in your business, problems that you wish you
would like to solve for yourself. And the interesting thing
that will happen is if you solve a problem for yourself,
you may find that it's a problem that other people have.
Like I'm not sure if you remember the messaging tool slack.

(48:43):
Slack was actually an internal tool that was created for
a gaming company that was trying to launch a game
the game never took off, but the little messaging tools
they created just to solve the problem that they had
and game design did and was sold for billions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
So interesting. Richard Muholland, thank you so much, founder of
AI agency Too Many Robots and author of the book
Relentless Relevance. Eighteen minutes after seven.

Speaker 7 (49:08):
The Money Show consumer Ninja.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
Well, your consumer Ninja, of course, is Wendy Nler, and
she joins us. Now, how's it, Wendy, you're talking tonight
about how I don't know how I got involved in
this or how the Money Show did, how we helped
the listener buy a house, and you got some feedback
from a regular listener, I have Stephen.

Speaker 11 (49:31):
Hello.

Speaker 14 (49:32):
It's always gratifying when you get feedback like this. It's
very seldom, actually you put advice out and you think, well,
maybe that'll help someone, but you're never quite sure. So yeah,
I got an email from Matthew earlier in the week
and it began. I listened to your segment on The
Money Show every week the podcast, and I just wanted

(49:53):
to say thank you. My wife and I I'll buy
our first home together, and thanks to you, I knew
how too, then he goes on to.

Speaker 15 (50:01):
List all the precautions that he took. So I thought
it was worth sharing because it's quite good key advice
on you know, how to go by and buying a house.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
What was on his list, because I mean, he would
have taken some time to put it together, and it's obvious.
It's not stuff that's always obvious.

Speaker 14 (50:23):
Okay, Yeah, So I found it really interesting.

Speaker 15 (50:25):
He said.

Speaker 14 (50:25):
He first got Inspector Home. That's one of these professional
property inspection companies. There are others. House Check is another one.
I think that's the biggest one in the country, but
there are many. They got Inspector Home out to check.

Speaker 15 (50:36):
That the home that they were buying was sound. He says.
It's an old home built one hundred years ago in.

Speaker 14 (50:42):
Parktown, North So this was crucial, he says, because he
has the thing. According to John Graham, who's the head
of house Check, one of which is one of the
one of these companies, only between three and five percent
of homeowners do this on average. I don't know about you, seven,
but I found that horrifying statistics given and probably because
I get the emails from people who weren't told that

(51:04):
there was damp or you know, a dodgy roof and
found out the hard expensive way later. So so yeah,
for me, it's a no brain And I was so
so many so few people do it that when not
Matthew told me about it, I was like, oh, that's
that made my day.

Speaker 15 (51:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
And the main issues, I mean, there are obviously so
many things that can happen with the house, it's such
a big purchase.

Speaker 14 (51:28):
The main ones are no plans or an extension done
in addition done no plans, and that's a big issue.
Roof poorly constructed or badly maintained or both, non compliant
installations of geezers and damp it's a huge one have
in many of those cases. And then walls and roots

(51:49):
are not built to building regulations standards and also boundary walls,
and this of course is a big issue if you
have an insurance plan. Is a big storm, it's your area,
the roof aves in, the wall falls down, and then
you're insurer comes back and it's a huge reason for
rejections that come back and say, oh but ursas the
wall wasn't built according to regulations and that's why it

(52:09):
felt downe The storm is just a contributing factor. So yeah,
the Graham of house Check says no one should put
an offer and to purchase without making it a conditional
upon a satisfactory home inspection.

Speaker 15 (52:25):
Well, of course you would, that's his business.

Speaker 14 (52:27):
But I completely agree that it is crazy to do that.
But if you didn't think of it before you bought
the house and moved, and you should absolutely do it
now to for that insurance reason, right to make sure
that you're not sitting with a problem that means you're
going to be wasting your premiums. You're never ever going
to get a successful storm plan.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
Yeah, I mean I see that, and I suppose I
mean you think about a conditional offer, and I think, well, then,
Joe Berg, I'm sure you could do that. In Cape Town,
the person is just going to take, you know, in
some parts of Cape Town, we'll just take the next
offer that's not conditional, because there's such a shortage of
property in some places.

Speaker 15 (53:02):
Absolutely so in Cape Town.

Speaker 14 (53:03):
I can totally see that being a problem, and it
has been worrying me.

Speaker 15 (53:06):
I've been thinking about this.

