I don't think that there is a single person in South Africa who doesn't believe that building costs in this country are way out of all proportion.
There are only three direct input costs in the building process: Land, materials and labour.
And each one of these input costs seems to be controlled by Ali Baba and his 40 thieves.
Various cement companies were allowed to operate as a cartel by the previous Nationalist government because the cement manufacturing industry was considered to be a "strategic industry" of national importance.
Once democracy came to our shores, the cement cartel was supposedly broken up and all three of these companies faithfully promised consumers that competition would prevail within the new South Africa, in line and in keeping with the country's newfound democratic freedom.
The cartel and each one of its members lied.
At least that's what's been alleged now that one company has finally turned around and admitted to the Competition Commission that the old cartel agreements have continued to operate the scenes and maintain prices or, much more importantly, share markets and divide these markets, in such a way that no company competes with any other company.
This company says it is "coming clean" and, because it is blowing the whistle on other members of the "cement club", is hoping that it will get off lightly while the others will have to pay huge penalties.
Penalties that go directly to the government, remember. They do not go back to you or me. We are the ones who bought the cement and used it. We get nothing back. The producers make the profits, the government gets the fines and we carry the losses. It's iniquitous.
Unethical behaviour, unfair competition and price fixing are the main, or possibly the sole cause of high building costs in this country. Collusion is destroying the industry and forcing us, the home buyers, to live in slavery just to pay off our exorbitant bonds.
What is the reality of price collusion and price fixing? We, the consumers, get ripped off. When the companies are caught and convicted, none of the money ever goes back to us. We don't get a rebate on the cement we bought or get a lump-sum contribution to our bond to reduce our monthly costs. We get jack-squat.
In fact, we just lose. Government scores, material manufacturers score, retailers score and we get nothing.
I'm convinced that the same kind of price collusion applies in every other building materials supply sector and building retailing sector in South Africa. It's cleverly disguised and ingeniously hidden from view, but believe me there is a lot more market sharing, price collusion and margin sharing than we know about.
And unless we get the top people in the top companies to start blowing the whistle on this unethical behaviour it will continue unabated for the next 100 years.
Bear in mind that all the major material suppliers have skilled spin doctors who conjure up new and innovative ways of duping the market into believing that they are operating in a completely ethical manner.
They dupe us with impunity as the bread price, the food prices, the medicines prices and the building prices show.
So it comes as no surprise to me that the building industry itself attracts so many criminals and fly-by-night crooks. They are just part of an industry that is morally bent from the top of the chain right down to the very bottom.
When it comes to the big construction companies, we are constantly reassured that these companies compete fairly and openly in the market and the tender basis for awarding contracts is supposed proof of this.
That is what we are told and the spin doctors make sure that we believe them too. My problem is that given the track record in every other sector of the building industry, I find it hard to believe that there are no "closed-door" meetings or "casual chats" on the golf courses of South Africa that allow certain boundaries to be set, tendering arrangements to be agreed or market divisions to be sanctioned.
The construction companies obviously deny that there is any collusion – just as the bread manufacturers did – but there are investigations underway and it will be interesting to see what those investigations reveal.
Moreover, many other material suppliers have said that they would never dream of colluding on price or markets, but then we hear that one such company has been fined hundreds of millions of rands by the Competition Commission for unfair pricing and that a separate investigation into price fixing is underway into anti-competitive behaviour in the steel market, involving some of South Africa's apparently most robust and most reputable companies.
Sand, stone and aggregate suppliers too are being investigated. In fact, looking at the entire supply chain in the building industry, we find elements of unethical behaviour that extend right throughout every sector of our industry.
The building materials market stinks and the more the authorities look into it, the more pungent the odours of dishonour and greed become. For the construction industry, it seems is riddled with crooks and thieves in elegant Armani suits, Rayban sunglasses and a 350ML to carry them off to their occasional site visits.
Let me tell you, these people are the primary reason that our construction costs are so unreasonably high today.
Of course, the second major input cost in the building process is labour and here we face a whole litany of additional problems. South African labourers are lazy and incompetent and yet they are extremely demanding when it comes to payments, working conditions and working hours.
I have my doubts that a South African labourer would last for more than ten minutes on a construction site in China, New York, Dubai or Britain. Yet they'll survive here for years and years.
Labourers here do as little as possible to earn as much as possible and at the drop of a hat will hold a construction company or builder to ransom by working slowly, deliberately working badly or walking out at a critical time such as during a cement pour.
Without wanting to prejudge the horrors of the staircase that collapsed at the church in Johannesburg last weekend that left 72 people injured, some seriously, let me assure you that that staircase did not fall down because the building work was perfectly done and built to specification. It fell down because someone got it wrong.
Buildings, staircases, retaining walls, ceilings - fall down because people make mistakes. The sad fact of the matter is that most of these mistakes happen because people are cheating the system. Using inferior materials, not adhering to the specifications or taking shortcuts on curing times, cement mixes or any other crucial material component.
Why? Because they want to make more money.
Ask Tokyo Sexwale about the R1,5bn that his predecessor Lindiwe Sisulu spent on builders who cheated the system, who took short cuts, used inferior materials, and probably even bought stolen supplies because they were cheaper than the same materials sold by a nearby retailer.
And, of course, even though the buildings fall down, the man or woman who was paid to do the work has a pile of money in the bank, a multimillion rand house that's paid off and several expensive motorcars in the garage.
Why should they worry?
So here we sit in South Africa, paying through our noses for materials that are overpriced, for labour that is unproductive and useless, and for properties that fall down or have to have major remedial work done because we're surrounded by crooks.
Well, what can we do about it?
For me that's the million-dollar question and my only answer is draconian:
– Unbundle our labour laws so that it is easy to hire and fire people and get rid of the lazy and useless labourers that punctuate our building sites. Hire workers who are prepared to work – even if they are Zimbabwean, Malawian or Rwandan.
– Unbundle our economy by imposing jail sentences (not fines) on company directors responsible for price collusion or market sharing arrangements. Put these white-collar, golf-playing predators in jail.
– Create a prosecutorial mechanism that will preclude any builder, materials supplier or retailer convicted of price collusion or market sharing from ever being able to operate in this industry again. Like doctors and lawyers can be struck off the roll, so too should builders, material suppliers and retailers.
That way we might curb this open verneukery that has plagued our economy for way, way too long. And let those crooks that are guilty of price collusion, price fixing, market sharing and shoddy building work rot in jail.
Because that's where they belong.
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