And now The Money Show with Stephen Credits on seven oh two.
Let's walk little. The Money Show with Stephen Curtis is brought to you by Absence CIB, proud sponsor of the Sarah Rail Conference twenty twenty five Powering Progress, Connecting Economies. Good evening, eight minutes after six. I'm Stephen Curtis, Welcome to The Money Show. Well, a big results day as we have at this season, lots of results from companies who's financially ends at the end of June. So we will speak to the CEO of Advest in a few moments in pummiu Medisa will speak to the CEO, the
chief financial officer rather at santem Vicas Uilafir. Also tonight we will hear from Paul Crookshank, the CEO of RCL Foods. Plenty of other news about as well in ours little mittal. Perhaps the most important does look now according to various reports today that their CEO has basically written to workers and said I'm sorry, but we are going to close up at their Newcastle business. And that's after and you heard it last week the Industrial Development Corporation giving them
one point seven billion Rand and then money. We're reporting today that last week Nursa basically said to Escam you have to give Arsenal Mattel cheaper electricity. And Eskham said, well, that means that consumers they mean you when they say consumers, by the way, that consumers will have to pay more to subsidize that. Nurse I went, well, yes, we know. So yeah, a lot going on, and when you try and manage industrial policy like that, you want to intervene.
I understand the pressure. You want to protect. You want to save jobs, you want to save livelihoods. In some cases, you want to save communities, dependence. There's a lot riding on it all, and yet you also kind of almost intervene in hope that the underlying problems, maybe the steel price will go up, or transmit will get attacked together or something, and it doesn't happen. At some point, you do have to cut your losses, you do have to
stop just plowing money into something. Either way, though still, I think for a lot of people will be very, very sad. And I was listening back today. You may remember a conversation we had with Saul Levin about it a while ago. He suggested, actually our longer term industry won't be that bad the effected. We'll get another view
on that tonight as well with David. With Donald McKay, he's the expert on trade, and just have a conversation with him about how government maybe could have done more, maybe should have done less, depending on how you view these things. So a very interesting conversation that'll be in about an hour's time. Also tonight, the latest on the
situation around blue label telecoms. We know that they're going to list sel C. That'll mean that all four of our cell phone networks are finally and sort of suddenly listed on the JAC, but all sorts of issues around as cel C. There's a sort of strange kind of dynamic in cell phone networks. It's called the third operator. So the first two in our case we are Voticomon MTN, cel C was the third and Telcom was the fourth. And what happens in many other markets is what's happened here.
The first and second of fine, they usually start together. The fourth is okay, something happens to the very complicated economic reasons behind it, as I understand it, But we'll get into that in about forty five minutes from now with Duncan McLeod from tech Central. I don't know how you feel about yourself a network. Do you love them, do you hate them? Do you not really care? Do you treat them as a bank? Do you try and avoid them and use Wi Fi to make voice calls? What'sapp?
Cause wherever you can, I know you'll have a view on O double one double A three seven O two and two one four four six O five six seven, and also your thoughts on Arsenal Mittle and the kind of policies that we should be following. Voice notes tonight on seven two seven oh two one seven O two
two is on the Money Shows six to eight pm. Well, the conglomerate Bidvest confirming today that while its revenue is up by five percent for the year to the end of June, it's profits are up by just one percent. It's been hit hard by a big decrease in bulk exports for its freight division. Its commercial units profits were also down, as were the contributions to the business from
mistaken at Ingrament of course is about to be delisted. Well, the CEO at Bitvest is put me medcent, put me good evening, Thanks for your time, Good to talk to you again your freight division having an impact on your bottom line. You say there's a decline in bulk exports. What's leading to that change? Do you think?
Good evening, Stephen, and thanks for the opportunity to just talk through the results. So yes, So, I mean we've seen a decline in bulk commodity volumes. It started in the first half of the year and has continued into the second half, and it's sitting in two places. So bulk grain volumes are down, They're down on average about
eighty three percent, so that's significant for us. And then on the bulk commodity side, we're also seeing a decline in bulk commodity volumes, driven by pricing and also just some of the inefficiencies we have in the system in terms of being able to move product. We also saw that bulk commodity were were also down in Mozambique, so not just in South Africa, but in our Mozambique operations, and that contraction in freight is about ten percent, and
freight is our second largest division. So when the freight division doesn't perform and you're seeing that kind of contraction, it does have a material impact overall.
In the numbers grain, your grain sort of movements, your grain volumes that you were transporting with down eighty three percent, that people choose other options. I know the grain harvest was done, the next one's expected to be up dramatically.
Yeah, So it's primarily Mays and it's Mays export volumes, and the maze export program didn't materialize in the way that it normally does. We are going back to cyclicality that we've seen kind of in pre COVID times. But it's also just a function of demand, right, So the demand for our local maze just hasn't been there. And it's also a function of pricing, and there's always a window and timing in terms of when our maze export moves.
The pricing must be right, the timing must be right, and the yield or the crop size must be right, and we just missed all of those and so there was just a significant amount of May. So the maze is there as the farmers are sitting with it. It's a storage, it's not moving and if it's not moving through the ports, we don't handle it, Stephen. And so if we don't handle it, the zero income coming through, and we've got a fixed infrastructure through our terminals.
Sure, your commercial Products division revenues were also down there where is that suffering the most?
So the main reason is in two areas. The first one is renewable product sales. During load shedding, we experienced a significant spike and renewable cells. So in around the twenty twenty three financial year when we had significant load shedding and blackouts, the renewable cells just climbed significantly, and so that base is very high. We've got more consistent power today and we really just working through what has
been an extremely high base. And so that contraction and volume plus a contraction and margin is where it impacted Commercial Products and the balance of the portfolio. You know, Steve, what I mean. We haven't had infrastructure spend in South Africa in our long time, and this division is reliant on infrastructure spend, construction, municipal spend and that kind of stuff, and we haven't seen it come through. So overall the market has been quite subdued, and we've also just seen
a contraction in the balance of the portfolio. And so the Commercial Products is done quite significantly at around minus twenty eight percent, So that division did perform below expectation.
Your Services South Africa apartment, do you report strong inbound leisure travel? You also sold a lot more coffee at airports on notist for me, are you seeing a lot more business from tourism? I mean, are those numbers picking up more people coming into South Africa one hundred percent?
So in tourism is extremely buoyant. South Africa remains a destination that foreign travelers want to come to, and so when you see those volumes go up, we attach those volumes whether at the airport, in a hotel, at a restaurant,
wherever that traveler may be. And so travel and tourism remains strong, and not just from a historical perspectives, even in terms of our if I twenty five results, but we can see the forward book about six months out and the forward bookings in terms of endbound travel also remain strong. So the travel and tourism industry is holding its own. It's one of the industries in South Africa that I would put up there in terms of economic growth.
I don't know if you have this kind of level of detail to hand, but is it mostly going to Keeton or some other parts of the country getting some of that as well, I.
Don't have it in that kind of granular detail, but I think you can make a couple of assumptions, right because it's leisure travels, So people would be going to the bush, they would definitely be going to Cape Town, they would definitely going to the Wineless, they would definitely be going to the beaches because it's leisure, right, So you could kind of make some assumptions around the spread, but I couldn't specifically say x percentage going to these parts of the country.
