Shine The Way - the story
One of the greatest challenges in South Africa is to promote equal opportunities to all people. Under apartheid, this was not the case, and even today in many cases it still is unequal. One of the hardest things is access to capital. This means the ability to borrow money to invest in your life. Over the last year, I have learned how difficult it is! For 5 years, I rented a house that I stayed in at first, then Carne moved into when I bought my own house. In 2004, the owners decided to sell it. I thought it was the ideal opportunity to enable my loyal staff to purchase a property and use the skills they have acquired at the Green Elephant to run their own business and work for themselves.This ran for 9 months, but the pressure of being entrepreneurial was a little too much, in addition to fulltime work. As a result, the Green Elephant has taken over the running of the house, but the ownership still belongs to the staff - Pat, Carne and Mavis. In addition, the staff are involved in a profit share scheme at the Green Elephant. As the Cape Town property market has been rising at over 20% per year for the past 2 years, this benefit goes to the staff, who otherwise would have had little formal access to a bank loan.
To achieve this, I negotiated a price with the owner, then set about borrowing money to start the business. We went to the commercial bank Standard Bank, that we have been a loyal customer of for the life of the business. We told them the full story, about this being a deal to promote broad based Black Economic Empowerment. The people we dealt with at Standard Bank were Tracey Dreyer, Wayne and the credit manager Cassiem, Majiet . They insisted that to borrow any money, I had to sign a personal suretyship for the full amount of the property.
"Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:23:47 +0200
Hi Mr Thomson
As per our telephone conversation we are unable to assist with bond finance without your suteyship. We cannot assist with any finance based on other 3 sureties.
Thank you and enjoy your day.
Mazeed Cassiem
Manager, Home Loans Credit
Direct Line +27 21 4012459
Fax Number +27 21 4012460"
This says that the Standard Bank will not lend any money to my staff who have been employed for over 20 years combined at my business, and does not recognise their skills and income as reliable or of any value.
To the rescue!
Steve and Di Thomas from Daytrippers came to the party and agreed to but half the house. This enabled me to lend enough money privately to Carne, Pat and Mavis to purchase 1/8th each, with the remaining 1/8th belonging to me.
The running of Shine The Way now falls under the Green Elephant. It pays a rental to all the owners. Individually, Pat, Mavis and Carne pay me for their personal loans. Over time, as the property value increases, they will have increasing capital. In this way, the sharing of the natural resources of South Africa will hopefully become more widespread and a more equal income across all sectors of society.
To Standard Bank, I can only say that the convenience of banking with you will soon be replaced with the comfort of transferring real benefits to real people without your input at all.