Dishes are beautifully prepared by team that replicates Reuben Riffel’s high standard

by JOHN FRASER

When you fancy a bite of lunch in the Cape winelands, you are spoilt for choice. As well as an abundance of restaurants in the towns, there is something on offer on almost any wine farm — from fine dining restaurants to tasting rooms offering platters of cheese and other goodies.

However, few places offer the quality of food that you can find if you wander a few paces off the main drag in Franschhoek and visit the restaurant of one of this country’s finest chefs. I have been visiting Reuben’s restaurant for well over a decade and have found chef Reuben Riffel’s food consistently excellent.

Of course, you are paying winelands prices, which are more of a strain on the wage packets of South Africans than they are for those harder-currency tourists, who gasp in amazement at the superb value our restaurants offer when compared to those in their home countries.

Reuben’s has moved from its original home on the Franschhoek high street — that building has now been downgraded to a Woolworth’s store. However, the newer venue is light and airy, with a covered terrace at the far end, while inside there is a roaring fire in the cooler winter months. As the temperatures were in the 30s when I recently visited, no fire was on offer, nor needed, but the relaxed terrace was a sensible location.

When I discussed Reuben’s recently with two elderly Franschhoek residents, it was sad to hear that they don’t go there. They feel that as the chef has expanded, opening new restaurants beyond his hometown, and no longer confines himself to his founding Franschhoek kitchen, standards must have slipped.

Indeed, lovers of local TV food programmes will almost certainly have seen him judging or cooking on the small screen. His roots may be in Reuben’s, but he has spread his wings. So, are they right? Only one way to find out!

To my mind, Riffel has achieved what only the very best chefs are able to do — by training kitchen and front-of-house teams that meet the same standards of cuisine and service that one would expect when Riffel himself has not left the building.

On my most recent visit, my first to the winelands in far too long, I started my lunch at Reuben’s with one of the dishes that is rarely off the menu — the prawn tempura. Beautifully cooked prawns encased in batter, nestled on a chilli-coriander salsa, enhanced with a creamy sweetcorn velouté and small dice of pineapple. A stunner.

Also on offer was the chilli salted squid, a dish for which Riffel is rightly famous — and then there was a generous, well-flavoured beef tartare. The hand-chopped fillet was flavoured with an array of flavours, including tarragon, rocket, capers and Parmesan.

For the mains, my chums and I had a beautifully cooked pork belly, with melt-in-the-mouth meat and crispy, crackly, crunchy pancetta crackling. Skilfully cooked and flavoured with fennel seeds, cider, chilli and ginger.

The beef fillet with rosemary bone marrow bordelaise sauce was also excellent, and the tender, perfectly cooked juniper kudu loin was a revelation, enhanced with blueberry chutney and pepper jus. All a bit cheffy, I know, but all the flavours worked so well together.

The previous week I had also ordered a venison dish in a celebrated Mandela Square steak house, and in contrast to Ruben’s kudu, I had found it so bland, and boring, and the sauce so unpalatable, that I could only eat a few mouthfuls of it.

It takes skill to cook as well as Reuben’s team does, and the dishes Riffel has created are beautifully prepared by a team that is able to replicate his high standards. While relaxed, the service was efficient and attentive, even as the restaurant filled up.

Unfortunately, unless one is staying in Franschhoek, it can be a long drive home, so I had to modify my wine consumption. I had a (surprisingly generous) glass of the excellent and luscious AA Badenhorst, Secateurs chenin blanc, and followed this with (an equally ample) glass of Reuben’s own red. Both went well with the food, and it is good to see some effort had been made in assembling a wine list with a good selection of exceptional wines by the glass.

My only criticism was that the red wine was served a bit warm on what was a very warm day. However, not being as snobbish about doctoring my red wine as some, this was soon remedied with a couple of ice cubes.