Sure, at Cock Ingram, you're going to delist it. They've had a very poor year. Their second half was better than their first half. Is this the right time to sort of be delisting and going through that process taking much closer control of that company up as you?
Yes, it is. I mean a delisted at Cock is much easier to manage, less regulatory obligations, bring it closer to home, and really run it the way that we run our as a subsidiaries. We're excited about the potential partner that we have in Antco Pharma. There are a large global pharmaceutical business. We think that they're going to bring a lot of value in terms of how we can kind of increase and spread our offering, particularly within
our prescription division. So we're looking for forward to the expertise, the kind of direct farmer global expertise they'll be bringing in. Netcore also has ambitions for the continent more generally, so we will also be having a conversation around which areas does it make sense for Adcock to drive that continental growth versus Netco driving that continental growth thenselves directly, so great upside with having that kind of shareholder in the room.
And then we still believe that there's probably more synergies to unlock just between the two businesses, between Bidwest and at Cock. So we are really looking forward to getting our hands around the business and running it in a delisted.
Environment imputing MEDISA. Thanks so much, Sore Bidvest really do appreciate the time. Tonight's on The Money Show eighteen after six.
The Money Show on seven OTO Monday till Friday, fixed to a PM.
Big change is coming for the insurance group Suntum. They're setting up a syndicate with Lloyd's of London. It'll give them more international exposure obviously. Also strong earnings are today their earnings share up by nineteen percent in the six months to the end of June, because earlier here the chief financial officer at SUNTM good Evening. Obviously you'll move to Lloyd's in London. An important first step. What kind of insurance operation do you want to set up?
Good Evening and good grieving to the business as well. So yes, Sir, Lloyds is a key part of our international growth and diversification strategy that we're driving. So at the moment we already do business outside of South Africa through our santam rebusiness as well as our special solutions business. So Lloyd's is really complementary to those two areas. But the focus will be on specialist lines of business including
for example, property, corporate property, marine liability, et cetera. And also geographically focus at more globally and in other markets. And then we we operate today.
We've seen other big South African companies do this in the past. It hasn't always ended so well because I mean, are you confident you have the expertise, the people, the share experience of those markets to make it work.
Yes, definitely. So for us, it's important that we grow in areas where we've got the skill set. So within these specialist lines of business. We've got big market shas in Africa, in South Africa as well, and it's where we've really been successful over many many years. So for us, it's about exploring those areas that we know, growing where we know, and not into adventure into unknown areas for us, but been very important as well as to make sure
that you also bring in very good skills. Set's also got London experience in specifically Lloyd's experience as well, so we are now focused on bringing in those skills because that will be very important for us to be successful within the Lloyds market.
You say all parts of the business did well during the period, they all contributed alternative risk transfer, increased their profits by twenty eight percent. How does that business work? Why is it doing quite so well at the moment.
So the alternative restaurants or businesses effectively what we call a sell insurance business. So that's effectively helping people that want to self insure first of all, the big corporates for multinational businesses that doesn't want to go through traditional insurance business but rather to do their own self insurance
through a insurance sell. But then secondly we also do businesses with partners that's got an existing client base that's non insurance, but then want to sell insurance with into that base, and they will typically then also do at
times those arrangements through a irt cell. And what we effectively from a revenue perspective and from that type of business is fee income based on the administration services that we provide for for them, and we also earn investment margin on the assets that we manage on behalf of clients. And then certainly in some cases we will also participate on the insurance business that they do right within those cells.
So those are the kind of the three biggest revenue lines for for us within alternative risk transfer business.
One of the main reasons here such a good year was that there were no weather catastrophes during the period, because are you changing your underwriting techniques to manage what does seem to be more extreme, whether more weather related catastrophes more often.
Yes, definitely. So although the first off of this year we didn't see major weather e light catar trophic, it is something that we do expect to come through in future. We've seen weather conditions being much more vault out over the last number of years, so we are specifically focused on initiatives such as our dee coding initiative, which really looks at the specific location of each and every property that we ensure and what is specific risk exposures around
that that property, including risk of flooding. Is it, for example, close to waterways, but also from a fire res perspective, to look at what are the specific risks and then based on that deciding whether we want to accept the risk or what is the appropriate pricing for from a
premium perspective for that risk. We've also expanded our surveying which makes sure that from a client's perspective, they make sure that I've got the n necessary preventative measures in place, for example sprinter systems, and that those are also being being maintained. So all of those are just some of the examples of how we managed to increase risk associated with property in particular.
So are there some places sort of in South Africa where you may just say we're not going to ensure that it's just not worth it. If you've had two floods in that part of cases, then in the last years, we're not going to ensure you.
It's it's definitely the case of our regions or our region areas that way will be excluded is very much property specific. So we have property is located, for example, within the flood zone. There's been numerous floods and then there's really nothing that can be done from a risk mitigation perspective. We might decide not to write a business and in simpler case, if you can't charge enough premium
to compensate for the risk. But those are really except and if I haven't at any case where we are had to exclude ah municipality area for example, to say that it's not insurable anymore, it's very much property and case by kay specific.
Because Olivia thanks very much. Indeed, chief financial officer at some time, really do appreciate the time twenty five minutes now after six o'clock on the Money Show, the Money Show, the market Cerm Batters and investment analysts at the old mutual investment groups here, good evening as sometime results having some good weather helps.
Good evening, Stephen most certainly really great results are today of the insurance they share. Prices largely sat slightly down, so it's not too bad. And I mean as an investor, you could effectively think of Sntown as South Africa's safety in it. You would have heard earlier. They don't necessarily sell your cars or houses, but they they protect them and sometime has reports some strong results headline earnings up about twenty percent as well as basic earnings up about
nineteen percent. So really grateless out there. And the key job behind this was the conventional insurance underwriting margin which was at eleven percent, So this was way ahead of management chargeet range of five to ten percent and way ahead of market expectations as well. And the CLAMS ratio definitely did help, and that was driven by the nine weather events. So the calms rasia sets at about fifty six percent, and this is the best or the lowest calms rasia
we've seen since I've been alive. So I won't give away my age, but it's it's been about thirty years roughly. And yeah, effectively less people are claiming, and when less people are claiming insurance collective opinions.
It's very interesting. Bidvest, What did you make of the conversation that we had with the CEO. I mean it seems to me that I mean, it's such a big sort of company. They do so many different things and yet there are one or two problems that maybe are outside their control, but certainly.
As with most businesses, it is psychical though are exposed to elements within the economy. But what I love about business, it's a phenomenal business. It actually sits within.
The better quality buckets. It's quite a diversified.
Business model, and you can almost think of businates as the ultimate behind the scenes operators. So if you eat at a hospital canteen, there's a good.
Chance that Bidvest caters to it.
If you've been to a stadium, they typically are responsible for cleaning after the matches. Or if you've been to a car dealership and you've changed a spare part, most likely they've handled the logistics of those parts. So it's quite a diversified business model. So I think that's what that's that's been a great point. But if I look at the most recent results, the key thing there group earnings under pressure really driven by the contraction within freights, so that was about ten percent, and.
