Business in South Africa - [website] Published: 1st of Feb 2011 by: (c) Staff Training Staff Reporter
Now that we’ve looked at how the countries belonging to the BRIC group conduct business,
it’ll be interesting to see what the common trends are in the South African corporate world and just how different to our new partners we actually are.
Due to its being such a richly diverse country, even more so than India, business practices vary greatly according to religion, language and race in SA.
South Africans tend to be very easy-going people and don’t need to have established a mutual relationship before doing business, although long-term business partnerships are preferable to short-term ones.
The majority of South African business men and women are non-confrontational, preferring harmonious working relationships to heated encounters. You will often find South Africans using metaphors and analogies in speech when illustrating a point.
Trying to schedule a meeting with a South African in December or January, or the two weeks surrounding the Easter period, is a near impossibility (especially in Cape Town) as this is a prime holiday-taking time. It is not uncommon for businesses to close early and be understaffed during these periods.
There are also a high number of public holidays in the South African calendar, the days surrounding which are best avoided when trying to arrange meetings.
For South Africa to keep up with the development of the BRIC countries we will need to a) address productivity in the workplace, and b) increase competitiveness and pricing.
To achieve this will require a change in attitude from the ‘what can I get’ to the ‘what can I do’ way of thinking, where productivity is the organisation’s main focus and efficiency an integral part of the company’s success.
That being said, South African business men and women are generally hard working, tenacious people with a will to win.
You’ll find that South Africans value trust when negotiating and prefer an upfront approach as opposed to haggling over price and bartering.
Appointments should be made as far in advance as possible and communications should preferably be done face-to-face. The first meeting is often used to determine whether the potential business partner is trustworthy and to establish a rapport.
South Africa’s economy (while the largest in Africa) is small compared to Brazil, Russia, India and China, but the introduction of SA to the BRIC group could present a great opportunity for us, if we can show ourselves to be true competitors.
