Jan Hugo: Welcome to the Relocated South African, the show for navigating immigration from South Africa. I’m your host, Jan Hugo, from Lagos, Portugal. Today, I’m very privileged to welcome a special guest to our show. He’s a well-known South African entrepreneur, businessman, and one of the founders of Rand Merchant Bank, and may I say my former boss, welcome Paul Harris.
Paul Harris: Thanks, Jan. Pleasure to be here.
Jan Hugo: Paul, this has been some week in South Africa with a White House meeting, making headlines all over the world, putting South Africa in the spotlight. In my opinion, social media has been ridiculous on its focus on what happened and what’s happening in South Africa. Despite all this, you’ve always maintained that the grass is not always greener. What keeps you so positive about South Africa?
Paul Harris: Jan, okay, I did make a few notes, but maybe I should just quickly go through them. Absolutely. I’m a bit of a history buff, so I like to just go back and I’ve often asked myself, what did South Africans face at various stages of our lives? I won’t go back as far as when my ancestor arrived here and I’ve got lots of ancestors. In fact, my ancestors date back in South Africa to a period where California and Texas still belonged to Mexico. And so that was my father’s side came in 1840, 50, my mother goes back even further than that. So I’m a proper South African, a more South African than any Australian is Australian and any American is an American.
Okay, so I’ll go back and I just think about the generations that I, at my old age now, have come across. There’s my grandfather and the Boer War. I just remember in the Boer War, the Afrikaans speaking South Africans, they actually had absolutely nothing. Their farms were burnt down, their children were put in concentration camps. I mean, they had serious bloody issues in there and they survived and they came through.
Then you had the First World War. My grandfather went to the war, came back, he was badly gassed. In the school that I went to, Maritzburg College, 97 kids were killed. Now you just think that there were probably only about 100 kids in the school and 97 were killed in the war. So that was serious bloody issues that they dealt with. They dealt with it through the depression.
The Second World War, my father, 1940-ish around there, our school lost 125 people. And imagine being in that situation in this country. I mean, it was, we really had problems. And then of course you had apartheid. 1976, we had riots. You know, kids were burning schools down rightfully so. They had obviously serious issues that they were dealing with, and the kids actually rioted. In 1986, around about there, we had death, standstill, where we weren’t allowed as banks and so on. And that’s when I first started. All the debt was frozen. I mean, the prospects of even surviving economically were absolutely down. And after all these points that I make every year, we’ve survived and we’ve come through.
Then in the transition, 94 to 95, Blanche was going mad. They actually drove into the trade center in Kempton and there were serious problems. Then Mandela came into power. I thought for the first time we had a chance of, instead of breaking down the country, we could start building up. If you go back to Mandela’s speeches, he said that we have to march on into Pretoria and take over the heights of the economy. That was proper stuff. We survived that. We survived the dot-com crash.
Then the crisis in 2007, financial crisis. We were gone. One day I woke up and I was running first-hand. And our market cap was greater than Citibank and Morgan Stanley. And I’m not saying that that’s good. I’m just saying that how desperate that was. I mean, there was no ways that we were better than them. But, you know, and I just sort of thought that, you know, something is going to go wrong. We’re going to go down to, we’re going to get wiped out. We survived.
Then Zuma arrived and things were going well. Then Zuma arrived and he stole the future of a lot of South Africans in 2009. And we had the lost 10 years and we survived. And we’ve always had crime. I don’t know if you remember that our sort of was the driver of a crime campaign, I think, 2003, where we at FNB after David Ratway was murdered. I started a campaign that we had to write a letter to Toby and Becky about making crime the highest priority. And we had like a million letters, and I got called to Umbaki’s office to say that, did I have political aspirations and so on? And I said, no, I just want you to prioritise crime.
Jan Hugo: What was that at the time when Mkhwanazi became the head of police? Soon after that, yeah.
Paul Harris: Okay, okay, I remember that. And then of course, Zuma got taken out and lost power and then Ramaphosa came in and Ramaphosa started off very well and he’s been a huge disappointment, you know, basically because he never makes a decision.
