Archive for the ‘South Africa’ Category
by Amanda on May 23rd, 2013
Chapter 7 of Everyone’s Guide to the Consumer Protection Act by Clive Gibson and Geoff Hulllooks at “The Right to Fair and Responsible Marketing” as laid out in Sections 29 to 39 of the Act.
Read the excerpt which addresses issues such as negative option marketing and bait marketing:
To restrain or correct the worst abuses in the area of the marketing of goods or services, the Act introduces or re-enacts a number of provisions to address the following matters.
The Act sets out standards for fair and responsible marketing and provides a general prohibition against marketing that is misleading, fraudulent or deceptive, as described in section 29.
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by Amanda on May 22nd, 2013
Neil Flanagan and Jarvis Finger, authors of Just About Everything a Manager Needs to Know in South Africa have made available a free electronic resource titled “How to prepare yourself for your performance appraisal” on Rubicor. They cover points such as: becoming a participant rather than a target, talking to others about their interviews, being prepared to assert your position and getting your documentation right.
It’s hard to like performance appraisals, whether they’re the traditional type or the 360° version. At one extreme, they’re an annual ritual at which bosses or their nominees list a litany of your flaws and then send you away to reduce or eliminate them. At the other extreme, however, they’re a wonderful opportunity to discuss openly your job performance with your boss. If you show some initiative, you’ll get a great deal from an appraisal interview, as the following points reveal…
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by Amanda on May 21st, 2013
In the following extract from Gert J Scholtz’s The Keys to Persuasion, the author discusses the “cat system”. This persuasion system is based on the author’s house cat, which he calls a “persuasion master”. Scholtz’s The Keys to Persuasion provides you with the tools to also become an expert at persuasion.
Meet a persuasion master: our house cat. Every evening, as I sit down at my computer, he jumps onto the desk and starts nudging me – softly at first, but more insistently after a while. The reason? He wants to lie on my chair. After some more caressing and nudging, he jumps behind my back and wriggles his way between me and the chair. On a cold winter’s evening, the warm cat at my back feels cosy and, after I have adjusted my seating, I let the cat be. He succeeds in claiming his position on the chair every time. How does he do this?
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by Amanda on May 16th, 2013
In Angels of Mercy, Chris Schoeman quotes from the diaries of various women who came to South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War to help out as nurses, teachers or simply in search of adventure.
Zebra Press has shared a few extracts from the book, starting with descriptions of conditions at the hospitals and going on to describe the schools organised for children in the concentration camps.
From the diary of Elin Lindblom, a Scandinavian nurse, Schoeman relates the story of an exceptionally tall Boer who was shot through the head and delirious. “We succeeded in nursing him through, thanks partly to our able doctors, partly to our vigilance. That we could cure Christian (as was his christian name) gave us a reputation among the Boers that ‘when they came to us they would be well again’,” she writes.
Among others, Schoeman also writes about Alice Bron, who came to South Africa with strong pro-Boer feelings, but left disillusioned, and Mary Kingsley, who visited Rudyard Kipling at his home in Wynberg.
‘The weather was now very cold at night, the frost being thick both inside and out of our single bell tents – the patients, being in double marquees, did not feel the cold so much. We were scarce of water, and lived on rations, which an orderly cooked for us on a fire on the veldt, dinner being a movable and uncertain feast on a rainy day. Around our camp, within fifty yards, were several six-inch guns, while we had prepared in a donga a place of safety for helpless patients and a bomb-proof shelter for all the hospital staff in case of attack, which for some time threatened us daily. Hanging in our mess was a copy of orders to be observed when attacked, etc. Several mornings we wakened to hear the boom of guns, which, however, were never near enough to necessitate our using the shelter.’ ~ Georgina Pope, Canada
Named after the strong-flowing Hex River, Sterkstroom lies in a valley, with the Stormberg and Bamboesberg forming an amphitheatre. Nearby is a wide expanse of rolling grassland, with rocky kopjes on all sides, where the wind blows fiercely, and lightning and severe thunderstorms frighten strangers. Nights are bitterly cold, mornings are frosty, and summer days are unbearably hot. It was in this inhospitable place, at the Stationary Hospital, that Nellie Gould and the other sisters prepared to nurse Gatacre’s sick and wounded soldiers. It was the beginning of a period in which Nellie and her team set about transforming decrepit buildings into hospitals, and raising the level of patient care; supplies were often limited, and food and water were in short supply. The team was fully committed to its task, however, and the women tirelessly scrubbed and cleaned sick tents, frequently using their own clothing as covering for the sick. At one point, Nellie was in charge of the entire Orange River district, which stretched far beyond Sterkstroom.