Speaker 14 (53:07):
If you look at if you look at listings for
anything from a studio apartment to your average.

Speaker 15 (53:14):
Home in Cape Town. You'll see under offer sold sold sold.

Speaker 14 (53:18):
I mean, it's just absolutely crazy, huge shortage of stock
and too many people wanting to buy. And so I
can imagine if you said to the agent, well, I'm
here's my offer, but I'm making it conditional upon getting
a check done first, which is the wise advice.

Speaker 15 (53:33):
You'll lose out. It's a difficult one for me.

Speaker 14 (53:35):
Because I foresee, especially in the Cape Town era, because
of that, I foresee problems, big problems with think about it,
you can sell just about anything so that you didn't
know any of the problems were there, and desperate buyer
who was like the lucky one and inverted commerce lands
up with big structural issues to deal with very expensively later.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
These inspections are very expensive, Wendy.

Speaker 15 (53:58):
Look it's all relative.

Speaker 14 (54:00):
They're about fall to five thousand rand for the average
size house.

Speaker 15 (54:04):
And you think of what they're doing. They're checking getting.

Speaker 14 (54:06):
In the roof, they're checking your plans, they checking the
integrity of your boundary walls, checking to see that was
built according to regulation, all the things that could trip
you up later. So it might seem like buying a
house is so expensive, and now there's this extra thing
when you consider what is what's at stake. I really
think it's crazy, crazy, risky to to not get that

(54:28):
check done before you sign on that dotted line and commit.
So yeah, it's a difficult one, but I talk about
it a lot because, as I say, I get a
lot of emails from people who didn't and then really
really lived to regret it.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
I mean, was that other advice that that.

Speaker 14 (54:46):
Yeah, A few more things on this list was I
made sure the home had approved plans so that we
can properly ensure the home.

Speaker 15 (54:54):
He says, they didn't.

Speaker 14 (54:57):
Have the plans ready for him, so they're getting them
done now the sales. So I was like, yay, so
glad to hear that, because that would have been a
mistake if he hadn't known to do it. And also
how to avoid remember we talk about business economic slorry,
business email compromised when you're paying your money over to
the convincing attorneys and you and and yeah, the brook

(55:17):
jumps in the middle, intersects the email, puts their bank
details there, and and you go and pay the crook
instead of the transferring attorneys.

Speaker 15 (55:26):
So he's done all those checks.

Speaker 14 (55:28):
And test he did a test one hundred rand to
see it landed in the corrector cart. He says, I
just wanted to say thank you for all the lessons.
There's still a way to go and purchase purchasing the home.

Speaker 15 (55:38):
Bond approvals, et cetera. But I feel a little.

Speaker 14 (55:40):
Bit more knowledgeable going into the whole process and hopefully
everything continues smoothly. And I certainly hope so too. Yeah,
as I say, really gratified.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
That, I mean, I mean, I was just thinking about
how do you make sure you're paying it into the
right thing, And I was thinking, oh, I would take
my phone to the attorney's office and make them put
in details.

Speaker 14 (56:00):
There's there Also I should add here that the other
thing you can and must do is most of the
banks will have a little If you look at when
you go to pay do an EFT, you'll see a
little thing that says something like verification. It's really an
expense of a few rand. And so if you're paying
to the name of your transferring at Tourney or the
legal practice, you can check that that actually is the

(56:22):
practice's account and if it's not a match, your bank
will tell you. So that's another way to find out.
But I mean at one hundred rand or ten rand.

Speaker 15 (56:29):
Check is is foolproof as well.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Wendy know that. Thank you so much, ready to appreciate it.
Our consumer Ninja helping you buy a house and just
get through life on The Money Show every week. Wendy,
thanks the Money Show. Shape Shift is twenty two minutes
now to eighth the time, so you'll know that many
of the people who've sat now shape shift a seat
started there, whatever it is that they've done. Kind of

(56:52):
halfway through a career, someone will get to the age
of thirty, thirty five, forty in decide I don't want
to do this anymore. They'll spot a gap, or they'll
do what they're always doing, but they started their own thing.
Some of our shape shifters are a complete opposite that
they were knocking on doors selling things at a young age.
Our shape Shifter tonight is one of those. He got

(57:12):
going while he was still I had to read it
twice to make sure I'd got it correct, just still
at school. Werner Stuckey is the CEO of Stubbart, the
co founder of Jenny Internet, and he started vernon Good
Evening it was an internet service provider while he was
still at school.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Right, Yes, that's correct. In the days of dial up.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
I mean I remember the telecom signal and dial up
in my head. I don't think i'll ever I mean,
it's changed so much. How on earth did you end
up doing that?