Then within the commit social products.
But outside of that, despite the decline in earnings, you've got strong cash generation coming through, which I think the testament to the strength of the business as well as the management team and going forward, I think the focus is then on organic growth. So they've done quite a number of acquisitions within the last year and it's all about integrating those acquisitions and getting good dis synergies from those. So really a great business overalls.
Some international and a statement out from them today they expect headline earnings to be up by nearly sixty percent.
Yeah, quite substantial, So I think the key thing to differentiate there is basic earnings per share, so those they are expected to decline between about eight to eleven percent, and headline earning, so those are driven by one source or non cash items. But I think that the statement is a bit the training update rather was a bit vague, so we we didn't receive much detail on the drivers.
But the important thing there that the balance sheet is stable, so they're currently edward in a half times debt to EBIT dark which is great because that's below the covenants. And yeah, I'm fully excited to see the results that are being released next with Monday.
I mean Harmony the gold miner. They seem to be getting the go ahead from shareholders in Australia to buy the mine, the copper mine.
Yes, so nothing new there, nothing, nothing.
Too exciting.
But yeah, so they've received an they've received approval for the sale of one hundred percent of the shared to Harmony Gold. And you know, we've already received regulatory approval from the SAAB which was in the fifth of August, as well as the Australian FIRB which is in the nineteenth of August. And so with way to the final court sanction which is to be heard on the ninth of October, and hopefully this is computed by the end of October this year what was expected to be computed
by the yeah, October. And I think what's interesting about the asset, it's really a high grade, long life underground copper operation. And the great thing about it is that it's casual, positive from day one, so in needed contribution to group earning. It's high grade, low costs, and I think it plays in with the theme around decarbonization. The nd transition really diversifying Harney Goldf's portfolio, shifting away from the volatility of gold towards.
Copper, Siera and Baruta. Thanks very much, indeed, investment analyst at the old Neutral Investment Group, bringing the time on the money show to six point thirty All.
The Laney Show with Stephen Cruds Live on ninety two point seven and one six FM, streaming on the Prime Media Plus NAP and DStv channel eight five six.
Seventeen minutes to seven the time on the Money Show. Good Evening. Our CL Food's reporting today their headline earnings up by nearly twenty nine percent in the year to the end of June, despite their revenue from continuing operations up by only one point eight percent. The baking division seems to have made a strong turnaround. Still issues though, around the price of sugar and the impact of sugar imports.
Paul Crookshank is the CEO at RCL Foods. Paul, good Evening, Your baking business increased revenue but just one point eight percent, But your underlying ebadar of that business was it nearly fifty five percent. How were you able to do that?
Evening, Stephen, And thanks for having me again this evening. And yeah, it's been a very good use for baking And please for the team because they put a lot of effort in the last eighteen months to prepare for this financial year. And you write revenues are very muted.
Volume is under pressure in most categories. There are some areas within baking which volume has improved, But we've focused very much in the last twelve months on costs and that are in our control and really managed to eke out across the whole of baking some significant cost savings through a number of initiatives across all our facilities.
Was some of that finding a way to get out of eskim, I mean, are you using other forms of electricity? I presume you need quite a lot of it.
We do need a lot of it, so we you know, in our sugar business we produce power, but unfortunately quant wheel it all the way through to our plants in the heartfelt so no, some of the cost savings that came through would have been lower amounts of diesel as a consequence of less floationing that's before, But the bulk of it would be in initiatives which we which we've done ourselves, but we don't generate our own power at many of the facilities.
In the cutting some of your baking product volumes grew. You say, are people buying more of your product? Is that because other food might be more expensive? Could you maybe rather be taking market share from some of your competitors.
So in the areas in which we volumes improved in bakings, mainly in our powers and specialty operating operating units, and it's difficult to measure marketing there. We sell most of our paths into four courts and specialty service most of warwis products, so we saw some last volume upticks there, and bread remains a challenge market We certainly not stealing share from anybody, and pricing parity in bread is actually
an issue and remain so. Although the bread part of the business did improve over the prior year, but we comfortable that our market shares are remaining pretty much intact across most of the business. One or two areas where we'll be under pressure, but overall peace with the shareholding up.
Your sugar business revenue was down slightly, I mean by slightly, I mean by less than one percent, so a tiny fraction. But is your business is that section of your business under a little bit of pressure? Is there a lot of important sugar coming in?
So Stephen, let me starts with that business that performed brilliantly in the last few years, record results four years in a row, and even this result is still a very hard result. I think it's the fourth highest in the business of history. So very peace of the performance
is imports. There's no question. Imports started to come in in the last quarter of our financial year and continue to come in now, and it's all linked to the dollar based reference price and tariff that's in place, which is now not strong enough to protect the imports from coming in, and we do see some risk and headwinds there. Our tackle busy reviewing that tariff and we hope that in the next six to maybe eight or nine months that this is resolved and some additional protection is brought in.
Otherwise there will.
Be some risks to the sugar industry, and it's been through quite a time in the last five or six years, so we don't need any any more pressure. But back to your question, we still peaceful with our sugar performance. We think that they've performed well. And in sugar, what we really focus on is what we can control, which is costs and making sure that we crush our cane and get our production as sharp as we can.
Where's the sugar coming from that's coming into the country. Obviously it's quite a lot of it for you to to go to itach.
Not one hundred percential war. It's coming from probably probably Brazil, big sugar producer, and some of it can come out of India. You know, the international market and sugar is very buoyant, So most countries are protected, their local industries are protected and then the x the the the surplus production is then dumped onto the onto the intovarious international markets.
Some of the countries convert some of their sugar into ethanol and depending on that praft, they will they will play the game.
Of produce ethanol, produce sugar.
So so if you if you take a relative scale the imports that have come in in the financial view on materially up on the prior and you know, the last few years that protection has actually worked very well for us, and so something for us to keep our eye on. In the next financial view.
You grew your pet division and you've been focusing on premium brands, and we see some of the big retailers now going quite aggressively into pet food ped accessories. They're investing in that space, they're setting up their own sort of pets. Is that good for you to have a little bit of interest in that market.
Yeah, definitely. And we have a wide portfolio of brands that can play in various market segments and to the move into and we're very strong in retail. So there is there is some some risk to our business going forward, which we busy busy working through. But most important thing is the brand portfolio that we have that can play in those segments. So so retailer is moving into the into the speciality to what we call the speciality PET
channel is a positive thing. They will certainly drive the category hard, which is what we're looking for from a growth perspective. But we quite well positioned in pet to pick up some of that additional volume should the category start to grow.
I mean, our society, like others, has sort of changed the way it deals with sea spets in some households, I mean almost completely from sort of you know, dogs being fed scraps outside. I mean that still happens in many, many cases in South Africa to some you know literally easilyeping on a bed. There's a lot of opportunity there for you.
Yeah, absolutely, and we were very strong in certain parts, particularly dry dog and cat is where we strong in the market. And it's quite a diverse market there. There's there's there's webbed food which is growing and big which which which we're in but very small in and and that's that. That's a part of the portfolio which we plan to grow out in the future.