I don’t often dig into a dessert, and I am annoyed that Reuben’s has stopped offering a few craftily chosen cheeses for those who wish to linger a bit but don’t go for the sweet stuff. There are far too few top SA restaurants that put in the time and effort needed to curate a good cheeseboard, and I think this is a betrayal of the many excellent producers whose produce deserves wider exposure. Though cheesed off, I have to accept that demand may be limited, hence the decision to remove it from Reuben’s restaurant menu.

In a 10-day visit to the winelands, I did not confine myself to Reuben’s restaurant, though I did go there three times, making up for the Covid-19 years when restaurant dining was a pleasure banned by our philistine politicians.

I had excellent, simple lunches at the Fairview wine farm in Paarl, which is a firm favourite, and in the Rose Garden cafe on the historic Vergelegen estate in Somerset West. Both are well worth a visit. I also lunched on two of our most prestigious wine farms, where you have to beg to secure a table, and I must confess that I found neither to be good value nor particularly impressive. Some chefs sadly seem to have abandoned flavour to focus on theatre and pretension. I won’t be back.

So Reuben’s, where there is consistency, and skill levels remain high, remains my uncontested winelands favourite. Not only is there great food, but it can’t just be my imagination that wine always tastes so much better when you are glugging it over a fine meal in the heart of the world’s most beautiful winelands.

By John Fraser and Chris Gilmour

“Let’s do lunch”…   It’s the most magnificent phrase in the English language. 

Lunch is not just about sharing good nosh and a few bottles of red nectar.   It is also good business.

On one’s arrival in the Business Day newsroom, the then editor Peter Bruce issued a command – that he didn’t want to see people sitting at their desks at lunch hour.

He wanted them out there, networking, getting scoops, building trust and relationships with the sort of people who would spill the beans. Fully baked and ready for the front-page splash.

And it wasn’t unusual to see Peter himself in the local steak and chips joint, hobnobbing with the great and the good, the influential and the mighty, captains and midshipmen of industry and political movers and shakers.

In the stockbroking world, too, lunches were de rigueur, at least in the days when stockbrokers were still stockbrokers and not just the securities divisions of investment banks.

Most stockbroking firms had their own dining rooms, which were used almost every day to entertain clients. Waiters wore starched uniforms, and the host had a little bell to let the staff know when to bring the next course. All very quaint.

And, of course, the booze flowed.   We can remember several occasions when these in-house lunches finished only at 6 o’clock in the evening.   There were probably later finishes as well, ones that we were incapable of remembering after all those brandies. 

Of course, the hedonistic side of a lunch is fun.  Those increasingly rare occasions when your corporate host, replete with expense account rands and on a mission to woo the humble hack or analyst, hands you the wine list, and suggests that you must choose the booze.

It works the other way as well.   One industry association chum we entertained would always go straight for the most expensive prawn starter when a humble hack was footing the bill.

A proper lunch involves more than one course, booze and an infusion of coffee. Then we sit, merrily belching as the barriers come down, the barricades are dismantled, and those gems of information flow.   

After scoffing a heaped pile of food, it is always great fun to see if we can get our host to offer a port (a double, of course) that is of considerably greater vintage than his guests.

Christ had the right idea about the benefits of breaking bread and sharing wine, although his choice of dining companions did prove fatal.  (And why on earth did they all sit along just one side of the table?). 

Fortunately, these days one can normally find more reliable dining companions, prepared to hand over a bag of silver when the bill arrives, rather than to indulge in ungrateful betrayal.

But the golden days of lavish lunches have largely gone now, swept away by the impact of de-regulation and the dead hand of investment banks.

To be fair, we started seeing the demise of the boozy lunch in all its former glory by the mid to late 1980s when the likes of Allan Gray analysts and portfolio managers would attend lunch grudgingly – and certainly wouldn’t touch alcohol.

This abstinence is a very American thing; our Yankee cousins eschew the idea of drinking at lunchtime, reserving this for after work. How sad.

These days, younger finance whizz-kids, in particular, tend to be a humourless bunch, and no amount of arm-twisting will persuade them to take you to lunch.