So we get to this point and we’ve survived all that. And guess what? We love this country. We live in the greatest country in the world. We’ve had shit, but we’ve survived it. We find a way to, in a large extent, we live in our bubbles. But sadly, we don’t share the bubbles. I don’t feel any guilt about that because we make contributions to the country. We pay our taxes. We’re philanthropists and so on. So we have a great time. So that is the way that I see it. We’ve had much, much worse, situations and what we’ve got now. And I think that from here we’ll continue to end up performing, but I think we’re going to still continue to have a great time in South Africa with huge opportunities.
Jan Hugo: No, I think that’s fantastic and I think it’s time that we get that message across. One of my feelings on this is that the media is so focused and the social media and all these podcasts and so on are so focused on the negative side of South Africa because that’s what sells. You know, if you go to Tucker Carlson and all the big podcasters, they have gazillions of followers, so to get onto those podcasts and tell a bad story, that’s what sells. And I think somebody’s got to actually stand up and say, listen, but it’s not that bad. And I know it’s rich coming from me sitting in Portugal, but I honestly do believe that we have a responsibility to the country to get a positive message out.
Paul Harris: Jan, can I just add that, if you want bad news about South Africa, I suggest you go to places like St. Args, you go to Dallas, you go to parts of the States, you go to London, you go to those cold and wet places and to a run-down and that sort of place. Then you get all this shit. I mean, these guys sent me, if there’s a bad article or bad podcast about South Africa, I get it. But I don’t get it from people in South Africa, by the way.
Jan Hugo: No, I think that’s, I mean, you made the point in your article that diaspora, the people that leave are often the ones that spread the worst message. And isn’t that in a way because people like to justify their decisions. So if there’s shit happening, then they’re going to say, oh, you see, I made the right call. They don’t want good news.
Paul Harris: Yeah, look, I think there’s obviously something like that. I think it’s maybe being a bit unkind unto people, but I don’t know if people have given up praying and they’ve given up sort of the culture of South Africa and they’ve adopted another culture and then, you know, then that’s fine. But I think if you really miss it and so on, I think it’s a bit sad to be quite frank.
You know, I emigrated and it took whichever way you look at it, it takes five years out of your life. Absolutely. You know, it becomes before you go, it’s the biggest subject of any conversation you have with any friends. That’s all you talk about when you get there. It’s a big complication about where do you live and who do you make friends with and what sort of home are you going to get and and blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, you keep going back and phoning your friends and coming back for holidays and so on. It’s a very disruptive thing to do. And I suppose once you’ve done it, it’s fine. And I did it. And I don’t regret having done it. I think I had a fantastic experience. I made some great friends and so on. But I don’t think people should underrate how disruptive it is to one’s life to actually emigrate.
Jan Hugo: I can attest to that on this podcast. I’ve now spoken to a lot of people everywhere, Ireland, Spain, Dubai, Australia, everywhere. And it’s a massively disruptive process and people miss South Africa. I was actually talking to some English people I played golf with this morning and I said the same thing. Immigration for them to come and live in Portugal from London is nothing because they actually is like moving from Joburg to Cape Town. You can always go back, whereas for South Africans, it’s a massive decision.
And for younger people, you know, you talk about taking time out. It’s also financially, it’s a hell of a disruptive process. And that’s why I often think that the decision to leave is based on bad news. Very often, you know, it’s a crime, an invasion or whatever. And people focus on that. And they say, now I’m buggering off. The counter is that the push is sometimes very hard, but you don’t realise what you’re getting into.
Last week, I was talking to a family in Holland, and they’ve got a fantastic job opportunity. They just can’t live there. They don’t want to be there. And I think they’ll go back. And that, I think, is a thing. It’s a big decision. And this is the problem is, I don’t think there’s enough of a positive message about why it is still a good idea to stay in South Africa.