Poll Crookshank thanks very much. Indeed, the CEO at r CL Foods really appreciate the chat. I'm fascinated by how much money people spend on animals nowadays, and you do see it in all sorts of ways accessories. I mean, obviously, if you spend any time on social media, you'll probably see a cat video, but you'll probably also see someone being ridiculous with a you know, a dog and an aeroplane and first class travel or something like that. I'm
not really talking about that. I'm talking about, you know, the special cushion or the specials or the special vat. Is there something you've brought your pet just because you know you'll like it, well, the pet will like it at the cat or the dog, and maybe something your parents or the generation before you would never have dreamed of doing. He still one of those who think that dogs need to sleep outside. Double one, double A three oh seven oh two two one four four six five sixty seven.
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Well seven minutes now to seven the time. Blue Label Telecoms confirming today some of the technical details about how it's going to list sel C on the JC. There's debt of course to deal with, and all sorts of other issues as well. Duncan McLeod is the founder and editor at tech Central Dot s dot today at Duncan, good evening. I mean, some of it is very sort of technically financial. I suppose the bigger point is that selc's going to join the other cell phone networks on the JC.
Yeah, it's actually quite exciting, Stephen. We haven't it's quite a rare things don't have a major listing on the JFC, and even rareer still I think to have one in the tech sector. So it's quite exciting to have a tech listing coming up and one of this magnitude.
This is a very difficult question, but is SELC a good investment at the moment? I mean, when it came into the market, was the third operator promised big things struggled for a little while. I remember Ellen not Craig of all people, took it over for a while and made some big changes, made some big noise. I still remember there sort of five gigabytes special which seemed amazing at the time. Then it seemed to sort of run into a bit of trouble again.
Yeah, it did.
The problem SELCA has had since its sounding really is that was a later entrant to the market. It launched about six or seven years after Votcom and MTN had already established themselves in the market and built national networks. So it came along as a late comer, and I didn't have the deep pockets of its larger rivals, and so it struggled to compete on infrastructure and to deploy infrastructure across the country at the sort of scale of
Voticon and MTN. And it's always struggled in that in that regard and tried to compete, but in trying it got itself into huge debt, tens of billions of random a hole it dug for itself, and it's had to go through a number of recapitalizations over the years to prevent it from going going to the wall. It's actually Amicable's business is still around, given the difficulties it's been through over the years, and I think it probably just shows the tenacity of the Levi brothers who run Blue Label,
that they have actually saved this thing. It's you know that that death problem has been a noose around its
neck for decades. And I think what we're seeing here with the proposed restructuring and these transactions that we're announced today, if they go ahead, they will once and for all, it seems, finally deal with self siise balance sheet, and that will put it in a much stronger position and make it a lot more attractive to potential investors ahead of the listing, So we could we could see an interesting listing here.
I mean what that would mean then is suddenly it would be able to almost compete with both hands, the way the albatross around his neck will be gone. And I mean, do you think it could then start to challenge We had a very interesting time in the telecom space.
We are indeed, and you know, they've got a new operating model which is very interesting. They're doing something no one else in the market is doing, and that's that they don't operate their own radio access network anymore. That means they don't own the sort of the network that connects the base stations to the customers. They've outsourced that to their network partner's empty and voticoms. It's an interesting
sort of coopetition model. They've got strong agreements in place with both empt and and verticom and so they adopted what they call a capex light model, so they no longer have to invest the billions around every year to try and keep up with VOTCOMY and EMPTN and deploying four G and five G and later sixteen networks. They can ride all f that infrastructure using their own spectrum
from Ecasystare. But it's a new model, which is capex light, and which should prevent them, hopefully from getting into the sort of debt problems that they've experienced in the past. So this is a very different business to the selfia we've seen historically, and this should position it well if they If they're smart in the way they package their products and come to market with well priced and good products that consumers are interested in, they could indeed carve
out a good niche for themselves. I think they've got a probably about ten or twelve percent of the market at the moment, and we could see that expanding in the coming years if they box cleverly against the empty and Voticom and Telcom. But of course those are also very strong competitors and they're not going to want self coming along and eating their lunch. But SELFI is run by George Mendes now the CEO, and he's expert COOM.
He's got a lot of experience in the TLCO space, and the management team is strong, So I think I think this business is actually looking quite.
Good the future obviously for cell phones as data. I mean, so many people don't make any ordinary phone calls anymore, they just use WhatsApp. Does it make sense? I mean, is there an opportunity for someone in celse's position to just give up voice calls and concentrate on data.
They're a full service polcos. I think they'll continue to offer voice, but there's no doubt that voices is in structural decline and has been for years. Many people and now make phone calls over WhatsApp because the data network is good enough for that.
I mean that fact.
We've seen some of the operators now offering very low cost plans where you can get you know, one thousand minutes of calls for one hundred and ninety nine or two hundred and ninety nine round a month, which was unheard of five years ago. So I think that just shows that voices become a commodity and that indeed is
there's data that these operators are selling. They've tried over the years to offer complementary service, and I think we see that more from your bigger players like MPT and vertcoms branched out into things like fintech, mobile money, et cetera,
et cetera. Selfie has tried some of those things before, such as in the media space where they tried to launch a streaming media player Selsey Black was a failure, and I think they're just focusing on their core business now, which is selling air time, selling data, and that's probably
be the right strategy for the moment. And of course they've got a strong partner in Blue Label, so then we may see some opportunity for the two companies to work more closely together going forward, especially now that it looks like the transaction is going to go ahead where Blue Label is going to take full control of of Selse, so it will allow the management team a Blue label to work much more closely with Selfie than they have in the past, so we could see some interesting propositions
coming forward, but they haven't spoken in detail about what some of those propositions might look like. But I'm sure they're thinking carefully about thinking beyond just selling data bundles and offering complementary services, but we don't have an insight into what that might be yet.
And Duncan mclop thanks so much, really appreciated, founder and editor at tech Central dot dot CD. Lot's going on in the telecoms business, obviously, and just the idea of moving away from voice calls only to WhatsApp calls, and I think it is happening astonishingly quickly that transition. If you think about it, I mean, probably five years ago you'd never have made a WhatsApp call in your life. Now suddenly it's pretty much all the time. It's very
interesting to see how quickly that is changing. And then who's going to be left on voice phone networks, on normal old fashioned voice networks. Well, i'll tell you who It'll be the spamers. They'll be the one still using the old system and they won't be using WhatsApp because WhatsApp hopefully won't allow them to all Right, lots to come. We'll find out more about arsenal Mittal and their decision to basically close down their Newcastle operation. We'll talk about
lifting up the transformative power of support of leadership. And don't forget Desre Marcraft, the film and television producer, should be talking to you about her career, one of the big minds behind Shaka Elendi. You at the Money Show at seven o'clock The.
Lonely Show with Stephen Kruis Live on ninety two point seven and one six FM, streaming on the Prime Media Plus NAP and DStv channel eight five six.