They fully subscribe to the view that all relevant information about a company is contained in the financial results and that anything else is peripheral. They don’t appreciate the benefits of social interaction and obviously don’t understand that it’s not what you know but who you know that matters.    

Especially when they enjoy a good, long lunch.

The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) qualification has a lot to answer for in this respect. There are massive sections in the CFA charter on ethics and doing the right thing – and this organisation seems to regard accepting a lunch…as being tantamount to succumbing to bribery.

And we won’t even go down the road of imagining what they would think of when it comes to alcohol. Shock, horror! Double the garlic and send for the exorcist!

It is all very well for journalists and analysts to attend results presentations or AGMs, to ask clever questions and then to interact with management over a sausage roll of two. 

But, as we have bemoaned before on these pages – to the deaf ears of so many corporate PRs, whose lack of understanding of the benefits of social interaction would lead to the speedy elimination of the human race – you just can’t beat a proper sit-down session.

It is all about trust. 

You don’t need to like your lunching companion, although many would be surprised by what really nice, charming and generous people do inhabit the financial world.

You need to build an understanding, a bond.    A lunch in the best of times may help in the worst of times.

Get the cell number of your dining companion.   It will be invaluable when the fertilizer hits the fan and the rottweiler PA tries to block all calls to her beloved boss.

An open line of communication is the saviour of the journalist and analyst.

And, of course, a sound relationship works both ways.   If your company is the target of a hostile takeover, if some unscrupulous rival has been leaking malicious material about your business, that’s the time for a call to a trusty journo or analyst, to provide the other side of the story.  Timely truths, and even a bit of crafty spin, can save your share price, your company and maybe even your job.

However, it can be useless to cold call someone, anyone from any side of the corporate equation, from out of the blue.  There will be suspicion, maybe hostility; maybe they will be in one of those meetings that last a lifetime, or getting down and dirty with Miss Moneypenny, and they just can’t come to the phone.     

Once an aviation company released its financial results in the early evening.   Everyone had left its head office.  The security guards couldn’t help, and nor could anyone at the call centre.

The next morning, once the vampires had all returned to their coffins, we finally got hold of the CEO.

Abject apologies followed, and while breakfast is no substitute for lunch, at least the hotel where we met for a mutual glaring session had some brekkie buffet bubbly on ice.

Cell numbers were exchanged, better transparency was promised, and the relationship was launched. 

Lunches were to follow.  Information was to flow. At the next lunch, a starter was born.

Of course, there are other, less subtle benefits of lunching in some of Joburg or Cape Town’s better restaurants.

Firstly, you often bump into someone you haven’t seen for a while.   A chance encounter with a former editor of Business Day once led to some useful and enjoyable writing work – and even a job offer.  

While there be the people whom you can greet, hug and to whom you can transmit transmit Covid, you will also be able to look around the room, to spot shadowy figures slipping into the discreet, private dining rooms, where the mega deals are made.

Just knowing that CEO X has been lunching with CEO Y could provide the first hint of the merger that will lead to the formation of a new corporation, let’s imaginatively call it XY.

Reading the room can prove almost invaluable, and it might even give you a premature indication of your paper’s next mega-scoop.

So don’t sit hunched over your desk, in solitary misery, blinking at your computer screen and dispiritedly munching on a stale sandwich.

Venture forth, and if that contact you really need to make has failed to send you an embossed invitation, contact them yourself and suggest a coffee.

When they agree, reject the suggested time and offer a better plan for the encounter with those magic words: “Let’s do lunch.”  

After all, man cannot live by stale sandwiches alone!  

John Fraser is a journalist and broadcaster, and Chris Gilmour is an investment analyst. Both are available for lunch.

By John Fraser

You might be forgiven for thinking that the SA government is in reverse gear when it comes to encouraging the country’s auto industry to go electric.

An announcement on this was expected in last year’s mini-budget, but that borefest came and went.