Paul Harris: Jan, you’re talking to somebody that has done it. And I’ll tell you, I haven’t regretted it for a nanosecond. And this is a little bit cheesy, but I often talk about using the analogy of an animal. If you were an impala, where would you want to live? Would you live in the wilderness or would you live in a zoo? And I’ll give you the upside of a zoo. You’re going to get fed every day. It’s going to be warm. It’s never going to be too cold. Who knows? They may even bring in a little lady, a male impala, depending on who you are. And so all your needs will be sorted and you’ll probably live a little bit longer versus living in the wilderness, where you hear the dawn chorus and you’re wild and you wake up in the morning and there’s thunderstorms and it’s cold sometimes and it’s too hot and other times. And by the way, if you break a leg and you’re in the zoo, they’ll put a little plaster on you and you’ll probably survive. You definitely won’t in the wilderness. So that’s it. I say you can choose. What do you want to be in the wilderness? What do you want to be in a zoo? And I’m not saying a zoo in a negative way. I’m just saying in a safe place. And I think I’ll go for that. And sometimes I say that the life expectancy of somebody like me, outside of South Africa, 73.73 years and four months. I can’t pass that now. But for South Africa, it’s 74 and two months. And I tell you, for those two months, I’ll take what I’ve got.
Jan Hugo: I hear you. I think one of the points you made in your article is that you said the standard deviation of our emotions. I said that you’re never just a little bit happy or a little bit sad. And I think that’s what often happens when you do emigrate is that you get into a boring situation. Yes, it’s safe and everything works and you’ve got electricity and so forth. But you never have that feeling of total elation, of total ‘hutsfull’ that you have in South Africa.
Paul Harris: I think I was saying that article, which was written about 12 years ago, by the way. I just say that my daughter runs an NGO that teaches young kids to read. 220,000 kids online reading. She’s got 20,000 computers in various schools around the country. She employs 800 people. She doesn’t take a cent out of it herself. And you go, I’ll take you to one of those schools in the townships. And these little kids with their bright eyes, they get onto those computers. You cannot believe how enthused they are inside. I mean, any guy that doesn’t walk out of there with a lump in their throat and a tear in their eye and just feel unbelievably alive that you can make a contribution like this. I think that that’s all part of it. You can make a contribution and it’s off a very low base.
So a very small thing, you know, a very small, I mean Francois Pina has got a thing called MAD which make a difference foundation. He’s raised a lot of money in that and he puts promising kids out and he puts them through university and he’s had kids that have got through Harvard and that have got through Oxford and I mean you see those kids and you just talk to them and see what they’ve achieved and so on. I mean there’s nothing that can replace that for me. There’s the ability to or an environment where you can actually make a huge difference and and I think people sit around and they pitch and complain and you know forget about that, get on with it, go and do something, go and join an NGO and and you cannot believe the NGOs that we’ve got and the people that do it.
And I’m not saying for one moment that they aren’t massive frustrations. They’re frustrations. I mean, even my daughter now, her frustrations with the government and dealing with bureaucracy and all that. But that’s all part of it. You know, to achieve something, I always say for entrepreneurs, to achieve something at some stage, you must sort of crawl over broken glass, you know, and that’s what happens. But when you get there and when you achieve something and when you see the difference you can make, I mean, it is so incredibly uplifting and you feel good about it. That’s a little bit personal philosophies.
Jan Hugo: No, no, but I think that’s fantastic because that kind of news never gets onto Facebook or the social media platform.
Paul Harris: No, Jesus. I mean, I was looking the other day at the bots that they’ve got. You know, they’re factories. These bots are factories. They’re people that sit in rooms with multiple computers and they generate negative news or positive news or news to support whatever they’re trying to support, whether it’s an election in America or an election somewhere else or whatever it is. And they hear, they do that. So if there’s one little bit of bad news about South Africa, guaranteed it’ll be amplified to the maximum. And I’m not saying that there isn’t bad news. Of course there is. Is crime bad? Of course it’s bad. Of course it’s bad.