Speaker 6 (57:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 16 (57:40):
I think we were like exposed to technology from a
young age. And then yeah, those US robotics modems. We
used to go out in the town and install them
on our bicycles after school. So my brother and I
that we were fifteen and thirteen at the time, setting
up email addresses, email but moilboxes, those type of things.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Pop free, wasn't that you always had to get something
to do with top three and was it? I I
can't even remember.

Speaker 16 (58:05):
As MTP and pop three and you had to get
all those settings and set it up and yeah, I
diagnosed why it's not working that.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Yeah, that's so good.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Where were you when all of this was happening. You
weren't in Joeburg. You were in puma Langa.

Speaker 16 (58:17):
Yes, in a small town called Fork Trust, So on
the border of Bazilinadal and Pumalanga.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
Were there many other ISPs then for Trust?

Speaker 2 (58:27):
No? No, no, not many?

Speaker 3 (58:28):
When was this so? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (58:30):
There was? That must have been late nineteen nineties.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Yeah, and I mean to a lot of people at
the time, as strange as it may seem now, the
Internet was this thing that other people did. Now you're
bringing the Internet into people's home, you're bringing it on
your bicycle. I mean, that must have been quite a
fun thing to do as a young as a younger person.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Yeah, it was. It was really fun.

Speaker 16 (58:51):
And then luck we were first reselling dial up because
you couldn't get licenses those days, and then you as
the telecoms in this we opened up. We took each
successive step, so we got a van's license, and then
we got the the S license.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
After that, you're gonna have to tell me what a
van's license is.

Speaker 16 (59:10):
Yeah, So there were there was like the previous licenses
which allowed you to resell Talcom's Internet. And then there
was a famous case with Ultra and Altic and they
took they took the took the regulator to court, and
out of that came a e CNS license. And they
made two types of licenses, a country wide license and

(59:31):
like a provincial license. And due to some stroke of
like they said if you were in three provinces or more,
you'd they'd give you a coverage of a country wide license,
and if you were only in like less than that,
you'd only get a province license. Now, if you go
back to Fortress, your seats on the border of Kazilinatal

(59:51):
and Puma Langa and just up the road is free state.
So I think we're probably the smallest ip ever to
go from Van's license countrywide ECNS license in one step.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
That's amazing, I mean, and just to realize that this
was the case that you could do it. Yeah, So
you were at school when things started to change, and
I presume you were finishing school. Did you have an
idea as you were finishing school. I don't know how
your parents felt about you using your bicycles for productive
Internet purposes, but did you get a sense this is
what this kind of industry is what you were going

(01:00:24):
to do?

Speaker 16 (01:00:25):
Yeah, I think I knew it was in tech or
in software actually as well. So I was writing software
from a young age as well. My dad actually gave
me a visual Basic three book I think I was twelve,
and he asked me to write him a stock management
system for his business. That was a little bit above
what I was capable of at the time, but yeah,
I always knew it was tech, and I was actually thinking, Yeah,

(01:00:47):
I didn't really ever think of a profession growing up.
I think there was a time where I wanted to
become a doctor, but that was very young, and then
after that I always sort of knew I wanted to
run my own business.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
And your parents were encouraging. I mean, if they're giving
you books on basic three and they're they're asking you
to write it, I presume they weren't asking you to
write it down by pen there was a computer around.

Speaker 16 (01:01:07):
Yes, my parents are very encouraging and job that we
come from a family business in the area. So look,
I think I learned a lot of just business just
by osmosis, like the family business.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
I can just imagine. So as you finished school, what
were you thinking of doing. I mean a lot of
people in that environment, some people immediately want to go
and start their business. I'm turning eighteen now, Dad, I'm
registering it in my name, as some people go and study.
I don't know if you thought of along those lines.

