There is nothing like a dose of chick lit to while away a holiday. Take this gem, which I grabbed at a bookstore at OR Tambo en route to the family hideout in the Wild Coast. Typically, the cover of the book is a bright pink that screams “for women only”.
What is it with publishers and their obsession with this Barbie pink when they try to appeal to us grown women? Red is an equally hip and foxy colour and so, by the way, is black.
Anyway, the cheap pink trick having worked on me, I grabbed the paperback and threw it into my ever-expanding book bag to join my other more discerning reads for the annual trek back to “emakhaya”, as we citizens of the former homelands fondly refer to the Eastern Cape. The book, I decide, is for those moments during my holiday when I will have tired of swimming and sunning myself or staring into the distance — taking in, with awesome gratitude to God, the serene beauty of the Wild Coast.
It’s How to Be Single by Liz Tucillo. You may remember her as the co-author of Greg Behrendt’s bestseller a few years ago, He’s Just Not That Into You. No, this isn’t the same sort of self-help book for the sad and sexless. It is her first novel but focuses on — you guessed it? — the same subject matter.
A brief précis: the main character, Julie, is a thirtysomething New Yorker (aren’t they always from the Big Apple?) who, after realising how disastrous and empty the lives of herself and four “singleton” girlfriends are, decides to escape the tragic-comedy of it all and travel the globe to research whether the status of single women in other parts of the world is just as gloomy, whether they are having better luck at finding love, or whether they are at least finding novel ways of coping with their impending spinsterhood. Her intention, on her return to the US, is to compile this research into a little guidebook for single desperadoes the world over.
Julie’s experiment as she flits about the world speaking to women about why they can’t find love and the various cultural permutations this takes is interesting and you’ll find the results in the book. But throughout her travels, there is a glaring omission — big Mother Africa. Why didn’t she come to this continent to find out how we are doing? The Good Man drought is here too and it has spawned the cynical, somewhat frenzied and thoroughly love-parched counterpart, which is the single thirtysomething woman, black and white.
Back in the city, a friend and I were discussing suggestions in the press that British mobile operator Vodafone might merge with Verizon. Now my friend — let’s call her Lisa — is a very pretty, clever and blonde fortysomething whose love life can at best be described as a mangled train wreck. Being steeped in financial services, she sighed in her usual circumspect fashion and said: “You know ‘niks’. We are just like MTN. No one wants to merge with us.”
Her precise financial mind continued with this intriguing analogy.
“Think about it: despite the number of times any major players have courted MTN and MTN was seemingly willing, in fact eager, to form some glamorous telecoms conglomerate, the deal always fell through for no good reason. But look at Vodacom — she only needed to bat her eyelids that one time and — bingo! — Verizon is chatting her up.”
Catching on to this rather unusual comparison, I said: ” No one can doubt the value proposition of a company like MTN; the stock is blue chip and this would really be an attractive asset to have in anyone’s stable.”
But still nobody wants her. You might argue that Telkom has now come along and signed this roaming agreement with MTN that allows Telkom customers access to MTN’s network throughout the country. So it seems that even when someone does approach MTN, they just want to use her.
We both laughed until our tummies hurt. In the end, I suppose there’s no point in running off with every Reliance, Bharti Airtel and Verizon just because they happen to ask. If you think about it, despite the fact that her attempts to merge fell through, MTN always emerged stronger, having lost none of her value and allure. I take comfort in the fact that perhaps she may have even added to her value. Now isn’t that “ayoba”?
Ultimately, though, it boils down to the economic fundamentals of supply and demand — with the demand for good men very high and supply stocks diminishing, it’s no wonder that mergers and acquisitions will continue to elude us.