But that doesn’t overwhelm. People that have emigrated haven’t. I always suggest that there were always ways that they could have dealt with the crime situation here. Because what has happened is that the resourcefulness of South Africans, okay, South Africans with means, they’ve sorted themselves out. You’ve got private security, you’ve got private schools, you’ve got private medical, we’ve sorted ourselves out. Now, all of those things are under threat, but they’ve always been under threat. It’s always been under threat. The conversations we have about the shit that South Africa is in, are the same conversations I used to have when I was at university, exactly the same. Guys, we’ve only got five years. We’re going to go one way. We’re in a crisis situation in the country. We’ve always been like that.
I find that those sort of crises, it’s quite sort of, you’re alive, you wake up and you’ve got some challenges out there, but you know, if you put your head down and you do something about it and you stop whinging, it’s going to be so fulfilling and exciting.
Jan Hugo: Oh yeah, a question just in terms of, you know, in your businesses, like Rain and the banks and so on, you obviously deal with a lot of young people and, you know, a lot of those people aren’t necessarily white people. And I just get the sense, you know, that unfortunately there are politicians, a world without politicians would have been a better place. What’s your sense generally of young people in South Africa? A positive?
Paul Harris: The size of the middle class, the black middle class, is about double the white population in South Africa now. It’s about that. So a lot of the young people coming through are obviously black guys. And I’ve just, you know, I try not to distinguish between one or the other one, but we have got fantastic youngsters of all races that work for us. And it just happens to be that most of them are black, basically because there are more black middle class people than white middle class people. They are fantastic. The last thing they’re going to talk about is all this politics and how negative it is. These guys want to get on with it. They want to get a mortgage. They want to buy a house. That’s what people do.
I tell you, the young white guys, they obviously don’t have the same opportunities as the young black guys, basically because of some of the… But they’re resourceful. I mean, I live now in Stellenbosch. I’ve got an office in Stellenbosch and we’ve got people, youngsters that have started their own businesses. You cannot believe the quality of these businesses. And a lot of them work remotely. A lot of them have got businesses in other countries. I mean, I’ve had lunch with a guy whose business works in Saudi Arabia and it works in the Middle East and it works in Australia. I’ve got another guy that’s also associated with us. They’ve got a bicycle insurance company that’s international, you know, these flight scope golfing apps, which is very hard tech stuff that tracks the golf ball and the cricket ball and all that type of thing. That’s also the epic in this next next door. So these amazing businesses and and very often as young white guys that are incredibly talented that struggle to get jobs in traditional companies, certainly not in the government. What do they do? They survive and they find a way and they start a business. Unfortunately, it’s going to increase the difference between, between them is going to increase the inequality in a sense. But they are amazing. And you know, a hell of a lot of them. I mean, my son was and daughter were overseas for five, six years. Both of them came back and they here in Stellenbosch, they could have a party sort of a 40 or something like that. And they could invite 50 couples. People that are in there in their group, you know, and so half of them have spent time overseas and they and so they’re very sort of worldly. Youngsters and they out of they hear out of choice and so I think you’ll find a lot of young guys are coming here.
You know, I also say that things are definitely tough around the world. I mean, if you can’t find something, if you can’t find it here in South Africa opportunity, then you’re going to struggle to find it somewhere else. Maybe the competition is a little bit tougher out there. So it’s not as if, you hear and you sort of can’t quite crack it and you go overseas and you’re suddenly going to make it. You’re probably also going to have to be in an hour’s bloody commute on a train and wake up in the middle of the night and all that type of thing. So that’s alternative for these guys.
Jan Hugo: No, absolutely. And the guys are, you know, other than maybe Australia, but people are battling to cope with the weather. For instance, the South Africans are used to braaing every day. When they want to braai, they braai. Our kids in Ireland braai under an umbrella, but they braai. But that’s the reality. I think the other thing that I’ve also found in these discussions is that the South Africans hang together. We understand each other’s jokes. We understand what life is about these. The foreigners have no idea. When you talk about South Africa and what life is like there and how we joke with each other, you know, they look at you like you from some other planet, but that’s just the way it is.