Speaker 16 (01:01:36):
Yeah, I was thinking along those lines, but I sort
of had the choice made for me in a sense.
So I was in grade eleven and I got a
letter from the German army and they conscripted me. So
Germany still had conscription, Yes, and they conscripted me through
some era in the system in Germany because I can

(01:01:57):
speak German, although my grandfather's and raised in Germany.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
And they're the citizenship system through where they call it
blood but they mean from your parents. Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:02:07):
Yeah, so I was born in South Africa and my
dad as well. Yeah, and I got this letter in Fortrest.
Turns out was like an error and I could have
gotten out of it, but I said, no, let's let's
go after my tric owl. I'll go do my service
in Germany.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
So wow.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Yeah, I hate to say it that they might call
people up again. You know they're looking, I mean people
thinking aloud about conscription in Germany, which is a big,
big issue. Okay, So you come back to South Africa
after that experience. I presume the first thing he did
was remove the uniform. And now you're running a I mean,
was your brother already running a business. Were you looking
at joining him? Did you decide to do your own thing?

Speaker 16 (01:02:45):
Because so we had we had about ninety clients on
dialogue subscriptions by the time we left school.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Just in the area.

Speaker 16 (01:02:52):
Yeah, and so while I was away, you were sort
of turning to the customers. And then he went to
England for a year and I was back to then
I was looking after the customers and then we sort
of just grew it from there. Moving to an ECNS
license allowed us to start building our own network, and
I think that's the big switch. That's where we could
sort of focus on the actually building an internet company.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
So to do that you would need capital as well,
and you probably weren't getting it too much from anti
customers and folks rests, so you've had to get money
from somewhere. And at the time, you know, I'm always
interested in in kind of waves of technology, which that
was AI is the current wave obviously, and you were
you weren't just taking advantage of it, you were helping
to drive it. Was it difficult to convince people of

(01:03:36):
what you were trying to do. I mean, did your
bank manager know what on earth you were talking about? Yeah?

Speaker 16 (01:03:42):
I think banks banks operated a little bit differently those days,
you know, So we knew you know, the bank manager
from the running club, you know, and it's a small town,
so yeah, the the I mean, we we were probably
the only company in fortiss that asked our bank for
direct debit facility so that debit people's accounts, and I

(01:04:02):
remember that was like such a difficult thing for them
to arrange for us, but yeah, they were they were
very supportive.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
And then yeah, we just grew grew it from there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
When you're scaling up and you're beginning to now have
your own network, so you get investments and you go
from there, but you're also now for the first time,
I presume, dealing with competitors, people who, depending on where
you are and the geography, people who may be used
to getting into a bigger market. What was that like,
because scaling up for a lot of businesses is really hard.

Speaker 16 (01:04:33):
Yeah, so yeah, I think we took we took quite
a difficult route there. So we're most of it's all
just organic growth and we built like this franchise model.
So we were very fortunate to have some great partners
in different areas regions in South Africa that we sort
of they helped us build up the infrastructure and we
sort of ran support and core network and those type

(01:04:55):
of sales services centrally. So we built it up like
with a network of partners and grew across South Africa
go that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
Way, and I mean you are working suddenly with a
lot of people, and sometimes people are quite difficult. I mean,
did you find yourself dealing with problems that you thought, ah,
it was easier, you know when I was just right
selling ips?

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Yeah, I think, yeah, there was quite adjustment for me.

Speaker 16 (01:05:17):
I think my brother is more the people person and
I was much more on the technical side.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
So we had a good partnership that way around. It's
amazing to see how quickly it grew. What do you
think helped you to succeed? So obviously you knew what
you were doing and you would have provided a reliable service.
Otherwise none of us would ever have worked. But what
do you think was I mean, was there something you
were doing that was different? Did you get your pricing right?

(01:05:43):
Was there something else?

Speaker 16 (01:05:44):
Yeah, So we focused on just building our own network,
so instead of reselling somebody else's service. So we when
we operated in what's called fixed wireless technology, so we
built towers and put these radio sectors up, and so
it's sort of a niche technology and we also a
niche market, so it's more like rural, smaller towns. We

(01:06:05):
didn't focus on the big metropolitan areas, so and then
we branched out in different African countries, you know, just
following this niche model, you know, focus on what we're
really good at.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
And obviously there was a lot of a lot of
customers for you in smaller towns and everybody wanted to
be on the Internet. Everybody still does.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Yeah, we are.

Speaker 16 (01:06:23):
We found our nation in smaller towns, and especially with
a partner model, you get you know, you just get
that that distribution and that local presence with a partner
model that we followed.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
You've recently moved into AI and we're going to talk
a little bit more about that in a moment. Vernerstucky
is your shape shift to this week, the CEO of
Stubba and co founder of Jenny Internet. Twelve minutes NATA, The.