Well ten minutes after seven confirmation Today arsenalal Mittal essay writing to its workers telling them the company will be closing its long steel business. Three and a half thousand direct jobs go as a result, as you know, a long drawn out process. Here the IDC, as you heard from their CEO last week, giving arsenal Mettel one point seven billion rand in the last financial year and money we're reboarding this morning. That Eskimo was a fish was
essentially told by nurser. It had to give arsenal Mittal cheaper electricity, which basically meant other consumers. I mean you would have had to pay for it. Donald mckaye's director at XA International Trade Advisors, Donald good Evening. I mean, underneath all of this week steel prices and week steel demand, But is government policy to an extent responsible for the situation. They've thrown a lot of money at it, and it's going to close anyway. Yeah.
I never thought it was a wise idea for so much money to be given for such a short amount of time. Yeah, I think there is an element of it. I mean, you've at the heart of this, you've got a conflicting policy between Arslal Mittel as a as a steel producer from iron ore versus the minimals which produce steel out of scrap metal, and they get something around a thirty percent price advantage, and that at some point feeds into their prices, which then ends up undercuting Mittel.
So we've kind of what we've done is we've incentivized and subsidized at a time when there's too much steel in the market, so there's too much coming out of China, and then we're bringing more and more steel online in South Africa and that's that's simply a recipe for something to fall over.
The minimals if they've got a thirty percent price advantage. And as I understand that, one of the reasons is that scrap metal has a lower melting point so requires less electricity. I mean, you can't compete with that. There's no point in trying to subsidize that kind of competition.
Well, so the mini males also get a subsidy because of cheap finance out of the IBC, So there's lots of money flowing out of the IBC and on their raw material, so they purchasing their scrap at a thirty percent discount to the global market, and that kind of combination is a perfect storm. Yeah, it's a problem.
We've seen, I mean all sorts of interventions. Should we not have bothered?
Or was it?
And isn't this what always happens whence a company like Arsenal Missel runs into trouble. At first, you want to help with your government, and I understand that, and then you kind of get caught up in it, and it goes on and on and on, and you might wait for the weather to change, but it never does, and suddenly you've lost one point seven billion round.
Yeah, I mean that is a risk.
You know.
Also, governments find it very easy to spend our money which wouldn't have in any other environment, So there is an element of that. But the reality is there's also a global steel market which is problematic. There's simply too much steel everywhere, and of course the demand in South Africa remain suppressed. Think of all the infrastructure projects we've been promised for years and years that never happen. Those
are steel hungry projects which are not executing. And then think of all of the manufacturing businesses that are failing because of municipalities that don't work, es, com et cetera. And you can very quickly see that the local demand that would normally sustain these businesses is just horribly and artificially suppressed because the government is not executing properly on lots of what they should be doing.
And I mean, you know, if we wanted to, I don't know, help transnitt with new railway lines or better railway lines or new improved railway lines, you would need a lot of steel. I imagine. I'm no export, but I presume.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean, in fact, somewhat darkly ironically on the railway line front, we do not produce the railway line to the standard that is required by transnet and passer. So the rail we do produce is going into things like the mines, et cetera. But we do not produce to the standard set for the rail industry, which is in itself just a ridiculous situation to be in.
There are also perverse consequences or perverse outcomes. So in this case, one of them, and I presume it was an unintended outcome, was that two of the competitors to ars Little Mittel went to the Competition Commission and suggested, I haven't read their documents yet, but suggested they were basically arsenal metal. We're using the government sort of bailout the one point seven billion round to undercut their product.
I mean, something like that was almost inevitable if you look at the nature of our market.
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean that's just such a bizarre case because they of course themselves have product that is artificially cheap because of the subsidies. So it's kind of a battle between one part of the IBC and another funding each other. So it's yeah, I mean, that's just that's a very peculiar situation.
What's the best thing to do. Let Arslt Mettel go to the war, do what you can for the people of Newcastle and get on with the minimal policy. I mean, I don't know, and I know there can be different views on this. I don't know what the long term consequences will be of the closure of Arsenal Mattel. I understand that some of their very specialized products can't be made by mini mills. I don't know how much that will affect the economy.
Yeah, I mean that's above my pay grade to answer if we should let them go or not. But what I will say is you can't say of everyone. So the downstream fabricating steel sector has already lost over two hundred thousand jobs in the last decade, so you know the jobs are going to be lost somewhere. What government has to do is make a decision. What you can't do is try to protect every single company. At that point,
I believe you cause more harm than good. So whatever the decision is, they need to make it and move on with it and then leave the market to adjust. At that point.
A lot of commentary about the sort of role all of the DT. I see the Minister parks tow quite a lot on his plate at the moment with the US and everything else that you and I have been talking about and everyone else over the last few months. Do you get a sense that the that the Department of Trade, Industry and Competitions actually on top of things. It can sometimes feel that they respond that they're reactive, but I mean that is also the nature of their game. Unfortunately.
Yeah, I think most of the problems that Mattel are dealing with have nothing at all to do with the DT.
I see.
You know you still cannot get iron Ore properly out of the Northern Cape to Newcastle because of the railway situation. Yes, you do have the conflicting policies, which sits with Minister too, but you you have a whole host of issues which which Quibus Pasta has identified as problems, and almost all of those problems sit somewhere else, so you know, somewhere
else has got to come right. It's you can't fix this by subsidizing your way out of the failed municipality, and you can't subsidize the fact that there's not functional railway lines. So that's just that's a problem that has to be fixed its source, and I'm still a little cynical around whether that's actually going to happen.
I mean, someone's going to write a few I'm sure there'll be a one or two pH d theses on the whole issue of arsenal mittil. Are there lessons here for how to intervene or not to intervene next time?
Yeah, I think our problem is not in the interventions, but in not doing the things that you're supposed to be doing all the time. So we should never there should never have been a position where TRANSNETT got to the state that it is in in the same way that should we should never have been in a position where ESCOM collapsed to the point it did before we started doing something. It's simply unforgivable that we have almost no functional municipalities in Africa, So those things have to
get fixed. I think the interventions on noble. I understand why the DTIC has the instinct they have, but I'm afraid you cannot subsidize or protect your way out of the fundamentals of our economy which do not work, and they've got to get fixed.
Donald mackay, thanks very much. Indeed director at XA International Trade Advisors, really appreciate the time. I mean, there's so much going on with this, and yeah, I find it difficult to disagree with Donald. I don't know what our government can do except fix all of the things that we actually need to take responsibility for, including municipalities, politics, the way we manage money, and fixing things like trans net in the railway system. Nineteen minutes now after seven.
The Money Show with devenuited.
On the next Money Show, Peter Engelbrecht, the CEO of the Shopwright Group, will take you through the retailers financial results and the state of the retail sector. Personal finance expert co founder of Galileo Capital, war On Ingram. We'll talk to you about the reasons why some high income earners are often financially fragile and go broke. You can earn a lot of money and still not save. Also analysis of all the top business news of the day.
