If today’s basic education is remotely comparable to that which this writer was subject to, back in the 1980s, then anyone age eight and up should be familiar with the proverb ‘a stitch in time saves nine’. A proverb, for the learners (sic) trapped in South Africa’s schools circa 2023, is defined on Dictionary.com as “a short popular saying, usually of unknown and ancient origin, that expresses some commonplace truth or useful thought”. PS, apologies for the ‘dig’ at local education standards but we have it on good authority that eight-in-10 South African 10-year-olds cannot read for meaning!
Get it sorted, today!
For those who can read for meaning, the phrase ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ can be restated as: ‘sorting out a problem the moment you become aware of it saves you a lot of money and / or effort down the line’. Most probably, the phrase arose from observing that a pull or tear in an item of clothing, if immediately addressed with a single stitch, could be returned to service whereas doing nothing meant that the pull or tear became much worse, and required far greater time and material inputs to ‘fix’ later on, if indeed ‘fixing’ were still an option. At this point, readers might be asking how this proverb links back to financial planning or the economic, insurance and investment topics this writer usually covers. Patience, dear reader, patience … all will be revealed.
Before tackling the question, it behoves explaining why the proverb sprang to mind in the first place. Over time, this writer has noticed an alarming repetitiveness in the news coverage of events where a ‘stitch in time’ or a stitch at an appropriate time, if you prefer, would have saved the country a great deal of fuss. This week’s triggering event was the brouhaha over the death of a number of illegal miners... Per news agency Reuters, “a methane gas explosion in a disused South African mine killed at least 31 people … believed to be from neighbouring Lesotho”.
They further reported that the explosion occurred in a ventilation shaft at a ‘shuttered’ Virginia mine, Free State Province. It took just minutes for editors and social media commentators to set off on the proverbial ‘witch hunt’ to unearth those to blame for the deaths. And in typical South African fashion countless responsible parties emerged, from local and national government to immigration to the private sector to the safety and security services… The only blameless souls, it turns out, were those with individual accountability for the illegal activity.
The ‘stitch in time’ in this story should have been applied back in 2010 when Harmony Gold Mining Company announced the closure of various shafts at its Virginia operations. That stitch, properly applied, would have seen the mining activity wrapped up with the shafts and surrounding premises properly sealed off, by whatever means. PS, we are not talking the science fiction solution of smashing an impenetrable dome over the region, but rather a set of measures that would make accessing the mining assets, and continued utilisation thereof, impossible. That stitch, applied to all disused mines in South Africa, would prevent countless deaths each year, not to mention ending countless associated crimes.
Abandoned mine shafts just part of the problem
The ‘correct mine closure’ stitch is not the only ‘stitch in time’ that could have ‘fixed’ this problem. Imagine, for example, if the various law enforcement and regulatory authorities had bothered to apply a stitch or two to the myriad ‘torn’ land border control points between South Africa and its neighbours.
You see, illegal mining is not just about abandoned-yet-accessible mine shafts; it involves a long list of shortcomings in areas such as enforcement of the Minerals Act; Home Affairs; and policing, to name a few. These are among the countless glaring rends in the fabric of South African society that have been left to grow wider over decades. These ‘rends’ mean that a foreign national can simply stroll over a border point, rock up to work (sic) in an abandoned mine, illegally smelt and cast the product of that illegal mining activity, and somehow walk back across the border with this contraband on his or her person.
The occasional flare-up of xenophobic attacks that afflict the country are another consequence of failing to apply a ‘stitch in time’ to the country’s porous border crisis. Had the South African government kept tight control of its land borders and prevented all-and-sundry from relocating to the southern tip of Africa, they could have prevented a scenario in which thousands of technically illegal residents bump shoulders with citizens for scarce jobs and resources… Government’s failure to take decisive and swift action when a problem first surfaces has become a common thread in almost every disaster the country faces.
Case in point, the ongoing Zimbabwe Exemption Permits (ZEP) fiasco. It is clear that ‘stitching’ does not feature in government’s approach to legal work permit holders, but rather ‘stitching up’. Faced by its inability to deal with thousands of Zimbabweans working domestically, Home Affairs has repeatedly decreed dates by which all ZEP permit holders ‘be gone from here’. The most recent development in this matter saw a full bench of the Pretoria High Court rule that Home Affairs could not simply terminate the ZEP programme. Alas, even the courts have abandoned the ‘stitch in time’ paradigm in favour of the ‘kick the can down the road’ approach.
Act now, not later…
And now for a hattrick of domestic financial services sector botch-ups that could have been avoided with the sensible application of a ‘stitch in time’ paradigm. The first is the provision of universal health care (UHC) to all South Africans; a noble ambition that has long befallen the public health sector. Unfortunately, the public sector’s UHC capabilities are rapidly eroding. But instead of fixing the public sector, government is peddling the fable that a centrally controlled and funded National Health Insurance is the only solution.
The truth is that the public health sector’s slide into chaos could have been halted at many points over the last two-to-three decades. If government had abandoned its cadre deployment mentality; held public hospital managers to account; and stopped meddling in each and every aspects of public health ‘goods and services’ procurement the country’s public health service delivery would not be the shambles it currently is. Government is already involved in every aspect of public healthcare: from the training and placement of doctors and nurses; to keeping cancer screening machines going at state hospitals; to doctor medical professional ‘trafficking’ between Cuba and home. So, how would giving them full control of both private and public resources change the outcome?
Our second ‘tear in the financial services fabric’ comes courtesy the state-controlled Road Accident Fund (RAF) which is supposed to compensate victims of South Africa’s appalling road accident experience. It is worth commenting that a few early, well-placed stitches in either the fund or traffic enforcement could have prevented the mess the country sits with today. Year after year the then Financial Services Board (FSB) reported the RAF shambles to National Treasury; and year after year the powers that be simply kicked the can down the road. Short story: instead of timeously and sustainably compensating road accident victims South Africa now boasts a fund that owes billions; is technically insolvent; and drowning in legal fees rather than medical expenses.
Race-based policies to un-hitch the nine…
Finally, we get to the looming disaster that derives from government’s ongoing obsession with race-based employment laws. The recently assented Employment Equity Amendment Bill (EEAB) empowers the minister of Employment and Labour to set race-based management employee head counts, per sector, for all firms employing more than 50 people. In this case, one might excuse financial services firms for not adopting a ‘stitch in time’ approach as they could have believed that South Africa had moved past the era of job reservation by race.
Alas, by not placing African, Indian and coloured ‘stitches’ in their management tapestries over time, these asset managers, financial advice practices and insurers now face the threat of being fined out of existence for non-compliance with targets they have no chance of hitting. While in most cases ‘a stitch in time’ paradigm would serve South Africa well, in circumstances where government itself is ripping into the fabric of society through blind adherence to ill-thought policy, all the stitches in the world will have no effect.
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