In today’s budget, we do have news of a new incentive – worth 150 per cent of a qualifying investment in production facilities for electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles in the first year of investment.

The bad news – it will apply to new investments ONLY from the 1st of March 2026.

So there will be a two year wait before it happens.

The tax loss to the fiscus is estimated to amount to R500 million for 2026/27.

Existing auto incentives will still be on offer to manufacturers, but one wonders why they will bother to go electric in SA when so many other countries offer speedier – and more highly charged – reasons to invest.

And as for the local market – barely a spark of interest in the new technology vehicles.

It seems that electricity isn’t the only thing in SA to lack the necessary energy.

08 JUNE 2022

by JOHN FRASER

While fine dining can sometimes be fine, if oft unaffordable, there are times when a good pub lunch is just the ticket.

Bustling, welcoming and infested with TV screens, Cesco’s in Randburg is both a sports bar and a sit-down restaurant.

The food is hearty, a little hit-and-miss, but this is somewhere I love to go. If I lived in the neighbourhood, it would be my local: everybody would know my name and I would have a tab the length of James Joyce’s Ulysses behind the bar. But on to my guest.

Born on a wine farm in what was then the sleepy village of Durbanville, Michael Olivier rose to become one of SA’s top restaurateurs. He ran the damn good, reliable, top-rated Parks on the fringes of Cape Town. Now semi retired in Johannesburg, he continues to wine and dine, and to write and consult to a new generation of foodies and winies. 

Great company as always, he and I wedged ourselves into our seats, and got down to the serious business of the day — lunch. The menu is extensive, ranging from simple and excellent-value Prego rolls to steaks, seafood and tons of other stuff.

As he would only be tempted by a coke zero, about which I have zero to say, I went for a glass of the house red. It was too warm and bland and I surrendered after one sip. The replacement was a draft Castle lager, which was beautifully chilled, and a delight.

To start, Olivier had grilled squid heads, which he raved over, and I had the prawn au gratin, which was a few peeled prawns drowned in a pool of processed cheese. Nothing wrong with it, the prawns were beautifully tender, and I can see why it might be a big hit with the pub punters, but for me, it lacked a certain … everything.

Squid heads and prawn au gratin at Cesco’s Portuguese Pub and Restaurant in Randburg. Picture: FREDDY MAVUNDA

For the main course, he opted for eight prawns which he devoured with all the delight of a kid in a sweetshop, while I battled with a sole and chips.

We finished by greedily devouring a sticky toffee pudding (he) and ice cream and chocolate sauce (me). Both were much enjoyed.

Simple food, with no cheffy tweezers involved in plating it up. It had its low points, but we both had a fine time.   

While we munched away, Olivier recalled a happy childhood in the rural Cape. “My parents were wine farmers; they grew grapes and made wine. We also had a large olive grove. It was artisanal farming — my dad made good wine that was used by KWV. He was a member of KWV.”

After boarding school in Cape Town, he joined the hospitality industry as a trainee at the Lanzerac in Stellenbosch. He then went to London where he took two courses at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school. “The first was a basic one for Sloane Rangers who needed to be able to cook to get a good husband. The second was a professional chefs’ course.

“I was then head receptionist at the Mayfair Hotel in Piccadilly for six months and got to know some quite interesting people, such as Omar Sharif and Princess Lee Radziwill [the sister of Jackie Kennedy].

“I began my first marriage. It lasted about six months, but it was four years before I divorced.”

Back in SA, he worked for Tupperware (where he felt boxed in?) before returning to the Lanzerac as manager for three years. Then on to Boschendal for nine years — as public relations manager, though he was also responsible for the restaurant.

“We then started our own restaurants,” he recalls. This time with the current Ms Olivier, the lovely Madeline, who was often hidden behind the scenes in the kitchen while Olivier schmoosed the guests.

After Parks had to close — to my fury — because of a problem with the lease, Olivier became a food and wine writer and has been active in promoting wine farms. He was also a food and wine specialist at Pick n Pay for five years.

