Reply from DTI

Surprise, surprise, surprise! A reply from the DTI to the letter I copied the Minister on regarding CIPRO's Highway Banditry. From no less a personage than a Deputy Director General, too.

Thank you for writing to the Minister with your concerns. The Minister has requested that I indicate to you that this matter has been forwarded to the CIPRO Acting CEO to respond to you. 

As the department, we will however follow up on the issues you raise especially to the extent that you express concern about the requirement for companies that are already suffering to pay further monies in a form of tax and levies. The intention is not to burden businesses, especially small businesses, with unnecessary  additional costs in doing business.

Ordinarily, these are fees for administrative purposes in regard to government services and those of agencies of government. These fees are not intended to cover the total costs of providing the service, but merely a reasonable amount to contribute to administration of various respective functions of government.  

As indicated, to the extent that these fees may be steep for smaller entities, there is a need to look at them very carefully. In this regard, we will consider your concerns as we are currently in the process of determining the fee structure for services rendered in terms of the Companies Act. This will include the fees for annual returns that you are concerned about. We trust that you will also make use of the opportunity to make your comments to the Minister on the draft regulations and fee structure that will be issued in the next few weeks for public comments.

We trust that the Acting CEO of Cipro will assist you with other matters raised in your letter. Should you require further assistance from us the department, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Now this is all fine and well, and I confess to being pleasantly surprised that somebody in government could actually be bothered to respond. But somewhat misses the point. The primary problem is not the amount of the Protection Money Levy, but the fact that it must be paid at all. And that it is just one more onerous tax on our time and energy. And one more compliance requirement that government failed to properly inform us about but expects us (under Threat of Company Death) to comply with. I wrote back:

Thank you for your speedy and pointed response!

This is not intended to waste your time with a protracted dialog on the matter, but I feel compelled to emphasize one point you raised:

On 15/07/2010 18:50, [you] wrote:

of tax and levies. The intention is not to burden businesses, especially
small businesses, with unnecessary additional costs in doing business.

This is, however, the nett effect. However, it is not merely a question of the direct financial costs:

Ordinarily, these are fees for administrative purposes in regard to
government services and those of agencies of government. These fees are
not intended to cover the total costs of providing the service, but
merely a reasonable amount to contribute to administration of various
respective functions of government.

This cuts to the heart of the matter. The fee levied by CIPRO, together with the requirement for an annual return, achieves nothing and provides absolutely ZERO value over and above what we already have.

(Let them learn how to live within a budget - that provided by the treasury - just like the rest of the country has to. Ordinary people do not have the luxury of being able to go and put a gun to our clients' heads whenever we feel the pinch.)

CIPRO's claim that the annual return is intended to ensure that their records are kept up to date is irrelevant and spurious, since companies and CCs are already legally obliged to inform the Registrar of any changes to those details. So the annual return and associate levy are
a) unnecessary
b) financially burdensome, and
c) too demanding of time and energy.

This last point is particularly relevant for micro-enterprises already struggling to simply keep head above water. Every "couple of hours" I have to spend in regulatory compliances (from whatever quarter of government) is a couple of hours that must be stolen from the attempt to keep body and soul together.

Add to that the ever-increasing requirements to somehow track new regulations and changed compliance requirements in the absence of proper, clear, understandable information and you will understand that it all quickly becomes overwhelming.

So, thanks again for your time and kind consideration, but, as CIPRO has promised to deregister my CC today for non-compliance with their ridiculous requirements, I guess I am now officially out of business. Having gone from creating direct employment for others a few years ago, I am now free to disappear into the cash economy. I guess I should thank you all for my freedom.

Open Letter to CIPRO

Update: Also sent to Rob Davies, Minister for Trade and Industry. No reply realistically expected from anybody.

14 July 2010

Chief Executive Officer, CIPRO

Re: Annual Returns

Sir,

See you in court.

Your organisation's handling of the matter of annual returns for Close Corporations has been handled in a completely unacceptable, unconstitutional, unfair, uninformative, unfriendly and unlawful manner.

The first information I received concerning this new requirement for submitting an annual return, along with extorting yet more money from your unwilling victims, was a letter threatening to de-register this CC. Normal business practise is to send an invoice, perhaps a statement, maybe even a brief note of explanation. But to open a conversation with threats? Unacceptable. This letter of threat then went on to give 90 days for us to act on it. It arrived 100 days after the date of the letter. Sheer incompetence. I know the Post Office's track record is not so good, but not even they take that long to deliver a letter. So it must, logically, have been delayed within CIPRO itself.

