South Africa - email forward

Interesting letter by John Mauldin, one of the US's top investment advisors
- recently voted second only to Warren Buffet as an investment guru
His name means nothing to me, but his piece is pro-SA so it cracks my blog's nod. It was quite long so I've edited it down. If you want the entire article, email me and I'll find the link...

I start this week's letter somewhere over the Atlantic, halfway through an 11-hour flight from Frankfurt to Dallas. It has been an altogether marvellous 11 days in South Africa, speaking to over 1,000 people at 12 venues, giving a half dozen media interviews, and meeting with many individuals.

This week, I want to give you some impressions of not only South Africa, but talk a little about emerging markets in general.

Finding Value in South Africa

As I observed South Africa, it was forcefully brought home to me that there is more to the emerging-market story than China, India, and Brazil. There are any number of countries that are seeing robust growth and contributing to the world economy.

Before we get into some facts, let me give you a few impressions. First, there are construction cranes everywhere in the four cities I visited: Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and Cape Town. Twelve years ago the thirty miles from Johannesburg to Pretoria was mostly agricultural land. Today it is one big city, with offices, malls, and homes lining the freeway. There was a significant number of rather nice new housing developments, many if not most being built on speculation all along the freeway.

Johannesburg is a world-class city, on a par with New York or London or any major city in terms of facilities, shops, infrastructure... and traffic. There were new shopping malls all over, and the stores were busy. The restaurants were excellent. The hotels I stayed in and spoke at were excellent and modern. The Sandton area is particularly pleasant.

Durban is a tropical jewel on the Indian Ocean. Again, there was construction everywhere - a green, verdant city of 1,000,000 people, with modern roads and great weather.

I have been to Sydney, Vancouver, and San Francisco. I love all of them. But for my money, Cape Town is the most beautiful city I have been to in the world. Amazing mountains, blue water harbours, white sand beaches, with wineries nestled in among the mountains and valleys. The Waterfront area, where I stayed, is fun and vibrant. Again, an amazing amount of construction everywhere, especially in the waterfront area, as investors from Dubai are pouring huge sums of money into creating a massive residential/business/ retail/restaurant development. There are several similar, quite large developments going up in different parts of Cape Town.
...
I began to ask about the bills for food, drinks, and such for the rest of the trip. The country was uniformly about half what I would pay in Texas for the same quality. I stayed in a very nice five-star hotel (The Commodore) for six nights for less than $1,000, including several meals, laundry, and my bar tab.

...The service was terrific and uniformly delivered with smiles.
... In short, after having been to London and Europe for my last few overseas trips, South Africa seemed like a bargain.

And it was not just the people I spoke to that were optimistic. Grant Thornton (a large international accounting firm) did a survey in the 30 countries in which they do business. The four countries with the most optimism and confidence were India, Ireland, South Africa, and Mainland China. Why such confidence? I think there are several reasons. The economy has been growing at a reported almost 5% a year for the past several years, which is quite strong. They have had 32 consecutive quarters of positive growth. But the official figures may understate the reality by a significant amount. If you look at the VAT (value-added tax) receipts, as well as other tax figures, some economists estimate the economy may be growing by 7% or more. Why the difference?

There is a large "informal" economy in South Africa. While much of the income may not be reported, when something is bought and sold in the retail sectors, taxes are collected.

The stock market has grown by over 25%, 47%, and 41% for the last three years. Such a bull run is always a boost to confidence. But there are also some real fundamentals underlying the emerging-market Bull markets. South Africa has a strong commodity sector, with numerous commodities and not just gold.

Football as an Economic Driver The attention paid to football (or soccer in the United States) is rising to fever pitch in South Africa. And for good reason: they will host the World Cup in 2010. They expect some 3,000,000 fans to show up. The government is using the occasion to spend some 400 billion Rand (a little over US $50 billion) on all sorts of infrastructure projects. They are doubling the size of the major airports, which had already been significantly improved. Walking past the construction at the Johannesburg airport, you have to be impressed with the size of it. New roads and other forms of infrastructure are being added to prepare for the influx, but it will have the added effect of making the country more competitive, just as infrastructure in China has been a boost to that country, and a lack of infrastructure has limited India.

The World Cup will also be a boost to tourism, already one of the most important sectors of the economy. Cape Town is becoming an international destination for vacations and conferences. The growth in tourism has been strong, showing 20% growth last year from 2005. 2006 was a record year.

Are there problems in South Africa? Of course, and some of them are quite serious. But that is the case in nearly all (I cannot think of an exception) emerging-market economies. While the overall crime rate is dropping, it is still far too high. Some rather high-profile crimes of late have resulted in a strong outcry for serious change.