In 2013, he received the Eat Out Lifetime Achievement Award. He recalls: “I didn’t want to go to the function, but when I did get there, I discovered I was at the head table.

“The other awards had been made and, at the end, they were introducing the Lifetime Achievement Award. They started describing some person I didn’t know — and then they said it was going to someone who had started SA’s first online food publication — and then I knew it was me.”

What of the achievements of the SA wine industry in his lifetime?  

“It has been stratospheric in terms of quality. Since 1994, more young winemakers have been travelling overseas and bringing back new tricks from both the new and the old world.

“It has been amazing: I don’t think you will find an undrinkable bottle of wine these days.” (I was too polite to point to my untouched glass of rancid red.)

These have been a few tough years for the food and wine industry, though.

“Covid-19 ravaged our business — it destroyed the restaurant industry as we knew it. We now see less fine dining and more very casual food spots. Quality, in terms of training of chefs in restaurants, has certainly diminished, though there are still some very talented people out there.

“There was a skills depletion due to the lockdown. A lot of places are using the names of classic dishes and serving something that doesn’t remotely resemble the classic — such as Caesar salad with chicken or prawns.

“Beef carpaccio amuses me; it was named after the painter who used red and white as predominant colours. Now we have zucchini or fish carpaccio.” These may please the palate, but they are not faithful to the palette.  

“We also see a lot of outsourcing in restaurants where people buy in bread or desserts. I wish people would pay more attention to desserts — if they did, their sales would be up. I have no wish to be offered Italian kisses, or creme caramel which come out of a plastic container in individual portions,” he insists.

Olivier has an encyclopedic knowledge of the SA wine industry and seems to know everyone and everything. So, does he share some of my concerns about restaurants and wine?

“Many have wine because they feel a restaurant has to have wine, and they are happy to hand over their wine list to a big wine company that will give them umbrellas and TV screens in return.

“There are some people, though, who are interested in wine and will meet the makers. Some restaurants will have an evening for a winery, with the menu matched with the wines. Those are quite successful. They can be fun.”

I ask him about corkage — people bringing along their own wines to a restaurant, but being charged a bit for the privilege?  

“At Parks, we started charging no corkage, but then realised how much restaurateurs lose with this. Often people would say they had a special bottle, and it wasn’t special at all.”

And it is not just a wine issue. “People would come for a function and instead of going through the menu, they would order no dessert because ‘Tannie Tammy is baking us a cake’. We had to slice it up and serve the cake, and garnish the plates.

“Once when we served the coffee, a woman of a certain age brought out a clutch of miniature airline bottles of liquors from her handbag and expected us to provide the glasses.”

Olivier’s most recent achievement has been a book of recipes, based on SA culinary traditions: Friends. Food. Flavour: Great South African Recipes.

So, after this lifetime of achievement what would he want for his last meal?

“Just a wheel of real Parmesan cheese, with a really nice red wine or a good, wooded chardonnay. The older I get the more I think white wine is better with cheese than red.”

A classy choice for a classy chap.

By John Fraser

After more than a decade of wine-tasting fun, Michael Olivier and I are hanging up our corkscrews and shutting shop.

For our last adventure we recorded this podcast, featuring the Koelenhof Winery Koelenbosch Director’s Reserve Pinotage 2020.

The terrific tasters are economist and venture capitalist Chris Hart, branding boffin Jeremy Sampson, broadcasting superstar Cobus Bester, and IT executive Malcolm MacDonald.

We also chatted about the merits and social pitfalls of serving red wine with a handful of ice cubes.

And the panel was asked what a good glass of wine means to them.

Click below to share in the fun….

Like this podcast? Subscribe to ZA Confidential to receive our newsletters.  Twitter:  @zaconfidential  

Do also check out: http://www.michaelolivier.co.za

By John Fraser

For our latest podcast, iconic food and wine expert Michael Olivier presents the Bruce Jack Heritage Collection: Heartbreak Grape, Pinot Noir 2019 – to a team of terrific tasters.