I attempted to contact CIPRO via your call-centre. After extremely long times on hold in the call queue, being charged at premium-rate phone rates, and after never having the phone answered by a human being, I attempted to find other contact phone numbers. To no avail. Evidently you are so ashamed of the high-handed manner in which you act that you are afraid of actual contact with your victims. I dare-say you are right to feel so.
I immediately (email 10 June 2010) contacted your organisation with my full contact details, requesting information, since I had no clue what this was about at that stage. Well done on providing information. It took fully 8 days before I received a reply (email 18 June), informing me of the requirement for submitting a return, and requiring me to register on your website.

Unfortunately the CIPRO website clearly and unambiguously states on its front page, “Customers must use Internet Explorer for any CIPRO transaction. “ Unfortunately this organisation does not possess any copies of Internet Explorer, nor are we technically able to use this software, since Internet Explorer only runs under the Microsoft Windows Operating System, and we exclusively use the Linux Operating System. We are therefore unable to legally comply with this condition of use of your website. Your Terms and Conditions make it clear that, in the case that we are unable or unwilling to accept your Conditions, our only remedy is to not use your website. OK – fine with me. I informed your organisation of our inability to comply with this requirement on 21 June (email 21 June 2010) and requested an alternative means to comply with your requirements. No reply was forthcoming.

I queried this matter again (email 29 June 2010) and was advised to phone your call centre again (email 29 June 2010). Once again I was unable to get through to your call centre, and informed your help-desk of this (email 29 June 2010).
I received a request for my contact details (email 30 June 2010) so that a consultant could contact me regarding this matter. Despite the fact that I had already supplied these details, I immediately complied (email 30 June 2010). On 2 July at approx. 14h00 I was contacted by your consultant Kate, and I explained the problem to her. She informed me that she would have to “consult with IT” to determine an alternative method of achieving compliance. I heard nothing further.

I again enquired on 12 July (email 12 July 2010) and received the snotty response “Further to our reply dated 30.06.2010, requesting your contact details and no response from you?” Clearly your help-desk is incompetent to keep track of simple stuff like contact details that have already been sent twice. I immediately responded (email 12 July 2010) explaining when details had been sent and the contact I had already received without any outcome.
No response.

I again enquired (email 13 July 2010) and was again told (email 14 July 2010) to send my contact details. What are you people up to? Let us not mention the fact that you allegedly keep track of all the details of all companies and CCs, so you already have those contact details on file as part of the CC's registration. Or have you lost the records? I responded – again (email 14 July 2010). Most recently was an email from Grace Masuku (email 14 July 2010) again requesting my contact details which have been supplied – again (email 14 July 2010.)

I ask you, with tears in my eyes...

So to sum up:

• You require us to submit some return and pay you some extortion money. You didn't bother to actually let anyone know. It may surprise you to learn that most of us do not ordinarily read the Government Gazette and you clearly made no effort to actually contact your intended victims.
• You require that submission to be via your website.
• Simultaneously you make it impossible for some of us to legally comply by imposing terms and conditions of use of your website that we are unable to meet.
• You have failed to provide any alternative means of compliance.

Despite many good-faith attempts to comply we are no closer to a resolution.

There is not a Magistrate nor a Judge in the land who will find in your favour on this.

Oh, yes! You would like us to register as “Customers” and pride yourselves on the “Service” you provide to us “Customers”. I have news for you: “Customers” have

• Freedom to choose another supplier.
• Freedom to choose not to buy the service being sold.

We have no such choices.

That makes us “Unwilling Victims”, not “Customers”. Victims of government's determination to suck every last drop of blood from small businesses such as ours. Every time we turn around to try and make an honest, law-abiding living in an entrepreneurial way, we get another road-block thrown in our path. It has become so onerous to comply with all the conditions, reports, manuals, return and payment upon tax upon levy upon payment that it is pretty much not worth the effort any longer. Much simpler to disappear into the cash economy where you will find it impossible to extort yet more money from us. The entire edifice of government has become nothing more than a blood-sucking parasite on the economy of ordinary people, and CIPRO the most excellent exemplar of that parasitism.

Your "Reaching Out" document (sent, I note, in the proprietary and closed MS Word format instead of an open, standards-compliant and accessible format as would be in line with governments alleged commitment to the use of Open Source software and open standards – fortunately my Open Source word processor can cope reasonably well with this closed format) claims that the annual fine is needed "to update information kept by an Office of the Registrar". What rubbish! We are already legally obliged to notify the Registrar of any changes to that information. It is nothing but another vampire tax to fund fat-cat officials and gravy-train robbers. Reference to CIPRO's own recent embarrassments in this regard is obvious.

Damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

See you in court if you make any attempt to unlawfully deregister this CC.

