"Pharmacies are in trouble because government is forcing them to sell at a loss and that is going to put them out of business. Who will be next?" That was the point of last weeks email. [If you missed it, you will find it on the Petes Weekly website.]

May I please share with you the responses I received, because they are

fascinating?

There were a few main themes coming back at me, and their messages were consistent. Firstly, the folk who feel that pharmacists deserve it after 'creaming it' for so long.

Maybe they do, but in the minds of the powers that be - we have all been 'creaming it for too long'. The folk who read this weekly are overwhelmingly white, previously advantaged individuals. And the overwhelming view amongst the previously disadvantaged seems to be that we have each been making this money at their cost. Instead of seeing the economy as a growing pie with enough for all, they see it as a finite amount, and if we are prospering it must be because someone else is starving. This means that there are no guarantees that our individual industries will not be targeted next year.

In my mind, getting the SME community to agree on any particular direction is like herding tomcats. And that's one of the core reasons why we are so vulnerable to organised labour/government/large business. We have no voice because we choose not to. The Business Warrior community is part of my effort to build such a voice.

Secondly, the few folk who decided that I am an unimportant speck in the universe and that I should not keep threatening to leave South Africa just because I do not like the way things are going. Right now we still live in a democracy, and a wonderful one it is. That allows me to say what I want if it bothers me. [Heck, you can say what you want as well!] And the setting of price controls in the pharmaceutical industry scares me enough to speak out. As someone who invests almost R60K each year to just stay alive [hospital plan + insulin + blood pressure tablets + regular checkups + blood glucose strips], I believe that it is a very bad move.

Right now South Africa is the best place on the planet to live, in my humble opinion. But if I have to sit in a government hospital/clinic for a full day each month to get the medicine I need to stay alive - then it won't be. Is it unpatriotic to say that? I understand that government is planning a complete national health system from 2007 onwards, based on the UK and Australian models. This would allow them to determine exactly what drugs SA can afford, rather than what is best for my particular situation. Based on the current service delivery of our civil service, how effective would this be? Honestly? Is it unpatriotic to say that I am uncomfortable with that? I don't know. But my reality is that I am deeply uncomfortable with it.

We South African small business owners tend to be very quiet in public about issues that bother us. Contrast this with Australia, the UK, even Norway - where those in power get slated each time they do something silly. I recall seeing Aussie Premier Howard being grilled on TV when last I was there - in a way that

I have never seen a public official questioned here. Yet as soon as any one of us criticizes our government - or any individual within it - we are deemed unpatriotic. Is it more patriotic to stay silent and fume over a beer with a few mates - where it doesn't do any good?

Which reminds me, there is a fight brewing between DoE [Department of Education] and DoL [Department of Labour] in which it is envisaged that ANY 'accredited' training after school will have to come from your local university or

technikon - thus sidelining all the thousands of folk offering specific eduction in things like film-making, IT, programming, sales, internet marketing, etc. And what are we going to do about it? Probably just yawn and go about our daily business because these trainers too have been living off the fat of the land for too long.

Thirdly, the folk who have chronic diseases like mine. [In medical terms 'chronic' means long term.] Most of those on expensive drugs have the same reaction I have. Even those on cheaper drugs are finding that the new regulations are making their drugs more expensive.

This edition of Petes Weekly is brought to you courtesy of Business Warriors - a community of small business owners who want to help you solve your challenges by offering great products, great services, and exceptional value. Please go here to search the database of Warriors before you decide to support a corporate who won't take your business personally, or seriously. They are not responsible for the content, however, and do not necessarily share my opinions. That is all my responsibility.

Fourthly, the folk who wrote to simply say "Spot On!" Thank you for taking the time to say that. In amongst all the folk who did not enjoy the issues I raised last week, your emails were heartening. And finally, the ex-Zimbabweans. They scared me enough to buy a few books of Zimbabwe's post independence progress and read 700 pages quickly. Let me tell you why.

Experience is a wonderfully personal thing that allows us to identify future problems quickly, and deal with them before they become crises. That's why I have done so much consulting. People trust me because I lost everything in 1992, and I can now easily see the holes in most businesses and business plans.

But experience is nothing more than a very personal view of recent history. And the reason we learn history is to learn from the mistakes of our predecessors and ancestors.

When half a dozen unrelated ex-Zimbabweans raise the same issues via email from different parts of the globe - then I think we should acknowledge their experience in this particular issue. Each of the emails mentioned that price controls started an immense range of shortages in Zimbabwe. Storekeepers could not keep selling at a loss, and simply stopped stocking a whole bunch of goods.

And my point is that these little nuggets of legislation quietly sneak up on us, and if we accept them as being the fate of those groups that 'creamed it' in the past, then how long before we ourselves meet the same fate? Which reminds me about CIPRO - www.cipro.co.za - who will soon require that every registered business submit annual financials over the internet - and pay the prescribed fee by credit card. This is in addition to your regular SARS returns. And if you think internet banking is expensive, how about being forced to pay another R450 each year so that YOU can input your own details? Bit of a bugger if you have a judgment and can't get a credit card, isn't it?

You see, my entrepreneurial brothers and sisters, we are all in the same leaky boat. Most of us are at the mercy of increasingly onerous legislation that we cannot ignore because we have too much to lose if we do, while those folk with nothing to lose can carry on with impunity. If the words above offend you, then I must ask you to take a step back and look at my writing since 1999. There isn't much point in sharing thoughts on how to sell better, or how to re-finance your business, if we ignore the huge impact the environment we operate in has, is there?

September 28th, 2004

- Umhlanga Rocks.

A few words on the products and services I recommend - and whose links appear in this ezine and on the Petes Weekly website. If I personally use  a product/service and find it adds immense value to my own business  or life, then I try to share the benefits. I only do that when I have had a wonderful, seamless experience myself. Of course, this is no guarantee that your experience will be the same as mine, but very few people come back to me on a service issue.

In personally recommending a specific product/service, I am not recommending anything else that the specific supplier might offer - just because I haven't personally bought it. As in all aspects of life, it pays to think before leaping.