The superstar panel includes economist and venture capitalist Chris Hart, branding boffin Jeremy Sampson, broadcasting superstar Cobus Bester, and IT executive Malcolm MacDonald.

The panel later discusses the importance of the vintage and birthplace of a fine wine.

Click below to listen in and marvel at the magic….

Have you got yourself a copy of Michael Olivier’s brilliant cookbook, which is a wonderful celebration of South African cuisine? If you already have it, buy a few dozen more for all your friends.

Like this podcast? Subscribe to ZA Confidential to receive our newsletters.  Twitter:  @zaconfidential  

Do also check out: http://www.michaelolivier.co.za

By Chris Gilmour and John Fraser

People are currently terrified of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – and so they should be, as we have seen and suffered from the impact of its forebear, Artificial Stupidity (AS).

The dangers of AS were brilliantly highlighted in the TV series Little Britain, now sadly regarded as very un-woke, which featured a series of sketches with comedian David Walliams in drag sitting in front of a computer screen.

In each sketch he would be approached with a simple request, the sort of thing a well-behaved computer could accommodate in nanoseconds.

And each time, he would type something, check the screen, and respond: “Computer says ‘no’”.

It was clear from these spot-on sketches that AS was in command, held all the cards, and was intent on being as difficult as possible.

On arrival at the offices of some of the country’s biggest firms, you may already be required to sign in via a computer screen.  In our experience, it is vital to have a human on hand as well.   You guessed it – because the computer loves to say ‘no’.

The theory is wonderful.  As these more and more intelligent devices extend their capabilities, they should be able to speed things up, save on labour costs, boost efficiency, and enhance our lives.

In reality, it just doesn’t work like that.

On a recent visit to a branch of PostNet, the aim was to courier some papers to a government office in Europe.     

Step one involved filling in a form.     Names, addresses, ID numbers, and contents of the envelope.   Had there been spare space on the form for inside leg measurements, no doubt those details would have been required as well.

The form having been completed, one should have been able to pay and go.   Not a chance.  Not without the computer getting in on the act. 

A PostNet person took the form and then proceeded to enter into the computer each and every detail that had already been written down, and not very speedily.   This gave the opportunity for some further complications.

What is the phone number of the recipient? No idea!

The computer said ‘no’.   It needed a phone number, or the package would not be accepted.     So, the computer (with a bit of human help) had to Google away to find the number.  This took more time.

Had there been a faster and more logical way of gathering the info, and loading it into the system, frustration levels would have been lower and far less time would have been wasted.  

Makes sense?   The computer said ‘no’.

Possibly the most annoying examples of AS come whenever you need to contact a call centre.

Instead of a human being speedily answering your call, finding out what the call is about and then putting you through to the right person, instead it is answered by a computer. 

You are guided (often unintelligibly) through a series of stages, each involving a series of choices.  Enter 1 for….  Enter 2 for…   And so on.

Then the concert begins.   As call volumes are high (are they ever not?)  the caller is forced to wait and wait while often unenjoyable, poor-resolution, music is played.

Possibly it is intended to calm you down.    It doesn’t.

Now and then there may be a recorded message, reminding you of those high call volumes, blaming Covid, the weather, God or Satan for your frustration.

Last year a call from Pretoria to the Virgin Atlantic call centre took one and a half hours of waiting, only for the connection to be severed by the airline.    

Another attempt was made, another hour and a half dragged by, and the call was disconnected once again.

It would be unfair to suggest that this customer disservice is unique to one virginal venture.  It happens almost everywhere, almost all the time.  

Try conversing with the robot-run WhatsApp service of Discovery Health.  A nervous breakdown may result.

Or how about the newspaper subscription you took out and now want to cancel? There are British publications that make the quest for cancellation more impossible to complete than their impenetrable crosswords.

Of course, machines can work wonders. If you are eventually put in touch with a health care provider, the scanners, X-rays and other hospital machines they can book for you may work brilliantly and can save your life.