Unnecessary Evil

ITWeb | Silicon Cape creates real 'buzz'

Zille [Premier of the Western Cape Province] said: "We heard a lot about the geeks, and the VCs, but very little about the politicians. And that is because we're usually regarded as a necessary evil."

No, Ms Zille. It should read:

"...usually regarded as evil."

There. Fixed that for ya.

Only the Kakistocracy is Above the Law

The Times - ‘Judges are not above the law’

I guess that means that only cabinet ministers and favoured party aparatchiks are above the law.

Do Journalists Dream of Electric English?

(OK, I'm talking to/about journalists in a country where, despite having 14 official languages, English remains the de facto language of social and commercial intercourse.)

This article in the Weekend Post (presumably the Official Newspaper of South Bumfuck, Eastern Cape Province, since nobody's ever heard of it before) yaks on:

Spekboom is renowned for its ability to sequestrate carbon, a key function in the battle against climate change.

Forgive me for asking, but don't journalists study English at uni at all? Do they not understand the simple difference between "sequestrate" and "sequester"? That the one is a legal term meaning "we're taking your stuff away", whilst the latter means "we're stashing this stuff out of the way".

Now I'm wondering who is attaching all the property of the Spekboom tree species. Does it even have any property? (Even the imaginary kind?)

Is this the quality of journalistic writing? Of editorial competence? Aagh well.... the Kakistopoly at work again!

The Bibbey's Hoek Heliport Saga

The story so far...

A local farm got sold to some rich bugger who believes himself personally entitled to limitless squandering of the Earth's resources, who seems to regard his time so much more valuable than the rest of humanity's, that he uses his helicopter to commute back and forth between his house in town and The Farm. A distance that takes under 30 minutes to drive, even sticking to the speed limits (which almost nobody does.)

Many local residents object to being flown over on a regular (or should I say irregular but frequent -- several times a week, at any rate) basis. Rich Guy has gone ahead and built himself a hangar for his little ego wank, signalling a Fuck You permanence to the existence of his Personal Airfield.

Eventually I wrote a letter to the Civil Aviation Authority querying the status of this airfield and asking what regulations cover the operation of informal airfields. I got brushed off with a reply amounting to "Read the regulations on our website." No help at all. At least it established that nobody in the area has applied for a permit to operate an airfield. And they suggested that the Local Authority (the Muni) would be a better avenue for getting the airfield shut down.

Some while later I tried writing to the Municipality about the same business. After some to and fro on this, their reply amounted to "Sorry; Out of our jurisdiction. Try the CAA."

What's the hassle?

Several people think I'm just being cranky; that this guy flying in and out on his little chopper bicycle is not such a Big Deal¹. I think it sets a precedent. Let's say we tolerate this. After all, it's not even that close to my property². What happens when the guy next door sees all this and thinks, "That's pretty cool! I believe I'll also commute by helicopter." Where does it end? Where and when does somebody draw a line and say, "Here's where your impact on the other people around you has to be considered."

I choose to draw the line here and now.

I wrote again to the CAA and (surprise, surprise!) received a reply within a day from the gentleman I had emailed, saying that he's in the wrong department to take this up with, but that he'd forwarded my letter to the correct person who would contact me "soon".

Still waiting, a month and more later. I wrote to him again:

A month has now gone past since I first wrote to you concerning the
regular operation of a local farm field as a helicopter landing-field,
and your extremely prompt reply. As yet, however, I have received no
response from Mr Ramolefi in regard to this or the question regarding
noise emissions from helicopter.


Please let me know who I can escalate this query to.


I will also note that the farm-field mentioned in my first
correspondence is STILL being used with regularity for helicopter
operations, and the operator now seems to take a malicious delight in
flying directly over our community, going out of his way to annoy
residents by flying a path well outside of what he truly needs to
follow. Regardless, all helicopter operations in this area must stop
and stop immediately!

His immediate reply:

As I am not directly involved with Flight Operations, I would recommend that if you need to escalate this matter, you may direct it to the following:

Mr. Patrick Chiwandire (Senior Manager: Flight Operations)

Mr. Anton Richman (General Manager: Air Safety Operations)

I hope you will get a response from these two managers.

Well, at least there's one person on the ball at Civil Aviation. I'd like to thank him very much for taking care to respond so promptly and helpfully! Let's hope I hear from Mr Chiwandire, who I forwarded my complaint to. I'm not terribly optimistic, given that several of the CAA's role-based email addresses don't work (e.g. commisioner@caa.co.za) and based on the organisation's track-record to date. I guess the next step will be to phone the Commissioner directly. In fairness, though, let's give them a couple of weeks.

---

[1] Alright, maybe a little cranky.
[2] About 2.5km.