Bronwen Jones
Soweto’s first bookshop will open its doors in Dobsonville on June 1.
The bookshop idea, which has been tossed back and forth since last year in NGO-land, initially met with doubts and tales of doom. Publishers and possible investors wondered: “How safe will our stock be? How will we be paid? How can we deliver there?” But two brave souls are taking the plunge: Barbara Malk and Solomon Sikakane. Malk is content to keep in the background, but has put up the money for the independent bookshop.
With government policy now strongly favouring schools seeking supplies locally rather than centrally, Sikakane looks set to make his fortune. There are 141 schools with a total of about 141 000 pupils in his intended phase one “catchment area” of Dobsonville, Meadowlands, Mofolo/Zondi/Jabulani and Zola/Emdeni.
Sikakane comes from a long line of educationalists and so it seemed logical to call the shop Imfundo-Thuto. Imfundo means education in all the Nguni languages and Thuto means the same in Sesotho. Education, in effect, for everyone. And education in its widest sense. Sikakane says: “Life itself is a learning process.”
A lover of books and all the opportunities that they bring, Sikakane sees a bookshop as essential to civilised society in Greater Johannesburg’s southern suburbs. “Anything that encourages a culture of learning is good for the community,” he says. Add to that the warehouse he’s already eyeing as a packing and distribution point, and Imfundo-Thuto will generate jobs and money where they’re needed most.
Sikakane has been involved in publishing for some time, as co-author of Simtoti IsiZulu (Zulu is nice), a Zulu reader for Standard 5, publisher of a Zulu literature guide for Standard 10, translator of a series of parallel text Zulu/Afrikaans and Zulu/English children’s stories and author of a still-to-be-published novel Kwemula UGezile (Gezile’s 21st Birthday).
His qualifications for his new position seem impeccable, from lecturing at Umpumulo Teacher Training College in the Fifties, to teaching at Jabulani State School in the Sixties, becoming principal at Enkolweni Primary School in the Seventies and finally, an Inspector of Schools in the Eighties. In the middle of his career he spent a six-year stint producing educational programmes for Radio Voice of the Gospel and managed to attend some specialist education conferences in Briston, United Kingdom, and Berlin, Germany.
Bolton Group turns losses to prosperity
In 1991 the Bolton Group looked like a prime candidate for a takeover bid. Jacques Magliolo reports on how the company’s fortunes have changed
In 1991 I was hired by a Cape Town-based textile company to conduct research into the viability of taking over the footwear, property and haulage interests of the Bolton Group. The company’s directors decided instead to pursue overseas projects.
The directors of the would-be predator must surely now regret that decision. The Bolton Group’s latest results are a shining example of how a company can turn a loss around and prosper.
For the financial year to end-February 1995, the group’s subsidiaries showed substantial gains in bottom-line profits. Compared to 1994, Bolton Industrial Holdings’ earnings per share (eps: bottom-line profits divided by shares in issue) grew
by 43,1 percent, Cargo Carriers’ by 55 percent and Bolton Footwear’s by 35,4 percent. The group is no longer involved in property.
In 1991 the Bolton Group was a prime candidate for a takeover. Despite being controlled by the Bolton family, which owned Bolton Footwear and Bolton Industrial through a 69 percent stake in Cargo Carriers, the group was easy prey.
There is really only one method of conducting a takeover of a company controlled by a single individual or a small number of people and that is to make the company an offer. Other methods require time-consuming planning and present the possibility of open warfare, which is usually lengthy and extremely costly.
For instance, before a hostile or amicable takeover is launched, the invader wants to know whether the target will produce strong profits in the future and, if not, whether asset stripping (the piecemeal sale of assets) will produce a profit after taking into account the cost of buying the company. There was no doubt the Bolton Group faced an uncertain future during the early 1990s, but its net worth reduced the risk-to-return profile.
My research into the group highlighted a number of important issues which should alert directors to their own companies’ susceptibility to takeover bids:
* Revalue company assets on an annual basis. This makes your company less attractive to asset strippers. This was one of the attractions of the Bolton Group, particularly with Bolton Footwear’s purchase of new equipment to increase turnover through organic growth. Cargo Carriers’ books had, during 1991, no updated value for the vast tract of land on which it stored its trucks. A walk around the plant with an estate agent immediately revealed to me that the land alone would have seen a buyer gain a profit of between 30 and 40 percent on the Cargo land alone.
* Strong operating profit margins need not denote a company with high productivity. The footwear company had a continuing profit margin of about 11 percent, which has recently dropped — despite higher profit growth — to 5,6 percent. Cargo Carriers’ margin was expected to be 9,7 percent in 1991, but it has since fallen to 5,7 percent.
* A company plagued by labour unrest is an attractive option. The longer unrest continues, the less able a company will be to fend off an attack. But unrest will always come to an end: unions know that strike action can ultimately lose their supporters their jobs and this is not the aim of a strike action. A telephone call to the union concerned with the Bolton Group told me that what they were asking was certainly more realistic than previous demands. It was only a matter of time before the company would have agreed to their demands, which they did.
* Poorly performing subsidiaries are also not an impediment. True takeover agents — using leveraged buy-outs in the United States — will never buy only a part of a group. Whether subsidiaries are performing poorly or not, the entire group is usually bought and stripped. The assumption is that, if you leave a part standing, it could grow and come back to haunt you and your profits.
SPORT