ƒŽŽ‘‘‹‰ ’—„Ž‹… •‡…–‘”

Sir,

It is not uncommon for a company to have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) tab on its website. This can be a very helpful resource for consumers to find out what a company is about. It is also a platform that can be used to glimpse into concerns that fellow consumers harbour about the institution of interest. That should be enough reason to include an FAQ page on your website.

If you do not have a website for your business, go ahead and get one. Why? – Because it is 2023! More seriously – although it is upsetting that Africa has dismal internet penetration (it’s not just your country bro), one of the lowest in the world actually, you have to consider globalisation.

Reliable

Economic interconnectedness is ever increasing. There could be someone out there with a reliable internet connection (must be nice) who could really use your product.

Ntsiki Biyela, South Africa’s first black female winemaker, exports more than half of her produce to Texas and China. The crux of Ntiski’s vineyard – Stellekaya – is international trade. She exemplifies what online presence can do for your business.

We took the long way around to get to the first point of discussion, which relates to questions asked around business and finances.

Product

I don’t know how we got here as a species; where money is such a huge part of staying alive. We’re running to half-baked Forex and Bitcoin presentations nje asitenti. Surely, something has to give. A product that makes money always, at all times, with no exceptions!

Conversations around finances are objectively difficult and it is not always easy to answer questions arising there from, but children will ask you even more devastating questions that make ‘how do I pay off my mortgage in five years’ look like a slice of carrot cake.

My seven-year-old cousin hit me with the ‘why do we exist’ question. I’ll tell you, I’m not the most religious person in the world but I responded; “We’ll pray about it, baby.” I have never seen anyone lose so much respect for me so quickly. I swear, the respect he had for me just evaporated through his big brown eyes. I couldn’t answer a child’s question! And it’s not because I thought he wouldn’t be able to comprehend the complexity of my philosophical argument or anything like that – no – I just pulled a blank.

I wish life came with a user’s guide with an FAQ section filled in generation after generation for posterity. If the first thing you read was wisdom collected from generations past, you wouldn’t be so ill-prepared for this life thing man. Sometimes it comes at you too fast. Like how we expect high school pupils to make career choices at adolescence. I mean, what does a teenager know – can someone tell me? A user guide for life would avert so many miserable careers with a single sentence: Check your premise and question everything (… frequently).

Mangaliso

Life

Sir,

All key economic indicators paint a bleak picture of the economy that makes us losers on all ends, despite all the institutions and brains in place to make our economy tick.

It is clear that our economy is coming undone, and this is very unfortunate because it is happening right in hands of the 20 or so government ministries, close to 50 parastatals, countless commissions, a fully housed Parliament, and a more than capable Cabinet. All these institutions, with their highly esteemed personnel, are a painful and unsustainable cost to government coffers.

Yet in Eswatini it seems okay for things to just fall apart without any major shakeups and accountability being pinned to all of these warm bodies in the different institutions that make what we call the Government of Eswatini.

It is no secret that at the centre of this economic landmine is our government, which consistently fails to manage its purse to economic prosperity. The problem is that government accounts for 40 per cent of the economy and has developed intricate dependencies with many of the sectors of the economy. Having government as a major player in the economy is a huge threat to financial and economic stability because our government is quickly becoming synonymous with a huge cash-flow challenge, a non-starter!

As a result, the prevailing fiscal challenges are quickly decapitating what is left of the different sectors of the economy. Government depends on the volatile Southern African Customs Union receipts for a bulk of its revenue, while a large share of the household and small medium enterprises sector rely on government finances for income. When government makes a mess of public finances, the economy at large quickly turns into a mess that finds even the private sector struggling to operate viable business enterprises.

Government needs to come up with radical changes on how to tackle the issue of the ballooning public sector and huge wage bill, how it can consolidate the many government entities that require subventions out of the taxpayers’ pay cheques, and most importantly, commit to spending to create value for money out of every cent that government takes out of our pockets in the name of tax.

Concerned citizen