Speaker 10 (01:06:44):
Money Show with Stephen Quotas is brought to you by
abs A cib a Pan African bank invested in your
story and the potential it can unlock, because your story
matters as as the rest of the FSP The Money Show.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
Shift is Werner Stuckey is the CEO of Stubborn, co
founder of Jenny Internet. Ten minutes to eighth the time
so when you did very nicely out of the Internet model,
you sort of pushed and rode that wave. And you've
recently more recently moved into sort of AI and you
have a particular service you arefer to customers, and it's
about I mean, basically using AI to provide certain services.

(01:07:23):
How does that work?

Speaker 6 (01:07:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 16 (01:07:25):
So I think there's sort of two main categories that
I usually put it in, and the one is like
augmenting the human. So these are like your Gemini CHATGBT,
really like a tool that somebody's using to like make
them work better or faster. And what we're doing is
really the end automational of a particular job or role
that's sort of mundane task that you can release, like

(01:07:47):
some bottlenecks in business, so that we be like like
completely customer support, like supporting a customer over WhatsApp or
a web chat channel or email even and just doing
that whole job role end to end.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
I mean there's some things where I sort of want to,
you know, communicate with a service provider about something that's
actually quite simple to fix. Sometimes I do want to
speak to a human. How complex are the things that
AI models can now solve?

Speaker 14 (01:08:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 16 (01:08:15):
I think that's where like the people are underestimating like
how well they can solve this. And really the way
we build it is we just give it the same
tools that you're giving humans. So we actually give it
a computer and it uses interfaces like the humans would use,
and then you give it different tools to like probe.
If we're building, for example, a customer service agent for

(01:08:38):
an ISP, we'll give it exact same tools we give
the human support agent, so allow it to bing that's
like a test tool for connectivity. And then we'd give
it a user name and a log into the support
PORDL to pick up the customers invoices statements and answer
them that way. And I think like the best where
the technology is because a lot of people have got

(01:08:59):
a bad feeling about chat points. The previous wave of
chatbots were bolt very differently and people got a really
bad experience with those. And what I often say is
like in my previous business and in this business, the
best technology is invisible. Like your Internet when it just works,
you never realize that you've got an Internet service provider,
and that's the best Internet. It's just invisible. And the

(01:09:21):
same is with AI agents when you've put them into
your business. Many of our customers, customers don't realize they
speaking to AI. They just feel it's like a friendly
person on the other end of the email that's helping them,
you know, with invoice or a query on their account.

Speaker 6 (01:09:36):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
I mean sometimes when I can't tell, I just insert
a little joke that a human would sort of respond to.
And I mean I think I think when AI can
do jokes, that's it. We're done. It's time to go
and do something else.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Yeah, we've we've had some crazy stories.

Speaker 16 (01:09:51):
I mean we had we had a case with one
of our customers where because our agents also work over
WhatsApp and they just respond to voice notes and pictures whatever,
you wouldn't really realize. And the one particular case, the
customer spoke English but in a very heavy Afrikaance accent.

(01:10:12):
I think there was one yard that slipped in somewhere,
but everything was in English, and the model, the large
language model, responded in perfect Afrikaans in text, and from
then all the conversation just continued in Afrikaans, perfect Afrikaans.
And this person was blown away that the agent couldn't
do that, could speak to him in Afrikaans. He had

(01:10:32):
no idea. He wasn't speaking to human. I think he
just thought, Wow, this is brilliant. I got an afrikaance agent.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Have they made any mistakes, the AI agents? I mean,
I mean they must, I mean have they got a
meaning wrong? Misunderstood? Maybe? What's the phrase hallucinated? Yes?

Speaker 16 (01:10:50):
So hallucination is mostly the fault of the designer or
the boulder of a system that would be us or
our platform, because there's some context missing. There's a context
in these cases often where the intelligence comes from, Like
you could, you know, employ Einstein and put him in
your business is not going to be very useful unless
you give him tools and context and a job. You know,

(01:11:12):
this is a job, this is what you should do.
So the other the hallucinations are mostly a result of that.
But when it comes to the accuracy and the mistakes,
what you really trying to achieve because these are imprecise problems,
like the problem doesn't have a precise answer. Yeah, that
that humans are doing, and so what you're really trying
to achieve is just is your accuracy as high or

(01:11:33):
better than humans? There will be mistakes, but is it
as high or better than what your humans are And
that has been achieving in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
Yeah, I suppose that's a very interesting way to look
at it. So, so how do you see the future
of a iron work? And I mean so many people
have said twenty twenty six is the year this company
will properly and I kind of want to yawn, But
how do you see sort of what happens to work
in an era of AI?