Stephen has gone ax at at Stephen Well. Later on Friday, US appeals court rule that most of the tariffs that have been imposed by the US President Donald Trump were now illegal, and he of course is now appealing and off we go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme
Court but generally has sort of backed Trump. Although this is an issue around the limits of power, and I'm of presidential power, and our imagine I'll want to look at the law are very very carefully, and I wouldn't be surprised if we get to a situation in the States in the US where even the Supreme Court says, actually, we need to sort of find a way to send a message to the president. I mean, who knows how
this is all going to play out. It did strike me though, that one of the problems for many of the US trading partners is the uncertainty, and a court ruling like this actually just makes the uncertainty worse. It doesn't help because you don't know what's going to happen. All it means is that you now can't make a decision until the Supreme Court rules. That's all it means. And even then you don't really know what's going to happen.
Because Trump has shown, particularly on issues around tariffs, that he can change his mind and change it quite often, and changes in a way that you don't really expect. So all of those things. Normally, you think a court challenge good we get a proper airing of the views and a final decision. Here, I'm afraid to say I'm not quite so sure. My show for business books well twenty one minutes after seven. They are about a million leadership books, and from time to time I do become
a little cynical about them. I think Ian Man's about to tell me to stop that, but I must admit to me, it does seem that leadership has become more complex and more difficult. It's not just that things are speeding up. It's that there's more to navigate, and the people you are leading come from more diverse parts of our societies, and that means that you maybe have to think a little bit more deeply about how you lead. I find it. I find some of it very very interesting.
Ian Man's our regular book review and MD at Gateways Business Consultancy and good evening. Thanks so much for coming in. I know you're a kinder person than I. Lifting up The Transformative Power of Supportive Leadership by Jen Mah Is it any different from all the others? Yes, it is not.
Why I think it's actually very practical, and I think that's why it's very useful. The fact is that if you look at employee equity, and there's been quite a lot of work done. Gallup polls done work on prey equity regularly and often, and what they've come up with this is that the most important person in employees being employees being engaged, not equity, sorry, engagement, proy engagement. Most important thing in employee engagement is management more than anything else,
and that the most important manager. The most important thing a manager can be is to be supportive, to be a supportive manager.
And the good news is.
That that supportive management isn't a natural tray. It's something that can be learned, and that what this book does is it basically gives you a way to understand what you need to do and then how to do it. And I think in that sense it's very valuable. But if we look at what's going on in the world today, I think that we probably suffering from more mental illnesses, more mental challenges than we've ever done before, everything from from the anxiety disorders all the way through to depression
and to burn out. I think that that is so common in the workplace today, and it's got to do with all of the fact that we're living under such pressure and the world is not getting any easier, and if certain parts of the world are more difficult, we are as very difficult. And under those circumstances, the role of the manager, and the Gallup poll showed this. The manager is the most significant person in your life, probably
equal to cointterstats, equal to that of a partner. So if you had a bad day with a partner, it'll mess up your ability to function for a little while. Exactly the same thing happens as the manager, except that you probably spend more time with the manager, or you could be spending more time with the manager than do with your partner. So it becomes terribly important that we know what to do. In addition to which we're starting to engage employee gen Z's gen Z's those are people
born after nineteen ninety eight. About those people are the most different people we've ever had as our children or our employees.
Really, that's a big thing to say.
They're the only generation that grew up with a cell phone in the hand. When we meet next time, I'll be able to share with you the impact of social media on everything, just the way we perceive reality. Now those people are suffering as well, and they by the way, they've got much higher and we don't understand them. We really don't understand them. Now if you look at the the the what what the supportive leader can possibly do or should be doing? The Probably the best example is
this the woman who founded the hospice movement. She she was She used to communicate the quotation she used to communicate people that you matter because you're you, and you'll matter because you're you until you pass away.
And that said that.
The people said of her that that was a message you got from her, incredibly strong message, and that was very, very affirming. I think we have to do the same sort of thing with out with our staff, except ob a different level. But the point of noticing people, I notice you as a person. The key issues to make it happen is to notice to a firm and to
let people know you need them. What we don't do much of is we don't notice people well, how they're doing, how they're feeling, what they're thinking, what issues are they dealing with. We don't affirm them by saying them you know that their presentation you died. I can really see the effort you put in just that much and or what you did your your presentation really helped us without to close the deal. The reason we don't do that is because we go into what they call the awkward zone.
And the awkward zone is the gap between our compassion and our ability to act. And often we're stuck in the awkward zone because we simply don't know what to do. And you have staff issues, which could be anything from colleagues are colleagues not you can't get on with colleagues, Or you've got family issues, you've got work issues, you've got you just complainers with those solutions. All those sorts of things happen in the workplace and you have to
respond to them. The way most people respond is that either try to be the fixer. Yeah, yeah, I know you're getting advorced. You should know when I was getting advorced and the person looks at you and says, your divorce has got nothing with me and it's not the same, or you or you try, or you get other people who aren't fixers but are deflectors. So when you tell me that something's really going wrong in your life or
your or your workplace, I just deflect. I'll talk about anything else except that, or or I'll ignore you, which just makes it worse. Well, well, either I'll try and take sort out your play. The fact is, and she gives a fabulous example which I just captures absolutely everything. She believes that that you we don't need verbs, so we don't need nouns when when somebody's in trouble, I don't need to empathize with you. Empathy is a noun.
I need a verb. She describes she moved into a new village, and before she moved in, somebody said, to our kids are going to be the same age when you move into the village. Let us know whatever carpool she said. The first day she moved in, the woman said to have you have you how's it going? Said, that's terrible. I've got all those things. Still know I'm not coping, and the and the woman instead of saying I really feel for you, I know where there must be like women said to do you have food in
your fridge? And she said no, and there was a said the woman came back by an hour later with all so you could possibly need for breakfast the next day, and a bottle of wine. We don't need. And this is this is a very very important point. If you're not somebody who's naturally empathetic, that's naturally supportive. We don't need that.
Just verb, just just verb.
People, things are going wrong? Do you need any help? Is there any way in which I can connect you with the counselor is anyway that I can have a conversation with you and your colleague? We need to respond to ourselves first. We need to notice, we need to, we need to firm them, we need to take action, and we need to we need to.
Use verbs and man Thank you very much indeed, our regular book reviewer and managing director at Gateways Business Consultants. The book is lifting up the transformative power of support of leadership. The author is Jen Mark. Twenty eight minutes after seven.
Her Money Show, How I Make My Money.
Twenty four minutes now to eighth the time. Well, from time to time you'll see and hear something that you
know is going to be a cultural event. Think for a moment, the first time you knew that there was a movie coming about Black Panther, or if your memory goes back far enough to the nineteen eighties, the series sharka zulu that people spoke about all the time and still strangely watch and perhaps the closest we've come to that kind of dramatic event here in South Africa in the last few years, a piece of culture which has been created and become an event, something that people talk
about and watch again and compare and sort of staff the Monday Morning conversation about is the TV series sharka iLembe Well. One of the people who's the co executive producer of sharka Elemba is doesre Marcraft, and I should say she's had a very long career before that doing all sorts of very interesting things, often related to our
history and our culture. Desree, good evening, and thank you so much for taking some time tonight to explain how you've made your money, how your career has been over the years.
