"Where are all the informal traders in Grahamstown?" asked Clem Sunter during a lecture at Rhodes University last Friday. "They are probably hidden away on the fringes of town with no proper access or support."
"Where are all the informal traders in Grahamstown?" asked Clem Sunter during a lecture at Rhodes University last Friday. "They are probably hidden away on the fringes of town with no proper access or support."
Sunter is a world-renowned scenario planner, acclaimed speaker and author of many books, including his groundbreaking Fox trilogy. His speech at Rhodes was a brief introduction to scenario planning where he also introduced scenarios with both global and local outlooks for the future.
“If we don’t go out of our way to create bridges between the informal and formal economies, we are going to end up as a failed state,” said Sunter, quoting former President Thabo Mbeki’s observation that South Africa has a first world formal economy and a third world informal economy with no bridge between the two. "If we don’t create viable small businesses, we are not going to create an inclusive economy," he added.
Sunter claimed that forecasting is not really valid, and a he quoted an American academic who studied 82 000 forecasters and concluded that their forecasting was “as valid as a blind monkey throwing darts”.
“You cannot forecast the future. You can only come up with plausible scenarios of what can happen,” said Sunter. He presented three possible scenarios for the future of South Africa and said that a close eye must be kept on certain indicators or what he calls flags.
“Given the current realities around us, I consider a 70% probability of the first scenario,” said Sunter which he describes as South Africa moving back up the list of strong global economies. He said that last year we fell to 53rd spot out of 55 countries, but we were up a few notches this year to 48 out of 57 economies.
“If crime, service delivery and healthcare don’t improve, then there is a 30% chance of us sliding further down the list,” he said. “The result of this would mean that there will be lower tax revenues and international investments.” But he said that the flags were currently looking good since local banks had performed well and South Africa has good tourism opportunities.
“I recently interviewed an informal trader who was running a thriving business in Durban. It is outrageous that someone can’t get a single bank to give him a loan, even though he has clearly proved himself by running a good business for 10 years,” said Sunter. He believes that it is entrepreneurship and small businesses that are the future for South Africa’s economy.
“As a country, we are not good at recognising and celebrating local talent and pockets of excellence,” said Sunter. “Have you heard of Siyabulela Xuza?” he asked, but Sunter but no one in the audience could respond in the positive. “A young bright man, from this province, has done amazing things and he even has a planet named after him. But nobody has heard of him. Our media is very bad at celebrating excellence.” Xuza hails from Umtata in the Eastern Cape and, at a young age, already has numerous achievements under his belt. It turns out that Nasa’s Lincoln Laboratory in the USA was so impressed by Xuza’s talents and achievements that they have named a planet after him. Now 20 years old, he is currently an undergraduate engineering student at Harvard University in the US, having been awarded a prestigious scholarship last year.
