People doing what they are passionate about

Now that we have a fortnight's break from Parliament, this week I have filled my diary with meetings with all sorts of people, all one way or another connected to small business development and entrepreneurship. It started on Saturday at the Soweto Arts & Crafts Fair and Sunday at the showing of the Step up 2 a Start Up film at Eastgate. Yesterday I met Pierre van den Hoven who told me about his just-launched mobile video app, Tuluntulu, which is at the cusp of a revolution in they way we watch TV. Today I was introduced to three completely different enterprises, run by tight-knit teams of dedicated and passionate people who care deeply for South Africa and have chosen their own ways of making a difference.

First up was The Living Link, which calls itself a Centre for Intellectually Impaired Adults. Founded in Parkhurst, Johannesburg in 2000 by Julia and Ingrid, sister and mother to Nadine who was intellectually impaired, its mission is creating abilities from disabilities.

I had not encountered the term intellectually impaired before and asked them to explain it to me. By their definition it does not describe someone with a mental illness that can be treated with therapy or medication, but someone with an IQ of around 75 or below. On doing some Googling I came across the WiseGeek site which has a useful description not far off theirs. Some definitions include cerebral palsy and other birth defects but the consequences of the impairment are all related to a reduced ability to live a normal life. Their website says in South Africa there are 2,5 million intellectually impaired people.

Now run by Stanley Bawden and colleagues Lisa, Claire, Helen and others, it has close to 500 people registered with the centre. Its main function is to prepare them for the world of work, through training in life skills and occupations such as gardening, reception, hosting and many more requiring a basic mental capacity. It then places them in jobs, negotiates their employment contract and provides ongoing support and advice.

The training is not cheap, coming in at around R45 000 for a year, so they rely quite heavily on sponsorship. They are a registered NPO so have received Lotto money and donations from various corporates' employment equity funds.

In addition they provide rented accommodation to around 20 residents who cannot find a home with their family or friends.

The centre is situated in a collection of buildings erected after World War II for returning soldiers with epilepsy They took me on a tour and it is immaculately maintained, what they call a village but more like a hamlet perhaps. There are training rooms, a functional kitchen and dining room where they train the residents and trainees cookery and basic etiquette.

I was put in touch with them by our local councillor Tim Truluck (I live in the neighbourhood) who thought there might be some value to be found in a mutual connection. Indeed, they are keen to try and place their trainees with small businesses because one feature of the intellectually impaired is that they are mostly happy to do routine and fairly rudimentary jobs which many small businesses offer, such as parking, gardening, hosting etc. I will see what I can do to help.

Next stop was Hyde Park where I met Bridget Fury, Director, and Lisa van Eck of Aspen Network & Development Entrepreneurs, ANDE. ANDE, from its website, is a global network of organisations that propel entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Bridget, who has worked in business development for many years, was appointed Director in April 2014 and is now establishing a membership base to mirror its 200 members active in over 150 countries.

ANDE focuses on small and growing businesses (SGBs) "based on its conviction that SGBs will create jobs, stimulate long-term economic growth, and produce environmental and social benefits."

South Africa has a very poorly developed and fragmented entrepreneurial ecosystem and one of ANDE's aims is to be a catalyst in its creation. We discussed the potential role of the new Department of Small Business Development and they share my view that unless it interprets its mandate to include advocacy for liberating the economy through labour, tax and industrial policy reform it will remain on the margins and fail to make a significant impact on economic growth and job creation.

We must hope that it will use its brief to not only support micro and survivalist enterprises, who have been shown to have limited ability to create jobs at scale, but also high impact SMEs, which ANDE and other practitioners in the field believe are the real engines of economic growth.

I hope I will be able to persuade the Portfolio Committee on SBD to invite them to present their vision to us during the workshop promised soon, where we will help the Department refine its mission and objectives.

Finally, I visited the Builders Training Centre in Soweto. I was referred to them by Andreas Künne, Minister of Economic and Global Issues at the German embassy whom I met in Parliament in July. The centre was formed by the German-South Africa Chamber of Commerce over twenty years ago, with the aim of training builders, plumbers and other tradesmen and women using techniques perfected in Germany over many decades.

This and  its other campus in Braamfontein that focuses on commercial training is run by the very bright and enterprising Bandile Gwebu, who started his career in investment banking but was drawn to the world of development and has found his niche here. The Soweto campus is managed by Simon Mohale, who has worked here since its inception and expressed his love for his job. It operates as a non-profit but is self-sustaining using funds from the skills levy administered by the Construction Seta as well as fees from self-employed builders wanting to improve their skills.

Bandile and Simon both have a global outlook, with work experience in the UK, Japan and Germany giving them a much wider perspective than the vast majority of South Africans. Simon has a jaundiced view of people who call themselves entrepreneurs, most of whom he says think it involves sitting in a comfy office bossing their employees around. His mission (like the Living Link) is to train people for the world of work where there are conventions, rules and responsibilities, not the easy street that many young people seem to think running a business or holding down a job is all about.

They say workplaces need to become training centres so the millions of unemployed, mostly young people who have never had a job, can learn what having is job means. The German system, which prepares future tradespeople by combining the classroom with three years of work placement, is much more effective than what we have here, with struggling FET colleges and under-funded universities producing too many graduates ill-prepared for the job market.

They have interacted with Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande but have not seen any sign of an understanding of what the sector needs to propel skills development in South Africa. I met Blade for the first time in the bar in Parliament last week. He's a jovial fellow, when he's not slinging rocks at the "neo-liberal" DA or "fascist" EFF. Perhaps the next time I see him I'll suggest that Germany has moved on, and its liberal-democracy has proven the most successful in Europe when it comes to producing an educated and productive workforce.