Hi, good evening, Thank you very much, and thank you for having me on the show.
You've made in other interviews, you've spoken and commented about the fact you were growing up during the Aparte eight era and in a way that's probably shaped a lot of the culture that you've been working in ever since. What kind of community were you were you growing up in?
You know, I grew up with my mother. My father and my mother had separated very early and I grew up in a I guess a lower income, middle class white household with a single mother. We grew up in the Johannesburg area in Jetty's Belgravia and went to a boarding school there. So I think I had a pretty normal, sort of Joeberg chwihood in the seventies.
Like the way you put that, I mean, what's normal now and what's normal then now about sixteen different things. At the time, information about what was really going on was quite hard to get. You would have to go and search for it. Were you aware then, and maybe as a sort of young adult how strange our society that society was compared to other societies. Did you have a sense of what was sort of going on?
No, I did.
I was fortunate enough that my mother was quite politically aware. She was active to some extent through the church that she worked at, the Swedish Church at the time, and so I was aware in my early childhood about the abnormal society that we lived in. And certainly I was aware of the huge disparities between growing up as a
young white person and as a young black person. But I would say that I really only got an awakening I think properly in my twenties when I started working, and I was fortunate enough to have started working in the film industry quite young as a runner and some myself working in Soweto, and that was, you know, just a massive awakening to me on I think the kind of privilege that I felt that I had grown up with because I've sort of grown up thinking, well, you know,
we were a poor white family and it was just me and my mom. But when I sort of opened my eyes and saw a bigger world around me, I realized that was not the case at all.
I mean, I think for some people to come to sort of leave where they've come from and go into Soweto at the time he would have been one of very few white people would have been quite a shock to a lot of people.
I have to say it was the best time of my life. I learned so much. I felt that I grew. One of the things that as a child, I remember my mother saying to me, and I don't think I quite understood it at the time, was that she felt that we lived in an extremely superficial society because we weren't really talking about what was going on around us. And I think that had a lot to do with white guilt and white shame, and people really couldn't talk
about serious issues. And so for the first time I found in my twenties that I was talking to people about real things and experiencing real life around me. So it didn't feel strange to me at all. And I made a lot of wonderful friends, friends that I have today, and I think it's you know, I'm grateful it conscientised me in a way that, yeah, I wouldn't have got otherwise.
I think did it inform that that clearly that period informed a lot of what you did afterwards. I mean quite a bit of your work has sort of been about that. You did a lot at the Aparthech Museum, for example. I mean you must have you know, that obviously set you on a road.
Yeah, I suppose so in a way. I mean, I think that the one thing was that I was particularly interested that mainstream media, television, radio, you know, so ignored black life in a cultural way, and that the little bits and pieces that one saw on radio and television were extremely curated, and so it was something that intrigued me. And it really wasn't until I met with my partners.
You know that I've had all these years since then that I suddenly realized, well, you know, this is really what I would like to focus my energy on, is telling these stories that I felt hadn't been told at the time. Of course, now television and radio and everything has changed, but it wasn't like that in the early eighties.
So how did you move through the field? I mean often, I mean I know very little about television production, but I presume it kind of goes project by project, and if you do well on one small project, maybe get a slightly bigger role on a second small project, and then maybe a slightly bigger role on a third sort of bigger project. How was that progression?
Yeah, pretty much like that. I mean I think when I started, you know, I went through the industry first as a runner, and then you know, getting various jobs and growing and learning and becoming a production manager and starting to work with money and understanding the dynamics of money. And I then started a very small, little production company of my own, and I thought I'd focus on doing corporate videos where I could learn my craft without being
in the public eye. If I made a mistake, so to speak, and you know, the corporate training market actually in the early eighties is extremely vibrant and buoyant. You know, South Africa was changing. There was this massive push to educate around change of policies in businesses about affirmative action. So it was a quite exciting time for the training space. And so that's what I started cut my teeth on. And but my heart had always really been in drama
and telling stories. And then of course in the late early nineties I had met with Angus Gibson and Tobacco Matlatzi and you know we started working together and our first pitch that we really got had been to develop what then became us Years.
Yes, I mean I've spoken to Angus Gibson once or twice, and I mean he rarely. I mean that the group, what you were doing at the time rarely set popular culture for generations of people in South African yeas Or Yezor was a big part of that.
Yes, it was such an exciting time, Stephen. I mean, you know, if we were sort of on this exciting moment with the end of Aparthet and South Africa felt so absolutely full of possibility, and it was the first time that we were able to really tell stories that felt like it really reflected you know, the whole of our population and in a very open way. We were able to explore what the challenges were that we're facing
us as a society. And of course User User was a story that was looking at what was after effects of you know, liberation, before education. Our schools were struggling and there was a big push by the Department of Education, government stakeholders, et cetera to really try and get education back on track, and not just for a small group.
Of the population, but for the whole population.
So it was an exciting project and it was you know, at the explosion of Quito, just there was so much energy in South Africa at the time, and it was a very exciting project to work on. And we had no idea that the project was going to be the success that it was. I mean, there was no benchmark for it really, and I don't think it was financially successful in the beginning. I think, you know, advertisers were extremely scared of us because it was a show that
was quite different, a little bit wild. It certainly you know, showed.
Us warts and all.
So it took a while before the money followed. The excitement that the show generated.
I find as a journalist working here, this country is the most interesting stories. I mean, to be a journalist in South Africa's to sort of have a really close seat to dynamics and stories and people's lives can change in ways that are just unimaginable in other countries. Does that help you? Do you think the fact that South Africa is such a rich canvas there are so many I mean to say interesting people sound ridiculous, but there are so many stories that I don't think you get in other places.
Now one hundred percent I agree with that. I mean, I think that we have such an incredibly diverse society thrust together. You know, we did a show after years or we did a show for the SABC called Zone fourteen and in a way it really you know, captured this very well that in one block, in one street, you could have so many different people living next brought each other, a school teacher, a millionaire, bank robber, a taxi driver, and it makes for such an exciting society.
And I think that we've got so many complex stories that we've shared, and you know, the human condition, aside from all the complexities of race in South Africa, that we've had to overcome, that we've had to grapple with, that we keep grappling with every day. I mean, it's here, present all the time. I think just makes a society that talks about interesting things. We are interesting.
I think you're with. I think I agree, I think we are You're with. The Money Show is fourteen minutes now to eight o'clock and we're speaking to Israel Marcraft, an executive producer and someone who's had a very interesting career in TV. I would like to talk to you a little bit about Sharka Elemba. Israel. Let me just
explain where I come from. And I'm just old enough to have been allowed to stay up as a kid to watch the nineteen eighties production of shark A Zulu when it was shown on TV at the time, and I'm always a man how it still has such power today. I mean, I've come across young people who actually believe the image of Sharka is the image of Henry Clearlier, the actor who played him. At the time, he was
a footballer before that. Was there something about that series that maybe made you want to make Sharka Limba to kind of move away from that because that version, in my mind, at least the eighties version now is highly problematic.
