UNDERSTAND IT: The first advertisement in Business Day's new campaign addresses education in South Africa.
UNDERSTAND IT: The first advertisement in Business Day's new campaign addresses education in South Africa.

THIS week we start flighting, in earnest, the first television adverts that, as far as I know and certainly since 2001 when I became editor, Business Day has ever run. We’re always quick to advise other people to advertise when the economic cycle is down, it is about time we did it ourselves.

I am so proud of the work that has been done. The initial idea was to produce advertising along the lines of "Read Business Day and you’ll get rich" sort of thing. I asked for something more real, more passionate and something that spoke to our mission as a newspaper that tries to explain to readers why it is important not only to understand that our greatest problems are poverty and inequality, but to engage with them and their possible consequences. The wealthy are far more threatened by poverty than they care to believe.

While I am interested in the causes of poverty and inequality here, I am much more interested in how we fix them. This being South Africa, every man and his dog has an opinion and that is a wonderful thing in one way and not so good in another. I, of course, think more people should listen to Business Day! We want a more inclusive capitalist economy and we get there by making it more democratic, like the Germans were forced to do after the Second World War.

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Our TV advertising campaign is designed to heighten awareness of the core national problem (the National Question being another thing entirely and which, unlike poverty, will be solved by time alone). The first ad flighted over the weekend.

The message is this: Understand Your Country Or Lose It. That applies to all those of us who live here and love it here and to all those for whom life here is a constant struggle. We must fight for our country. We must help it to grow, prosper and be happy, be more open and less frightened to speak, be loyal and proud. We must care about our institutions and try always to give ourselves, as citizens and as a country, the benefit of the doubt. We must not be so quick to judge, to assume the worst of people simply because they are different.

Business Day is no ordinary newspaper. It is one of only a handful of quality, business dailies written in English in the world. And we are much better served, trust me, by our business press than are the economies of Germany, France, Spain or Italy by theirs. Our mission, always, is to try to explain; how do politics and economics affect our lives? To cover, better than anyone else, that Political Economy. It is not a perfect newspaper by any means but one South Africa can be proud of. The ad campaign is both a marketing device and our attempt to say Thank You to the people from all walks of life, from across the political, class, colour and gender divides that crease our society. Thank You for reading us. Thank You for advertising with us. Thank You for trusting us.

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THANK heaven for the ref! Had he not been so bad the true poverty of our effort against the All Blacks would have been that much clearer for all to see, and Richie McCaw wasn’t even playing! It would have been like watching Floyd Mayweather play with an opponent the way he did on Sunday morning. I’m sure it’s tough being the coach, and Heyneke Meyer is by all accounts a good one. But help me out here. Why pick exactly the same team to play a brilliant New Zealand as the one that beat an ineffectual Australia? Does the opposition play no part in team selection as it may, for instance, in cricket?

Ruan Pienaar surely has started his last game for the Springboks. He used to be wonderful to watch. Now I just can’t watch. Morne Steyn had an awful game, as he always does the moment his scrum isn’t getting its way. Even when it is, his instinct is to kick possession away as quickly as possible. If he is so important as a place kicker, put him where Percy Montgomery used to be, at fullback, and get Pat Lambie back starting at flyhalf.

Ja, ja, I can hear the groans; there I go on again about Lambie. But Lambie spent the Super Rugby season behind a failing Sharks pack (no Willem Alberts, no Bismarck du Plessis) and still did incredibly well under pressure. That’s because he can play and think at the same time. If we think so little of the fullback position as to give it so often to Zane Kirchner (overlooking Lambie and even the gifted Gio Aplon) then why not play Steyn there? Oh, that’s right, he missed four tackles on Saturday, didn’t he? Or was it five? Or six? Start Lambie at flyhalf against the All Blacks on October 5 and we’ll be on our way towards giving them a real hiding. "Patrick knows what I want," the coach will intone, "he has to work on his tactical kicking." Like Morne Steyn’s and Zane Kirchner’s tactical kicking on Saturday, do you mean, coach? That tactical kicking? Jeez, no wonder Lambie doesn’t get it. He thinks the opposition shouldn’t be given the ball to run back at you with. What a fool.