And I think an interesting thing that you said about how many young people, funnily enough, yesterday afternoon, we were at lunch and the restaurateur said, oh, that guy’s from South Africa, so we went over and chatted to them. And their kids live in Cape Town, you know, and they said their kids are going nowhere, even though they’re living in Portugal. They just said, we’re not going anywhere. That’s where the kids are and that’s what they want to do. So I think that the difficulty sometimes is when people are saying, okay, we’re doing this for our children. So young people with young children, they say, we want to leave because there’s no opportunities and BEE and that. What does one say to them? What’s the message to those guys?
Paul Harris: Well, I think the first thing is to be careful that you go and then they come back. I mean, I know a lot of people that are in that situation. But, you know, opportunities, okay, let’s say, let’s try and use an analogy of, let’s say, a sporting team, a rugby team. Okay. If you, a young rugby player, and you want to go to an off the court school, let’s say Paul Reuss, you have to be damn good to get into the first team. But if you go to sort of a lesser rugby school, it’s a bit easier to get into the first team. So now, how does that relate to advising somebody? And I think that if you can make it overseas, then you can make it in South Africa. I think that’s what I say. If you’re not going to make it in South Africa, you’re going to struggle overseas. I mean, generally. So I would say tough it out.
I’ll call the emigration thing as a worm that comes and eats away to your psyche. And you’re forever talking about it and you’re wondering where you should be living and all that. Once you just decide that that’s over with, then get on with it. But having said that, my philosophy is in terms of kids, you must have wings, but you must have roots. And so going out and getting a more worldly view of things, I think that’s fantastic. I think it’s important. So young kids that want to go over there, go for it, go and get that experience and so on. But if you say, I want to go there and I want to go and live there forever. And if you’re going to do it because you don’t think there’s a future here, I think you should think again about that. See it at a temporary scene. Because in any event, you’re going to go over there and you’re going to only mix with South, mainly mix with South Africans. And if you don’t do that, you’re going to have a tough time. It’s going to take a long process to go and get the type of friends you can get here. Have a good go, but don’t give away your roots. But you’re probably going to come back here for holidays and reunions and all that type in any event, which everybody does. If you don’t, you’re going to be pretty unhappy.
Jan Hugo: Absolutely and people that do go back all say the same thing you know that they they love being back there and often they leave in the in the middle of of the European winter and they go to the sun in South Africa and then it’s even more difficult to go back so when you always just see darkness. Now Paul I must say I just think you know it’s so good to hear such a positive message I’ve always known that you’re a positive guy about South Africa and I think it’s fantastic to share that message because I really do think there’s an opportunity for people overseas. But ultimately, as you say, your roots are still what really matters. So I don’t know if you have any closing thoughts before we finish.
Paul Harris: No, I saw it somewhere along the line. You’re going to ask me about the Trump meeting. I try and keep politics out. That’s politics. That was theatre. What is that? Okay, so please give me your thing. Look, I mean, obviously Trump was sort of directing everything he was saying at his constituency, which is Moga constituency. And our guys were talking to South Africans. And there were some good things and bad things. I think the good thing from a South African point of view is that Ernie and Johan. It did quite a lot to bring business and government and the sort of racial divide. It did a really good thing for that. Basically the message was we’re in this together and we’ve got our challenges and we’re part of the same team. I think that was a very good thing. The other thing is putting crime on the agenda. That crime becomes a huge priority and hopefully we can get some positive out of that. The negative of course is perceptions about South Africa probably took a big knock and maybe people will be less inclined to come and invest here, which is a sad thing but they were never inclined to come and invest here anyway, unfortunately. But I think opening the door to having a better relationship with America, I mean, it’s incredibly important for South Africa. I mean, I’d rather be in that sort of alignment rather than alternatives. So I think generally speaking, it was not bad for us, although we didn’t necessarily come out of it looking very good internationally. And there was serious exaggeration about the crime and about the form murders. I mean, that really is a serious exaggeration. Things have got a lot better. And I mean, it’s not nearly as bad as what they say, relative to all other crime. I mean, there’s proper crime in this country.