Well, you know, it wasn't that series that inspired us to make the current one, but certainly, of course that series lives big in our imagination, and Henry clearly was a fantastic Sharka. And as you say, there are many things that are problematic with that series in the eighties. But let's go back to the eighties and remember that at that moment, that series was incredible to have on
local television. It was the first time that we had seen such a powerful representation of a black South African hero of a king, and in many ways forgetting many of the inaccuracy or political things that make us uncomfortable about that particular telling, which was through a white lens and a foreign gaze. It still was a series that held the character of Sharka up in high regard. But
really our story came from a totally different space. I mean, you know, it came from me being a mother and having mixed race children and wondering, you know, what shows and what are we talking about? What are our kids watching on TV? Our kids are all growing up with Americans, you know, Hannah Montana and Ben ten But who are our heroes? And so many of our heroes that we see and speak about have been particularly formed around the liberation struggle. But you know, colonial history is only a
few hundred years. There's been thousands of years of pre colonial history with kings and queens and rulers and complex societies, and those stories have never been told. And so when we started researching, you know, I was sort of interested in the notion of telling stories when we were kings. And when I started researching, I realized that there's just nothing visually available for young people of today to find
to read to excite them about African history. And so, you know, we went about trying to put the show together, and Sharkho, of course, is one of the most exciting African leaders, I mean, you know, just across the continent, and he's a worldwide recognized figure. So it felt like, well, if we're going to start, let's start there, and let's
start telling that story first from an African lens. And so our you know, launch pad was to go and find out to find out who who this man was and what society did he live in.
I Mean, there's a wonderful book called Shark a myth of ie which goes back many years, and it was by Dan Wiley that sort of explains all of that and what sort of triest you mean, very complicated. Did it spark the debates that you wanted? It had a huge It had a huge impression. I mean everywhere where I was working, people were talking about it. Did it start the debates? Do you think that you wanted? Do you think it had the kind of and then's very hard,
you know, in a multi channel world. I mean, you know, it's very hard to make any kind of pressure impression at all. It certainly made one. Did it do what you wanted us to do in terms of what we're talking about?
Yes, I think so, And I think that it's a slow burner that it will continue doing it because you know, what we wanted to do was get people starting to talk about South African history and the people who you know, populated this continent and in a way that getting people impested, getting people starting to look at their own history, their
own ancestry. And you know, we spent a lot of time meeting with people, meeting with descendants, meeting with members of the royal family, meeting with oral custodiums, meeting with praise singers, so that our telling was not just the telling that was in history books, but also trying to really understand the cultural nuances in which this story felt like it should be told. And I think that the
time taken to do that has resonated. You know, we've had an incredible team with us in Plantlam Tucker, who's you know, my co executive producer, has just been an absolute brand of information and meeting so many people, of course meeting you know, our previous king Azuelatini and the current king, missus Zulu, but also you know, just the richness of this history that was surfaced. And so we hope that we were so excited of course that people
have embraced the show so well. But really what we want to do is that this is the door that we're simply opening to much bigger telling and many more tellings of you know, African history.
Speak to dere Marcraft, the co executive producer of Sharka a Lemba. She's with us for another eight minutes. It's eight minutes now to eight o'clock. It's six minutes now to eight o'clock. We speak to Desreel Markcraft how she makes her money. She's a film and television producer at Desre. The people who do work in TV that I know and in film will or tell me one thing. It's long hours and lots of unbelievably hard work. If you don't want to work twelve hours a day, don't bother.
It's one hundred to say. True. It's a very hard you know, But it's also a sort of lifestyle. I guess. You know, once you get addicted to storytelling, somehow those long hours don't feel so long because you're excited about the work that you're doing and you're crafting and creating. But yes, so very long hours and very early.
Morning, and I imagine a lot of teamwork as well. You actually need to get on you You get it through a lot of fat talking, a lot of nonsense to each other while you're waiting for the next shot or for the sun to be just so.
Yes, there's a lot of teamwork. There isn't really that much time for talking nonsense, to be honest, because you know, you sort of have to be ready. Each department has to be ready for when it's their turn to be on, so to speak. But you know, the other thing about it is that on a show like Shark Lemba, for example,
it has this sort of massive ability for employment. You know, in the last season we employed close to twenty thousand people, and of course many of those are background extras, so they're there for a day only, or two or three days.
But even there, you know, you find on a set there'll be four or five hundred of us there there's a real camaraderie that happens because we're all there for the same reason, and you know, on a show like Shark Lember, of course we all feel very strongly about what we're doing and the importance of the sort of legacy of what we're doing. So yeah, there's camaraderie in long hours, but you know, often a very good energy
in those spaces. So you come away after a three or four month shoot feeling like you've made family and you've built something together, and then suddenly the family is disbanded, which of course, you know, leaves you feeling a little empty for a few weeks afterwards.
No, I'm sure the way in which we entertain ourselves is changing. And I mentioned earlier that SHARKI Lember landed in very much a multi channel world, by which I mean hundreds of channels, everybody watching things at different times, very different from say, watching TV in the nineteen eighties. Do you think the demand for content like that, I'm talking about episodic series or what's it forty six minutes or so, maybe an hour maybe in some cases an
hour and a half. If you look at something like Yellowstone, do you think that demand for that is going to continue?
You know, I think that good storytelling will change its forms a little bit in different ways. But yes, I do think that that demand will continue. And I think that is about in a way, these big television drama series is the new book. You know, we reading at the moment little bat sized things on our phone, and so much information is coming flying at us in batsized moments, And there is something about just sitting down with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and enjoying
a good story for an hour. And so I do think that there's, you know, still a lot of life left in this form of storytelling.
I mean, you say it's the new book. It's also kind of the new fire, isn't it. You know, you sit around and tell a story about that, you know, around the fire kind of thing. When you start to look now for new productions, new things to film, do you get, you know, thousands of ideas being flung at you from various places, or is it quite difficult to actually know this is what we're going to make a story of, this is the story that we're going to tell.
I mean, there's so many stories in South Africa. I mean, I think people would watch a Steve Picco mini series, you know, and there was a Solomon Mahlangu movie a few years ago. Of course, I think people would watch something about maybe a rain Queen might be kind of a good moment for that. There are lots of different stories.
Yes, I mean I think, you know, stories come to people in different ways and set me in our company, stories have come to us largely because we sort of feel that we are constantly trying to tap into what is the zeitgeist of the moment, What is it that people.
Are feeling, What do we feel like, you know, will be that.
Piece of entertainment that will resonate in a particular moment. So you know, perhaps, as I said, you know, in the nineties when we made Use the User, we were full of optimism and we could see something that was a little tougher about ourselves. Now here we are and we're feeling maybe a little The world is tough, and you know, the rosy, the rose printed glasses on South
Africa are not there so much anymore. And that's why it felt like it was good to tell a story that said, hold on a second, let's remember where we come from. Let's remember the dignity of the history that has come before. We're not who we are today. And I think just tapping into the zodcast of any moment does help give you an indication of what kind of content is. And of course it's all the streaming platforms. Sure you know, anything works, you're going to find your audience Israel Marcraft.
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. She is the film and television producer in one of the mines behind Sharka Elembe