Media Flaws

The morning kicked off with Mr Horace Robertson who is the secretary treasurer of the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education in the USA. He outlined the US’s entrepreneurship growth and further shed some light on initiatives such as Entrepreneurship week in the US and the impact of its implementation. Quite an insightful presentation. Straight after Mr Robertson the CEO of Drake and Skull Pty LTD, Mr Bonang Mohale, spoke about the success of his company and further delved into issues of building a culture of entrepreneurship in South Africa. As the morning panned out three successful young entrepreneurs (DJ Tira, Velaphi Ngema and Noluthando Nchapha) shared their experiences. I was particularly impressed by Noluthando - a former Chartered Accounted who was uncomfortable with being paid too much at age 25 and opted out of the corporate life to take up her own accounting and training business.

Being the opportunist I am I then went out to the exhibition hall, where young entrepreneurs from all areas of South Africa were displaying or advertising their businesses. Whipped out my recording equipment and attempted to interview all of them (and believe me there were many). A common trend were young people who were involved in the communications and marketing sector. Graphic Design, web design and ICT were some of the areas many were advertising. The more and more I spoke to these entrepreneurs the more I realised that Umsobomvu Youth Fund was playing a key role in their businesses. Something I had never heard of was Umsobomvu’s development service voucher programme – where young people with promising business ideas can simply purchase this voucher which enables them to access business support services such as business planning, productivity improvement planning, tax and accounting, web based marketing, etcetera. When I asked Umsobomvu about these vouchers I was quite surprised to find that they did not expect anything in return as long as the voucher was used to grow oneself and increase sustainability in whichever business. This voucher system is quite popular in KZN, Eastern Cape and Gauteng but the Western Cape - of cause - seems to be the basket case that’s forever drowsily lagging behind with its youth ever expecting handouts and manna to fall on their laps as they sit and moan about Cape Town’s racial barriers.

Another point of concern, as I spoke to these young entrepreneurs, was access to loans and funds. Many young people have brilliant ideas but most do not have experience or credible credit profile. Now the credit profile is something that hits them hard as some find themselves blacklisted for not being able to repay educational loans or simply being unable to handle their credit affairs. Transunion, was there, advertising and advising the young on how to clear their profiles as well as managing their debts. I didn’t even know that credit and financial management is being implemented in high schools and young learners are being equipped with much needed financial handling skills.

“When we were in High School we planned to be millionaires by age 40 – I didn’t know it would happen so soon for me!” said a friend of mine who’s in the medical profession. We laughed and headed off to Durbs nightlife. Which, for a Thursday night was unusually buzzing with clubbers and diners. First up was some bohemian hang-out spot which reminded me of Cape Town. Second was Reform – where one can expect to buy a beer for R7! (Amazingly cheap for a place located in an upmarket area). Then it was SkkyBar where my House Music needs were finally fulfilled as we chanted: “Bring on the night, cause I can’t stand another hour of daylight!”