Corruption is an issue, but that is the case in almost every emerging-market country. The high levels of poverty are evident. Although employment is growing and more and more of the poor are being brought into the economy, there is still a lot of room for progress.

The telecommunications infrastructure is hampered by a lack of serious competition. Access to the internet is limited in many areas, and it is really slow where it does exist. This will improve in the coming years, but it is a serious handicap to business. There are power shortages and the need for more power-generation plants to keep up with the growth.

But all these areas are (mostly) going to improve. I see a lot of opportunity in South Africa in particular and Africa in general. Let's look at one area where there may be more than a little potential in the future.
...
The simple fact is that as the world grows more prosperous we are going to need more grain and other foods. Where is the land we are going to need to feed the world? There is an abundance in Africa, along with the needed water and labour. And as African countries upgrade their infrastructure, it will improve the ability of farmers to get their grains to market at profitable levels.

There is much to like about emerging markets. That is where a great deal of the real potential growth in the coming decades will be. And South Africa will be one of the better stories. If you are not doing business there already, you should ask yourself, why not?

Your tired but happy analyst, John Mauldin http://www.johnmauldin.com/

Hands up if you want to be a sub....

Well, this wasn't anything to do with me but us subs get defensive when our kind are attacked, so it was circulated around the office via facebook. I have to warn you - this oke's language is pretty... rough. So those easily offended had better not read this one.

Giles Coren is apparently a food critic who writes a column for the Times newspaper. His copy was subbed and he wrote an open letter to the subs complaining about it which can be found below or at (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey).

We actually get moaned at a fair bit as subs and normally have to call the writers if we change their intros to their work to avoid conflict. Some take changes hard, others just care about the pay cheque. This chap apparently takes it quite hard.

Giles Coren's letter to Times subs:
guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday July 23 2008

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By the way... the ignorant subs replied in an open letter to the writer.

It isn't as interesting but FYI, their reply can be found at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/29/sundaytimes.pressandpublishing

Hantuchova

I'm asked every now and again about who my favourite tennis players are, and while my male favourite is Federer - because he simply gets the job done without too much nonsense and plays some shots that one can only admire; the famale favourite was much harder to settle on following the retirement of Amanda Coetzer (ooooh - just her name .....oooh) .

While Federer is one of only a few players that I can watch without getting annoyed by how they pump their fist, grunt, ball bounce for eons, etc; the women generally all annoy me. Louise and I have constant arguments about which is better - women's tennis or mens'. Louise doesn't have a clue and argues for the women. Tsk, tsk.

Anyhoo... for a while now my favourite has been Daniela Hantuchova, the Slovak player who always fails to take her game to the next level. Still, she's kind on the eye. we were lucky enough to see her at Wimbledon this year.

MMmmm mmm mmm.

Northern Ireland

BELFAST TRIP 08

Well the first thing I'll say is that we drove about 1200ks over the course of the weekend. We hired a car in Cork and drove to Belfast via Dublin - a bit like if you needed to get from CT to Jub but the only highway went via Durban - yeah, kinda like that, but on a smaller scale. At any rate, there's basically no other way. It is a long drive, but we had the car for free basically, compliments of getting a free weekend if we hired four times.

Belfast was really beautiful. It was my second visit as I had headed up on the bus to watch the SA cricket side play Ireland in the previous year.

We also noticed that there were a lot of, how do I say this nicely, WEIRDOS around Belfast. You know the type - the 20 piercing just in your upper lip type. Or the wear your hair like in the photo below left. Maybe there was just a weirdo convention on?

It was around about here that Cath got shat on by a bird. Got her right on the head and in her hair. Oh yes, she moaned for ages about it, but I WAS THE ONE who had to get it out with my fingers! Besides, it's lucky having a bird crap on you - but that's not how she was feeling.

We took this photies just to show that this was a mall. It looked like a bloody palace or national monument but it was just a shopping mall. Belfast city was pretty pretty.

While wandering around we found tourist info, which had flyers for... THE SPUR. Yay, quality, reasonably-priced food! We high-tailed it for a spur burger and a surf and turf, washed down with a windhoek light.

But we didn't have much time to eat cos we still wanted to do a bit of sight-seeing before we found our camping spot.

I had my heart set on seeing the Belfast murals - walls where the locals painted their allegiances - Catholic or Prot. Driving through the areas we were left in no doubt which area was for which 'side' of the conflict...

The murals are really good though...

Eire amach na casca - which I think means the Easter uprising of 1916 - a battle to declare Ireland independent of the Brits - a move which got a bunch of Irish slaughtered by the Brits who were not keen to lose a colony of the British empire - kinda like they did with the Boers.

