By Debra Basson*
We all have dreams, actually daily. We have them so often that we don’t even give them the place they deserve in our lives, until of course they disrupt them. The nightmare or the delightful ones. I believe we like to hold onto the ones according to the level of our optimism or pessimism. With that in mind I must be pretty optimistic since I usually wake myself up with raucous laughter. My dreams seem to get more comical the older I get.
In 2017 I would like to see SA back to its former glory, the African country that was foremost on people’s lips when talking of Africa as a continent that was achieving and developing. Not where we are now, shamed and disgraced and with a credit rating akin to someone trying to get an unsecured micro loan because regular banks aren’t interested.
I would like to see political parties looking after its voters instead of putting all their energy into fighting No 1 and coming off in 10th spot with no man’s land in the middle.
I would like to see a united SA instead of one where the people are polluted by forces outside of themselves and fighting causes that they don’t really understand. These things make them lose focus on their own lives and rob them of their own dreams and create lost opportunities.
Finally I would like to see Govt actually helping small business, mentorship programmes and structured access to funding for all sectors across all groups. Banks should get out of the small business arena and stop competing with small business and then promoting that they are there to help them. Banks cannot offer technology products, accounting software, registration of companies etc. they are taking away from small business that offer these services and they have the muscle and means to capture the market that the small guy can’t.
If we want SA to be great again we have to unite, politically, in business and when we interact with each other socially, that is my dream. SA lets practice Ubuntu in 2017, let’s be our brother’s keeper.
- Debra Basson runs a taxation practice specializing in assisting non compliant individuals and companies obtain compliance. In this process they ensure tax efficiency and attempt to enhance company bottom lines by introducing systems and processes that improve business workflow. They only operate in the small business sector.
