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the following chains that currently shackle South African entrepreneurs:

      1 The snobbish attitude of the political and business intelligentsia in this country which at worst consider entrepreneurs to be criminals and at best greedy little capitalists that need to be tolerated as a sideshow. Whichever, they have to be regulated as an irresponsible underclass.

      2 All recent national plans. They have emphasised the developmental state which is a euphemism for more chains and more regulation and more economic prioritisation. The people writing these plans have never personally had to create wealth themselves in order to be paid. As recipients of regular salaries, they have no idea of the risks involved in being an entrepreneur. Remember it is economic anarchy in China which has largely contributed to its economic miracle. Nassim Taleb puts it a different way in his books about black swans and randomness: it is all a matter of luck as to which businesses grow into major international concerns and which fail. The best policy is thus to have an environment which maximises the number of new businesses without any preferences for particular industries. The lucky ones will make it and you have no idea beforehand which they are.

      3 The vast bureaucracy surrounding the establishment and ongoing operation of a small business in a legal manner. We are now regarded as one of the most hostile countries in the world for entrepreneurs. Most small businesses here only have one employee – the owner. The reason is that nobody wants to take on extra people with the potential hassle of going to the labour court if these people fail to perform. Below a certain size, entrepreneurs should have total freedom to hire and fire as it is their business and their money after all. It is not the taxpayers’ money.

      4 The culture of non-payment to small business which thrives in the world of big business and government. In big business, standard payment terms can extend to 120 days while some state entities like hospitals never pay which is why they are in such trouble. The whole process of being approved as a vendor is now used as an excuse to defer payment. Can you imagine going to a supermarket and walking out with a trolley full of goods and saying to the security guard that you will pay as soon as the supermarket fills in the appropriate forms to become your approved vendor? Big companies do this all the time to small service providers.

      5 The tight-fisted approach of all providers of capital to entrepreneurs in South Africa. The financial universe here resembles a well-heeled club that is happy to extend credit to members. But woe betide uppity non-members who rudely knock on its doors making unreasonable requests to finance small business ventures. What a lack of manners! Why don’t they just disappear and borrow from their equally vulgar and impecunious friends?

      I can go on, but we have completely lost the plot. Until we fundamentally change our mindset with regard to entrepreneurs and regard them as the centrepiece of this nation’s future economic prosperity, we are finished. Nigeria will overtake us in the next 10 years as the continent’s largest and most vibrant economy and leave us eating dust.

      Beam me up Muskie

      Someone should produce a comprehensive list of all the South Africans who live in other countries and are heroes in these countries. I would include all those who were born here but who are no longer citizens here. Then we might realise what an exceptional contribution has been made to the history of mankind by all those inside and outside of our borders who share one characteristic: they are part of the greater South African family.

      Yet again the South African media has failed to headline an amazing first by somebody who hails from South Africa. Yes, there are articles but you have to dig for them in the middle pages. They still believe that only bad news sells newspapers here.

      The hero of the moment is Elon Musk, raised in Pretoria by a South African father and Canadian-American mother. He matriculated from Pretoria Boys High School in 1988 when he was 17, having taught himself to program a computer and developed a space game called Blastar at the age of 12.

      He is now a billionaire, having founded Space X, Tesla Motors which makes electronic cars and Paypal, an online payment system which is now part of eBay. Space X has just launched the Falcon 9 rocket with the intention of having its Dragon capsule dock with the International Space Station, thereby providing nearly half a ton of food, clothing and laboratory kit. Setting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, this is the first commercial space flight by a private company in the history of mankind.

      Musk tweeted on his page: ‘Falcon flew perfectly! Dragon in orbit, comm locked and solar arrays active.’ He added: ‘Feels like a giant weight just came off my back.’ John Holdren, chief science adviser to Barack Obama, said: ‘Every launch into space is a thrilling event, but this one is especially exciting because it represents the potential of a new era in American space flight.’

      Musk has received congratulations from people all over America including senators and congressmen and even rival organisations like Virgin whose founder Richard Branson has similar space ambitions to Musk.

      Like Siyabulela Xuza who has a minor planet named after him by NASA for his rocket fuel and who is now studying at Harvard University, Musk has become a superstar in America. It speaks volumes about the difference between American and South African culture. Americans celebrate individual excellence no matter where it comes from. It looks for the heroes of the future. We tolerate mediocrity and celebrate only heroes of the past.

      The latest global economic scenarios

      We are not out of the woods yet. Our scenario with the highest odds of 40% remains “Hard Times” with the world remaining uniformly flat in economic terms for the foreseeable future. Equally, the two-speed “Ultraviolet” scenario – where growth in the New World economies outperforms that in the Old World economies by a factor of 3:1 – still has a 30% probability. In this scenario, the younger demographic profile of the New World acts as an accelerator versus the ageing demographic profile of the Old World acting as a brake. China remains the key flag to watch. We retain our anxiety about its banking system, in addition to which we are now beginning to worry about it becoming more expensive in its production costs. This will necessitate a move from cheap replication of Western ideas to innovation and completely new products, a transition that Japan made in the 1970s. Will China rise to this challenge? We are not sure and it is the reason why we slightly favour “Hard Times” for everybody.

      As far as the two outsiders are concerned – the “Forked Lightning” of a second crash and the “New Balls Please” of a full recovery creating another boom albeit of a completely different nature – we now split the odds at 15% each. Quantitative easing by the principal central banks is keeping interest rates on government debt down, thus reducing the risk of national default; and unemployment in America is falling towards the critical level of 6.5% which will inspire confidence that a proper but slow recovery is in place.

      There you have it. Don’t bet on a single future. Rather keep all four of our possible futures in mind, watch the flags go up or down, adjust the probabilities and adapt your strategies and tactics as you go along. More and more companies are agreeing with the greater flexibility inherent in our approach when faced with these volatile times.

      Eleven years ago Chantell Ilbury and I co-authored a book called The Mind of a Fox. In it we said that much of the future is beyond your control and is uncertain. The only way to handle it is to play different scenarios, examine their probability and impact and look at the options to seize the opportunities offered in each scenario and counter the threats.

      Before the Great Financial Crash of 2008 the majority of companies preferred to base their strategy on a single, expertly-driven forecast. Now they are not so sure and are much more willing to interrogate their vision and strategy by measuring the resilience of both against a variety of scenarios. In particular, they are prepared to change the fundamental direction of the business should a case be made for doing so.

      Hard Times

      What are we now telling our clients about the possibilities for the global economy? The first scenario we call “Hard Times” for at least the next five years. It is a flat-line future of minimal economic growth for the world as a whole. Essentially, it is the Japanese experience for the last 22 years despite that country

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