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by Amanda on May 15th, 2013
Neil Flanagan and Jarvis Finger, the authors of Just About Everything a Manager Needs to Know in South Africa, have penned a short guide, How to Deal with Dishonest Staff, for the “e-Books for Managers” series.
Flanagan and Finger explain the legal procedures for dismissing an employee who has been dishonest and offer tips on handling the situation:
Once upon a time, if an employee was caught stealing in the workplace, instant dismissal would follow. Staff members caught red handed were found to have breached their duty of good faith to the employer; termination of service was an expected outcome. But these days, industrial legislation can protect even dishonest employees. Employers must, therefore, tread carefully when dealing with such staff members…
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by Amanda on May 14th, 2013
On her 567 Cape Talk show, Jenny Crwys-Williams chatted to Julian Rademeyer about his new venture as the Southern African editor for Africa Check. They also discussed how his book, Killing for Profit, has been doing and Crwys-Williams mentioned how topical the book is, as there are still rhino poaching stories in the news every day.
Rademeyer explained that Africa Check is a fact checking website, modeled on international examples, which looks at statements from public figures, as well as news stories, and determines the veracity thereof. He pointed out that they are not a media watch dog, but said that journalists are having to take on more and more work as newsrooms cut back, which may affect their fact checking abilities.
Listen to the podcast:
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by Amanda on May 13th, 2013
Andrew Rugasira wrote A Good African Story, “because African businesses are rarely written about…Without the experiences of these businesses being recorded, we lose the intellectual capital that feeds the juices of the next generation of entrepreneurs and spurs them on.”
Reconnect Africa attended the launch of the book at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies earlier this year, where Rugasira explained why he wrote it and said that he is “very optimistic about Africa. We need to challenge the issues of the decision makers head on; equip people with the data to argue and we have just got to keep going.”
The Ugandan founder of Good African Coffee, Andrew Rugasira, has launched a new book that shares his personal experiences as an African entrepreneur
Since its founding in 2003, Good African Coffee has helped thousands of farmers earn a decent living, send their children to school and escape a spiral of debt and dependence.
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by Amanda on May 10th, 2013
Bertus Preller, family and divorce law attorney and author of Everyone’s Guide to Divorce and Separation, has written about the number of complaints lodged against the South African Police Force for failing to comply with the Domestic Violence Act.
Preller discusses the findings of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, which discovered “that there were a lack of understanding of the Act and that record keeping was a concern.”
Police stations in South Africa struggle to deal with domestic violence complaints and some of the main reasons are that police officers do not understand the Domestic Violence Act (the “Act”) and the law and are failing to cope with the paperwork according to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. This article is not intended to criticise the Police force as a whole, but the data collected and alluded to below surely raises eyebrows.
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by Amanda on May 9th, 2013
Darrel Bristow-Bovey’s latest column for Random House Struik, “In praise of Sea Point”:
In Paris recently I became depressed by the thought that I don’t live in a first-floor apartment on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, across the way from a Tibetan restaurant, around the corner from the Pantheon, rue Soufflot and the eastern entrance to the Luxembourg Gardens.
‘You’re being childish,’ my partner said.
‘I know.’
‘Is it so bad where you live?’
‘No.’
‘You love Sea Point.’
I do love Sea Point. I have lived there for a little over four years, since I moved from Johannesburg. I loved Johannesburg, but I love Sea Point more. It has people and stories and life, and gratifyingly few Capetonians. It is the Joburg of Cape Town.
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by Amanda on May 8th, 2013
Summit Business spoke to Andrew Rugasira, author of A Good African Story, about the business lessons he has learnt along the way.
Rugasira named perserverance and tenacity as the two key qualities that entprereneurs need to have when starting out. He also highlighted the importance of hitting bumps along the way, as he says that “the bumps give you life lessons to be able to sustain your business once it makes it to the top.”
Good African Coffee is the first African company to export and sell coffee in some of the leading supermarkets in South Africa, UK and US. It has been a journey of persistent and hard work. Through disappointment and frustrations from retailers, friends and banks, Rugasira never gave up.
What started as a small company in 2004 has emerged into a global coffee brand sold in leading supermarkets across the globe. And as he says, this is just the beginning. Below is an exclusive interview with Andrew on the lessons of doing good business.
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