School'5 Address by Guest ofHonour,Mr Clem Sunter,on Speech Day 23September 1994 Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen and boys of the college. I'm going to talk about three things today. Firstly, I'm going to go through whatI consider to be the three rules for handling change and uncertainty in the world today. Secondly I'm going to handle some myths which I still believe pervade society; and thirdly,I'm going to talk a bit about where we are on the High Road and where we still have to go in order to get there permanently. But before I do that, let me tell you a little story. Back in April this year,I was invited with a lot of busi nessmen in the Transvaal to a meeting with the ANC Premier at the time, a guy called Tokyo Sexwale. He was Premier Elect because it was before tbe elections and he wanted to know from us businessmen bow to govern the PWV region. We told him in very forceful terms how we felt the PWV should be governed. Just before tbe tea break,one ofthe young people in the ANC team said,"I get the distinct impression from you busi nessmen tbat you don't wantto be governed at all!"And that's true! Butthen he said,"How do you actually think aPremierofaregion should behave?"SoI had the whole tea break to think about this and I got up after the tea break and I said,"A precise question deserves a precise answer. Mr Sexwale, you've got to view yourself as a casino operator!" This took him aback a little, but I had Sol Kerzner next to me so ...I said,"You're talking to 20 of the biggest gamblers in the country. We put bil lions of rands on the table to make billions of rands. That is what we are all about.And although there is ob viously a difference between doing business and gam bling, they are basically very mucb tbe same when it comes to the crunch, because the whole point of our existence is that we are putting money,notonto the gam bling table, but into a business in order to make lots of money out oftbat business.And basically, you can view the economy as a casino with everybody laying bets in their businesses and hopefully,overtime,making money out of those bets. And there are three rules in running a successful casino. The first is that the House take must be reasonable. In other words, if you charge too high taxes in thePWV region,you are going to frighten all us gamblers away - we'll go to the Cape or somewhere else. Secondly, the odds must be fixed. We don't want to hear when we start a project,that the tax rate is rising, so that all the calculations we did in terms of reward versus risks have to change because tbe taxes have changed.You don't expect,for example,when you play roulette, when the wheel is in spin,for the croupier sud denly to say,I'm changing the odds." "Equally, we don't expect the odds to change in busi ness.And thirdly, if we win big, and everybody around this table wants to win big, we don't want bandits to come into the casino and steal our cash.So we are very strong on law and order." Now this little analogy took offand somebody else said, "Ofcourse the croupiers must be straight." But the best remark was reserved for a young member of the ANC delegation who said,"I only have one thing to say to Mr Sunter. If he doesn't teach the masses out there how to gamble,they'll bum the casino down!"And that is true. So that is the challenge in this country - how do you actually teach everybody out tbere how to gamble so thatthey can open up small businesses because the other option is the South American option where everybody joins the Civil Service because there are no other jobs around? You end up with huge bloated bureaucracies, hyper-inflation, cormption and the whole place comes to a grinding halt. That is the other alternative to teach ing people how to gamble.So basically,that is what my philosophy of life has been. Life is a gamble. None of you knows exactly wbere you are going to be in five to ten years time. You don't know whom you are going to marry; you don't know what kind ofjob you are going to be in; you don't know where you are going to be liv ing. Life is very, very uncertain and therefore one must actually think of ways of handling changes which are different from normal ways.If you think ofschool life, school life doesn't programme you for the uncertainty afterwards. You come to school, you have certain les sons at certain times.You know that on such and such a day you will be taking exams.You'll know that in afew years time as you rise up in the hierarchy of the school that you will be in such and such a class and maybe a prefect and so forth and so on.Life is very,very predict able in a school and then you take exams and those ex ams ask precise questions that demand precise answers. I heard a marvellous thing the other day ofa doctor who said to a patient;"Will you please express your disease in the form of a multiple choice question!" You have this terrible tbing wbere you are programmed to think that life is predictable and life is absolutely unpredict able.I have come across three golden rules for handling the unpredictability of life. The first, is you must keep opposites in mind. Let me expand on that because it sounds like a formula for contradiction and indecision, but it's not. Certainly in a casino,before you place a bet on the table,you say to yourself,"Whatare yourchances of winning? What are the chances oflosing?",and then you decide the size of the bet. You are actually playing the two opposite scenarios before you make a decision on the size of the bet. Think of a court room where the judge comes in and the defendant is in front of him be fore the case begins.He is running two scenariosthrough his mind-that defendant is innocent-that defendant is guilty and as the trial proceeds,the prosecution and the defence try and sway him one way and the other.In the end he has to make a decision and he will be playing those opposite scenarios all the time till he finally makes his decision. Let me give you an even more familiar example.When I drive from Johannesburg to Pretoria,I play two scenarios for every bridge. There is a speed trap under the bridge. There is no speed trap under the bridge! Tben I look for signs so that I can apply prob abilities to those two scenarios, so if there is a cop car on the other side of the road, strike one for the speed trap scenario.Ifthere are skid marks on the tarmac,pos sible strike two. If people are flashing me coming the other way-major strike three! So in that way you actually decide whether you are go ing to assume whether there is a speed trap under that bridge or not. But of course, it is only when you get to the bridge, when you actually pass under, but by then it's too late. You have to make the decision beforehand and the decision is made with incomplete evidence.You have,in other words,to gamble because if you wait too 16 Kearsney Chronicle 1994
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