AI will advance all this even further. Already, cancers can be speedily and much more reliably detected when computers are brought in to help.

When the tedious and time-consuming side of AI – the coding – has been achieved and all that is left to do is to sit back and enjoy the end result, the effect can be earth-shattering. 

Once you’ve entered your biometrics and financial data into the system via the app, shopping at an Amazon or Tesco cashier-less supermarket in the UK is effortless (or so we are informed).

Customers literally walk into these stores, choose what they want from the shelves and walk out. They receive an itemised bill via email shortly thereafter. 

The kind of AI technology used in these stores has leapfrogged the radio frequency ID (RFID) chip that was designed to gradually replace bar codes and scanners. 

RFIDs are still around but the relatively high cost to manufacture them has meant that they can’t be used cost-effectively in commoditised applications – so they have found their way into luggage tags and clothing applications, where the cost can be more easily absorbed.

RFIDs are incredibly useful for high accuracy stock control of high value-added goods. In a single scan, an operator can measure the entire stock each time, every time.  

The learning abilities of AI are astounding, and of course it has many, many benign applications.

However, it is already a concern that whereas some human beings can apply the brakes, make moral judgements and press the panic button when the danger zone is looming, machines may develop their own hostile agendas, and become a real threat.

When that happens, the brilliant humour of the Little Britain computer saying ‘no’ will be replaced by something a lot more menacing.

Combine AI with AS and we are all in big, big trouble.  

Chris Gilmour is an investment analyst and John Fraser is a journalist and broadcaster

By John Fraser

We are back with a hiccough, tasting the Durbanville Hills Collectors Reserve Cape Mist Sauvignon Blanc 2022.

Food and wine legend Michael Olivier introduces the wine to branding expert Jeremy Sampson, economist and entrepreneur Chris Hart, broadcaster Cobus Bester and IT executive Malcolm MacDonald.

There is also an absorbing discussion on transformation in the wine industry, and how to attract more black South Africans to the delights of wine appreciation.

Click below and give it a listen….

Have you got yourself a copy of Michael Olivier’s latest cookbook, which is a wonderful celebration of South African cuisine? If you already have it, buy a few dozen more for all your friends, wives and mistresses.

Like this podcast? Subscribe to ZA Confidential to receive our newsletters.  Twitter:  @zaconfidential  

Do also check out: http://www.michaelolivier.co.za

By John Fraser

We are back with a pop. Popping the cork on a lovely Cape bubbly – so excellent the jealous French won’t let us call it Champagne, so it had to be christened a ‘Cap Classique’.

Food and wine legend Michael Olivier introduces the bubbly to branding expert Jeremy Sampson, economist and entrepreneur Chris Hart, broadcaster Cobus Bester and IT executive Malcolm MacDonald.

The panel chats about the naming of bubbly wines and how to get the consumer to fully appreciate our fine Cape wines.

Meanwhile, do seek out Michael Olivier’s latest cookbook, which is a wonderful celebration of South African cuisine. If you already have one, buy lots more for all your friends.

Like this podcast? Subscribe to ZA Confidential to receive our newsletters.  Twitter:  @zaconfidential  

Do also check out:  http://www.michaelolivier.co.za

By John Fraser

Were we to issue the South African Cabinet with weapons, the fear is that they would all shoot themselves, or each other, in the foot.

While some of the flipping and flopping over policy in Pretoria might seem amusing, it is imperilling foreign direct investment and risking both economic growth and job creation.

We are all painfully aware of the mixed signals that have been sent out over shining the spotlight on corruption in state power utility Eskom.

Ministers’ rhetoric speaks to the need to move on from the lost decade of state capture, but at the same time, we see our Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana, suggesting recently that Eskom (and Transnet) should be exempted from disclosing irregular and fruitless expenditure. This suggestion was later withdrawn when the Minister appeared before angry MPs, but it was subsequently made clear that the intention remains. They are just a bit baffled over how to proceed.  

