George; Bureauracracy Citichat 3 August 2007

CITICHAT 30/2007 - 3 August 2007



Looking South (East?) and counting the cost of Bureaucracy



Was on a fleeting visit to what I used to call the Southern Cape earlier this week. They tell me that it is now known as ‘East Cape” – whatever!



I spent a very short time, hours only, in both George and Knysna and it is quite some years since I was in that part of the world. Just some quick impressions as that was all I had time for. Firstly the tremendous growth that this part of the country has clearly enjoyed over the past few years is continuing judging by the high level of new development that is visible just everywhere and, secondly, how clean the area and particularly those two towns are.



George has spread over a huge area, driving from Knysna I measured 10 kms from entering the edge of its ‘strip’ retail area to what I used to understand as the beginning of its CBD. A long, low-density retail strip, rather sprawled but very orderly and quite diverse. At the end of this, one turns into the traditional main drag, York Street, which is extremely wide with well tended central flower beds and then deep parking areas on either side before you get to the retail. Doesn’t make for a brilliant pedestrian retail experience but I must say the spaciousness, cleanliness and excellent condition of the public environment made me rather envious. Quite a number of the pavements, and some of the roads, have been and are being resurfaced with a lovely red paving brick and add to the upbeat feel of the public space. On the downside, I had a brief chat to a councillor and gathered that drugs and particularly ‘tik’ are a major and growing concern.



The N2 between George and Knysna has been dramatically improved since I was there last and one can really enjoy easy driving through continuously magnificent scenery – spoiled only by the some lousy architecture in the widely scattered residential, primarily ‘holiday’, areas along the way.



Knysna, on the other hand has high density retail on both sides of its main street and, whilst being more easily walkable than George, clearly lacks the latter’s countrified charm and spaciousness. Lots of visitors - even at this time of the year - making full use of the many touristy shops and pavement cafes. Driving through the main street is awful, very congested – even at this time of the year - with little on-street parking. The planners appear to have chosen to rather put their parking areas behind the main retail street but these are quite difficult to find if you don’t know that they are there. I understand that the Knysna municipality are looked on as being one of the most enterprising municipalities around the country, for example they are already providing free broad-band access to their citizens with a growing number of ‘hot spots’ being positioned throughout the town whilst most other Councils are still talking about this amenity. Was interested to see that they are also repaving a main street square which I remember previously as catering for informal traders, badly housed and mostly selling tourist goods. It will be interesting to see how they intend to accommodate them in the future. Incidentally, the prices of housing appears prohibitive!



I visited the Knysna Municipal offices to ask for some literature on the town, as I couldn’t find a town website - not tourist info which the web is full of, but covering issues such as population, economy, growth, future plans, etc. I was told, rather uncertainly but very nicely and politely, that they would have to see what they had and would e-mail me the info. Haven’t received yet, maybe they don’t have access to their wireless facility! I did the same in George – although they did have a website it doesn’t have the info I wanted. As I wasn’t sure where the municipal offices were, I stopped in at the George Tourism Bureau, well accommodated in a historic building. They didn’t have that kind of info either, understandably I guess, so I was directed to the Municipal offices some blocks away, whose officials were also extremely nice and polite but re-directed me back to the Tourism centre. I didn’t have the time or the inclination at that stage to go back again but it made me aware of how totally centred such towns appear to be on tourism with, evidently, little thought to broader economic sustainability.



Which brings me to the issue of our burgeoning bureaucracy



Last year I was invited to the launch of a research report focused on ‘ counting the cost of red tape’ in the tourism industry, pretty staggering figures too. Well, we have recently been making a lot of submissions in response to public invitations to be ‘accredited’ on various panels as potential service providers. In the construction industry this would be akin to pre-qualifying before you are allowed to tender for or be appointed on a specific contract. All well and good, but I would love to know what the cost to the country is for this bureaucratic excess. You have to make separate applications to different departments of national and provincial government but, worse, you have to do the same to every municipality and, in the case of Johannesburg, separately to its different departments and municipal entities – annually or biennually.



Why there cannot be a Johannesburg central register of service providers that you are required to update annually I just don’t understand. It takes many man-hours to complete each submission and for each of these you have to provide various original documents or sworn copies of originals. Each basic document is different in order to cater for the idiosyncrasies of each department or municipal entity even though they are for the same municipality. On more than one occasion in the past two years we have been advised that our applications were lost (with all their original supplements) and that we had to re-apply!



With respect, the information that is requested to accompany the documentation is often in relation to processes that have been long abandoned such as Regional Services Council levies, or are no longer possible to obtain. For instance SARS, intelligently, no longer provides separate documents for “good standing” and ”tax clearance” and “VAT” and “PAYE” and “UIF” etc etc etc but provides one document that covers all of these issues. But application documents still request these individually. Someone is just too lazy to update their own documentation.



Some of the questions asked are quite inane, extremely badly worded and don’t apply to pre-qualification where there is no specific contract in view: “what would you ensure effective Project Management of assignments for XXXX?” or “what is the distance from the candidate organisation’s office to the relevant (Your Organisation Name) offices?” “Would the awarding of the contract result in your having to employ additional people and if so how many additional people would you require?” “Give a breakdown of the race and gender of these people” “Appointment of a new boarder (sic) panel of professional service providers….”



Then, irrespective of the fact that new BEE codes were promulgated on the 9th February this year and have force of law providing a single standard for measuring BEE contribution levels of all enterprises, everyone does there own thing. The new legislation provides a level of protection for small organisations like ours that have a turnover of R5 million or less. We are awarded an automatic BEE level ‘Four’ status regardless, which we can then improve further through black equity. This is a protection for micro businesses the lack of which previously has resulted in many old established firms having to shut down simply because they had a single ‘white’ proprietor. At least there is now protection for small traditional ‘one- or two-man bands’ who have a low annual turnover, and probably use more black students or graduates part time providing them with more essential training and experience than many bigger companies .



Yet, national and local government departments make no reference in their documents to the legislated BEE status rather falling back on the 80/20 or 90/10 preference points system to be applied for adjudication This latter means that 90 points are allocated for price, 6 points for use of historically disadvantaged individuals (no franchise in national elections before the 1983 and 1993 Constitutions) and the remaining 4 points for females. That preference system is also in use currently by a number of Council departments and municipal entities. But not all! One Johannesburg entity advises that it will evaluate applications 50% as to track record, prior experience and price and 50% as to black economic empowerment, skills development, social investment and procurement. This appears to be clear discrimination that does not take into account the law of the land nor micro businesses.



It’s about time that we had a similar investigation to the “counting the cost of red tape” but this time into the cost, efficiency and discriminatory practices of the procurement processes of municipalities and other public sector bodies!



Enjoy the beautiful winter weekend, ciao, neil