Africa’s minerals advantage will be won above ground & SA office vacancies fall to to 11.8% 

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

And now, The Money Show with Stephen Grootes on 702 Let's walk the talk.

Stephen Grootes (0:07)

The Money Show with Stephen Grootes is brought to you by Absa Corporates and Investment Banking, connecting global finance to the future. That's how Absa is invested in your story. Eight minutes after 6, good evening. Welcome to the programme. I'm Stephen Grootes. Really interesting to see some numbers coming out about national office vacancies. You'd think, well, surely we're still in a point where more people are working from home now than were before the pandemic. And that's probably true. Almost certainly true. But the figures now in terms of office vacancies across the country are almost exactly where we were just before the pandemic. Now, I must just point out a lot will have changed since then because the geographic spread is completely different. Gauteng, yes, the Western Cape had lower vacancies, I'm sure. I don't have numbers in front of me, but I would think.

And so now what you see is that I'm sure there are more vacancies in Gauteng than there were before the pandemic and fewer vacancies or overcrowding, if you like, in Cape Town. And don't forget that pocket in sort of Durban North, Umklunga Rocks, just sort of north of there, that area. Everyone tells me he's doing very well. I haven't been there for ages, actually, but everyone tells me it's very full. We've spoken to some of the companies that own office properties there. So the geographic picture has changed. I still find it interesting that the number, that the percentage of offices that are vacant in South Africa now is roughly what it was just before the pandemic. And it doesn't suggest to me that we're all immediately rushing back to the office. I don't think that's happening. I do think perhaps that if you look at it in waves, probably more people are spending more time in the office now, perhaps than at any point since the pandemic started. In other words, maybe you started going back to work to the office one day a week, then two days a week, and now three.

Something along those lines. Perhaps offices have rejigged themselves as well. Completely different buildings inside, some completely different sort of offices inside, some buildings in Santa now compared to what you had before the pandemic. Your experience of it, please. And before we go any further, and I'm happy to have this discussion because if you want to tell me why I'm wrong, I'm happy to hear it.

I am still one of those people who think if you really want a good, strong, effective team, you actually have to see each other, and you have to see each other regularly. I am a social being, you're probably not entirely shocked to hear that, but I do think that you do need to actually see each other. You need to look at each other in the eyes when you're doing something and understand where each other are coming from. I think that's really important. And without that, I think eventually you miss something. Jokes slip, the fun of it goes away. That's very important. And one last thing, and I won't harp on this, but I think it's crucially important. In a society like ours, if you don't go to work, you're not going to see people from different parts of society very often, because the office is the one kind of place we have where people from different parts of society actually mix. Lots of other places too in terms of factories and things, but if you don't go to work, you probably won't see many people from other parts of our society on a regular basis. And I think that's really important. Four thoughts please, 72 702 1702

Also, we all views on 11 AA30702 and 21 4460567 Mzila Mthenjane, the Minerals Council, we'll hear from him in just a moment, made some interesting observations about competitiveness. I thought that was interesting. The incredible story of the sale of the campus in Bryanston about what's happened with the NTT transaction. Now it seems that one person has basically, Jason Goodall has basically admitted a wrongdoing. Four of the others are very angry about it. There's still one who we haven't heard from. One of the journalists who's really led the reporting on this is Duncan MacLeod at Tech Central. We'll ask him to just explain it to us. It's quite a tale.

We'll talk about office vacancies with Professor Francois Viruly. He is a property economist and professor at UCT. And then also Andre Nebgen, the CEO at Discovery Green. That to come just before seven o'clock. Good to hear from you this evening. It's 12 minutes after six.