Meanwhile, in a bid to bring closer focus to the efforts to tackle South Africa’s crippling rolling blackouts, a new minister for electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, was appointed in the latest Cabinet reshuffle.

Instead of enhancing leadership, the appointment has led to a turf war between Ramokgopa and the two cabinet ministers who are also responsible for energy and Eskom, Gwede Mantashe and Pravin Gordhan.

The adage about too many cooks spoiling the broth comes to mind, although to be fair the broth was already pretty rancid before Ramokgopa’s arrival on the scene.

Given the government’s ham-fisted handling of the energy crisis, it is not altogether a surprise that it seems to be messing up a potential investment by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

It has come to light through a parliamentary question that the launch of his SpaceX Starlink satellite internet service in South Africa has been blocked, pending regulatory approvals.

According to DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard, this is because the ANC wants any lucrative internet work to go to its chums, with a demand that 30% of the equity for the SA operation should go to BEE partners. She has warned that because of BEE rules on inward investment, South Africa will be one of the only African countries not to roll out Starlink. 

This empowerment condition is not unusual. Similar requirements are routinely made of investors in SA, but there are always efforts to do a deal, to find a way to get the investment funds to flow.   We need it.

Trade and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel and his predecessors have been open to waiving the local ownership rules, at a price – most notably for investors in the auto industry, which is SA’s largest manufacturing sector.

The car companies got around the BEE rules by agreeing to make equivalent investments in boosting local businesses through a development fund.

It is a tried and tested compromise formula and allows foreign companies which are unwilling to surrender equity in their SA operations to nonetheless still invest here.

It was therefore deeply depressing to read an unpleasantly bureaucratic statement by our unpleasantly bureaucratic Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele.

Instead of joyfully welcoming the prospect of investment by Musk in his ancestral homeland, he brought out the rulebook and projected it at rocket man Musk.

“The Department wishes to place it on record that to operate an electronic communications network such as satellite to offer a service in South Africa, an individual Electronic Communications Network Service (iECNS) license and an individual Electronic Communications Service (iECS) license that are used in conjunction with a Radio Frequency Spectrum license are a requirement. These are obtainable on application from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA). The Minister wishes to state categorically that the custodian of the licensing process is the Authority, (ICASA),” was his department’s unenthusiastic response to the investment. 

That’s it then.   There is a process to be followed.

However, instead of jetting off to Musk’s Texas or Twitter HQ to urge the boykie from Pretoria to bring us jobs and investment, the department chose instinctively to adopt the tone of an irascible schoolmaster.

“Any interested party wishing to apply for a license, including Starlink, may through appropriate channels, approach the Authority with its application and comply with the prevailing legislation in the country,” it announced.

Hold on, though.  The news of Musk’s snub by Pretoria comes in the same month that President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted his fifth investment conference.

His rhetoric, and that of Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel, is so clearly at odds with the bureaucratic hostility of the clumsily communicating communications department.

Were government departments all singing from the same hymn sheet – a Utopian dream, I know – they would take their cue from the President, and rush to facilitate this Starlink deal.  If form filling is required, and there is no suggestion it should be waived, then South African officials should be instructed to assist with the process, not to block it.

If Musk has no pen on him, they should lend him one.  Even let him keep it. 

The Starlink shambles is so unnecessary.

If the President can set and then exceed his five-year target of R1.2 trillion in new investment, he can surely bang a few heads together.

After all, Musk is a leading player in the rollout of electric vehicles, and South Africa is planning to surf this excitingly lucrative technological wave, if Minister Patel ever takes his foot off the policy brake and locates the accelerator.

A son of Africa, and despite some reported misery during his schooldays here, Elon Musk could certainly easily match the over R1.5 trillion raised through Ramaphosa’s investment drive if he were to bring us production of his Tesla vehicles and a few other job-creating investments.  

But he won’t if our government’s addiction to red tape, lack of policy coordination between departments and narrow vision send him on his way.