Right - Bobby Sands - a hunger striker who dies in 1981 in prison after the British govt refused to agree to granting the IRA what was, effectively prisoner of war status. A wiki search tells me "his death resulted in a new surge of IRA recruitment and activity. The international media coverage sparked a wave of support and sympathy around the world for Sands, the other hunger strikers, and the republican movement in general."

Other murals simply bemoaned wars or political situations around the world.

Note the one below which has a picture of Bush and the words 'America's greatest failure'.

We then headed off further around Co Antrim to find a camping spot. We actually got lost but a farmer offered us the chance to pitch tent on his land. With rain in the air and the sun already having set, it was an offer we couldn't refuse.

His land looked over this massive loch - it was really stunning. We set up, trying to avoid cow crap,etc. We'd already eated so it was pretty much straight to bed.

Saturday driving about

One of the main reasons we came up to Northen Ireland, or 'the North' as they refer to it in Ireland, was to see the Giant's causeway. So we jumped in our car on Saturday morning and headed for Ireland's north coast. Along the way we came across a castle...

Giant's Causeway

The Giant's causeway is basically a series of rocks right on the coast that are all column-like, each an octogon (or something). See other photos for what I mean)

Funny how a bunch of oddly shaped rocks can attract so much attention. Thank God we don't make so much fuss about oddly shaped things back home. Table mountain... well (ahem) that's, ummmm... different, that's A rock, not a bunch of small ones. Totally different I say.

Don't ask me what formed the rocks like that - look it up on the internet you lazy ass - but it was pretty cool. The weather was crappy though so we took a walk and then headed off for a warm cuppa tea and a cake.

Carrick-a-rede rope bridge

The other nearby attraction is the Carrick-a-rede roap bridge which takes you from the mainland over a rope bridge about 10-20 metres high to a little outcroppy of land. We headed off to see that too.



Cath wonders about the futility of it all.
Blue steel.
Alan's love of heights clearly in evidence...

... while Cath is totally at ease on the stupid death-defying, swaying-in-the-wind, thin wood that could splinter into a million pieces sending you crashing to your death on the rocks below where your body would probably be eaten by sharks and the bones never found bridge. I was okay on it, really.

Hmm. Looks a bit higher than 10-20m now!

A thistle made us think of Madz again... so a quick Jap-style photo...

Stunning. And the scenery is good too.

Derry

We headed to Derry and this time we actually did stay in a proper campsite. It was a bit tough to find mind you, courtesy of typical Irish road signs. Click on this one below to see why we struggled to know we had to turn.

The campsite was good and we had some nice take-away food, did a sudoku or two and had a relaxing night's sleep. I think the rain even stayed away, which was a bonus. There was also a beach closeby so we went there for a stroll and a photo or two while the locals drove their cars up and down the beach.

And so the next morn, on to Derry City, why Derry? Well Derry has an interesting history and there was a wall I really wanted to see. I once did a project on the conflict in Northern Ireland - probably the worst mark I ever got at UCT actually, and I was quite interested in 'The troubles' as they call it in Ireland. You have to like that phrase - the troubles - as if bombs going off, terrorism, counter-terrorism, random beatings, etc, etc was nothing more than 'Oh no the drain is clogged, we'll have the troubles again' or like you can't find your socks or something.

Anyhoo, Derry strikes me as being the Cork of Northern Ireland. I.e. - what Cork is to Dublin, Derry is to Belfast - a bit more 'real' Ireland. It was really stunning and I would have liked to spend more time there. The signs of Catholic - Prot problems are clear to see though - in this photo below, this area of houses are fenced in because these houses are for Prots who were determined to live in the so-called Catholic area. So people would throw bricks at their houses, etc when they put up the British flag, etc.

This photo was taken from the walls of the old city. Old Derry is completely surrounded by a massive stone wall - from days of yore (or something like that) when all the locals would run into the city and the gayes would be closed when attackers came.

Below, Cath taking a stroll on the city wall.

A sculpture we found along the way.

This below, is an infamous area of Derry, known as the bogside. At the peak of the Troubles, an area of Catholics barricaded themselves in against the British military, writing on the side of a house - YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY - clearly saying that the rest of Derry, the part under British control was not free.

Down in the bogside...

U2's song Sunday bloody Sunday - well this is the hill, behind Cath, which the

Catholic protesters apparently ran down on Bloody Sunday, only to be mowed down by the British using machine guns.

There are reminders all over the place, many with fresh flowers indicating that the wounds are still a bit raw.

However it was the murals which I really came to see... those and my wall.

At last - my wall (with a mural on a house behind it).

Cath and a peace mural.

A lot of the murals had little signs beneath them explaining what they represented - which was helpful. I haven't included all of them here - I don't want to bore you, but they were huge. There were about 10 of them in this area, the bogside.

And then, back home. This time via Donegal - where I had never been before.