Speaker 16 (01:12:04):
So I think that's more on sort of that like
augmenting the human side of AI. So what we're doing
is like just the you know, getting rid of mundane desks,
and you know, some people say, look, that's you know,
isn't that taking away jobs? But really I think it's
it's going to unleash people to do better things. I
don't think that it's going to take away jobs. I

(01:12:24):
think it's just going to there's so much slack, so
much stuff that's not done in these large organizations. Especially Yeah,
that if you can just get drun rid of that
bottleneck of the mundane work, which AI is great at.
You know, often say it's AI gives you diligence at
scale for for for these mundane tasks, because like after
the third time a human is doing the exact same
stuff getting bored. AI is just you know, the same

(01:12:47):
thing over and over. It just keeps keeps at it too.
So I hear that argument, and I think, I think
that must be right. In the same way that you
know and iPhone does so many things for you and
created so many industries along the way. I do worry
because most people's first jobs were mundane and what they

(01:13:07):
were actually doing was, yes, they were being bored and
complaining about it, but they were also in a working
environment and soaking up knowledge. At the same time, they
were watching people do things that were less than mundane,
or they were really learning an industry about what to do,
and some thing's not mundane. How worried should I be
about younger people in particular? Yeah, so that's the one

(01:13:30):
that's that's a difficut question. I've also thought about it.
I don't think I've really got an answer for how
do you get, you know, the people across that gap,
because that even in the job and the job opening statistics,
that's showing right that those entry level jobs are now
drying up first. So I think there are going to
be some tough periods that we're going to have to
go through, but I think we'll figure it out.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
I mean, the only solutions I can see are kind
of jobs and sort of NGOs or things like that,
or that everybody studies for even longer than they are already,
or some combination of those things that gets them over
that hump.

Speaker 16 (01:14:05):
Yeah, I think otherwise, you know, maybe we should just
skip the them having them do mundane, mundane jobs and
just let them do creative jobs all the way. Because, like,
if you go back to like the augmenting the human pot,
I think your previous guest as well was mentioning some
of the tools. And what I often say to people
is that people that are worried about AI doing art
and AI doing poem and writing and that, but actually

(01:14:27):
what it's doing is just divorcing, you know, skill and creativity.
Because now you know, I can think of like this
beautiful info diagram that I want to yeah, produce, but
I don't have a skill to produce it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
With AI.

Speaker 16 (01:14:39):
Now if I can articulate myself, I can get the
diagram out.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
So maybe we should just let everybody just decreative stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
M Then there's a tradition on the shape shifter segment
that we ask someone what they do for fun, but
it comes with the rule. It comes with two rules.
You're not allowed to say anything related to your work
and you're not allowed to say jogging and spending time
with your family because so many people give those answers.
Is anything you do for fun?

Speaker 16 (01:15:02):
So, Stephen, I'm actually the the Africa Championship, Africa champion
for one wheeling really, yes, and.

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):
So one wheeling it's like a unicycle.

Speaker 16 (01:15:14):
That's like a unicycle, yes, and so how did you
get to do that?

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
They taught you in the German.

Speaker 16 (01:15:21):
So so I hosted the championship and five of my
friends attended and there was no one else in in
Africa really that has one of these, Right, that's advantage
of having a niche.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Sport that you're good at. Yes.

Speaker 16 (01:15:33):
So it's like an electric electric skateboard you with one
wheel in the middle. Yeah, it goes about kilimeters on
a charge, a lot of fun. I hosted it in
a forest in Celari's boss and uh one. I think
that does answer your question, Bernard Stuckey, it does. He's
a champion. I don't even know what to call it,

(01:15:55):
not uni cyclist, single wall thing. He's the CEO of
and he's the co founder of Jenny Internet Fanna, thanks
so much for coming in.

Speaker 10 (01:16:04):
The Money Show with Stephen Quotas is brought to you
by abs as cib a Pan African bank invested in
your story and the potential it can unlock because your
story matters.

Speaker 9 (01:16:15):
APPS is a.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
Richter fsp Well. After a very strong open in the US,
things turning a little bit differently. The Dow jones up
point zero to the Nastaic down point zero eight ps
and P five hundred down point one three. That interest
rate decision from the US Federal Reserve is still to come.
We're back tomorrow. Good evening, it's eight o'clock

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