Jan Hugo: That’s true. The one comment that Johann made that was taken badly, maybe these bots were saying that he sleeps with open doors. And people said, well, you know, with with these kind of money, he probably has 24 hours security guards around him.
Paul Harris: So there are a lot of comments that were made that you could, you know, on all sides that you could sort of question and, and so on. But yeah, it was theater.
Jan Hugo: It was, I must say, we had such a chuckle watching it. It was, but I mean, we all knew it was coming after that, that Zelensky one. It was inevitable that it would happen. So, it was good theater, but maybe they, as you say, there’s good stuff that’ll come out of it. And, you know, maybe the business guys, unfortunately, Adrian Gordon, make it into the meeting because there were too many others, but… Look, Adrian would have been amazing, very good.
Paul Harris: He was there, but he, the last minute, he got the chop and they put in Retief.
Jan Hugo: Yeah, and that lady, that trade unionist, I don’t think that has any… But anyway, yeah, no, it was, it was good theater, but at least it’s on the, you know, out there in the public domain.
Paul Harris: We boxed a bubble, wait, I mean, big time. I mean, we have a pimple on the backside of the mouse and they’re the cat, you know what I mean? So, but we, we there, we, we in there, we having the G20, my goodness there, that’s quite something.
Jan Hugo: That’s massive. And I think, you know, on the sports field, obviously, I follow golf and I watch the IPL and I saw the Heinrich Klassen clapping 100 or 36 balls, 37 balls yesterday and that young Port Gittery is still going to win big tournaments, you know. There’s so many good South African stories out there, I think it’s just, we just need to get people to focus on it. I promise you, I haven’t found a podcaster that is prepared to do a good story about South Africa. I don’t know, maybe I’m searching in the wrong place, but, you know, Rob Hirstoff is massive.
Paul Harris: No, I mean, you’re Rob Hirstoff, please. I mean, you know, if you want to influence people’s opinions, you don’t ridicule them, you know. You get out of your own eco-tember, you know, credit to a credit this to you. I shouldn’t be too unspoken about that, but you know, you can agree with a lot of what somebody says, but the way they say it, and if you ridicule people and so on, you know, you’re not really going to change opinions. You’re going to be feeding that. I’ll give you an example. There’s a friend of mine, a young black guy, you can go and look at his Twitter account. He’s got 600,000 followers. The business day where everybody reads here and everybody gets their opinion from in South Africa, it’s called City South. The people that count is not this eco chamber, it’s that chamber. Now you can read what Kaya has to say. Kaya was, he’s very positive about the role that Johan and those guys played in this Trump meeting.
Jan Hugo: I’ll definitely go and look him up. Maybe I should get him on the podcast.
Paul Harris: I think that’s not a bad idea.
Jan Hugo: Get him on the podcast. I would love that.
Paul Harris: Yeah. I can sort that out for you if you want to.
Jan Hugo: That would be fantastic if you could do that. Yeah. Awesome. Paul, I don’t know if you’ve got any other thoughts.
Paul Harris: No. I look, I just hope, I hope I haven’t, you know, one thing I have, I know, is that, and we’ve researched this in our companies that if you express opinions in social media and podcasts and all that, you get a natural distribution around how people respond. And there’s a bell curve and I’m fully prepared to accept that more than half the bell curve will think I’ve been talking complete shit.
Jan Hugo: Not at all. It’s fine. I think that’s how it works. I think that’s fantastic. And everyone has an opinion. And I think it’s our job to get the story across in a balanced opinion. That’s fantastic. So I can just say, honestly, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing why South Africa is home for you. It’s so refreshing to get a discussion like this after the week that we’ve had. And I really appreciate your time and the great conversation. Thank you, Paul.
Paul Harris: It was a pleasure.
Jan Hugo: Thanks, Jan. If you enjoyed my discussion with Paul and would like to hear more about the experience of South Africans outside of South Africa, why not subscribe on your favourite platform? If you’d like to share your own story, contact us on jan@therelocatedsouthafrican.com. Until next time.
