Chairperson's New Year Message
03 February 2021
A New Year – Some grass shoots?
With some positive news coming out of the President's Office this week, we can only hope for a better 2021 and an improvement in South Africa's COVID-19 numbers.
It was a very hard end to 2020 with the imposition of further levels of lockdown causing many of us having to cancel or cut short planned holidays and where a lot of us simply needed to take a well-earned break. We hope that those who were fortunate to spend quality time with their loved ones and families enjoyed the time off.
At this time, we all remember and mourn the passing of senior and respected members of our profession Alec Brooks, Andrew Wilkins, Les Cohen and Harry Kaplan who all passed away recently. We extend heartfelt condolences to their families.
For us at SARIPA, the year has certainly started off with great energy and excitement. We have already had our first board meeting and are hard at work rolling out various projects. We are lining up an exciting series of webinars and are preparing focused training videos for members. These will cover bespoke issues of interest to members and will include insolvency, rescue and restructuring topics. Do not miss out on CPD points and register as soon as the registration details become available. It is unlikely that we will be having face to face meetings or conferences in the near term so all of our regions are busy formulating content for their virtual conferences. The first SARIPA regional virtual conference will be hosted by the Western Cape on 19 March 2021 and the content looks fresh and very exciting. We will be sending you the programme and registration link soon, please sign up and register, so as not to miss what promises to be a great event.
SARIPA membership continues to build. In the period January 2020 to date we have had 70 new members join SARIPA, an achievement we can be proud of. SARIPA remains the most relevant Insolvency and Restructuring organisation on the African continent and with new members joining SARIPA from the SADC countries, we remain on a strong growth trajectory.
We remind members that the SARIPA Programme in Insolvency Law and Practice will again commence on 22 February 2021 and we encourage members to register. The course provides you with a practice-orientated training intervention in the administration of insolvent estates. The programme covers the effects of insolvency on the insolvent, the solvent spouse and contracts, impeachable transactions, the powers and duties of trustees and liquidators, as well as insolvency meetings. You will also gain insights to proof of claims, interrogations, preferent and concurrent creditors, and drafting of liquidation and distribution accounts. You will also gain a better understanding of sequestration and winding-up procedures. The course has been highly popular over many years and we encourage young (and older) practitioners to sign up. To have the UP/SARIPA course on your CV is a must!!
Our brand-new CRM Microsoft 365 project will be up and running from the beginning of March and will change the way we manage our database enabling us to streamline our administration processes.
We continue with our liaison with the Chief Master (Insolvency Steering Committee Meetings) and CIPC (Business Rescue Liaison) and where we are engaging with these regulators on issues relevant to practice.
Our Young Bloods are also gearing up for some virtual meetings and these details will be circulated soon. Watch this space!
Overall, we are in for a busy 2021 and we ask all of you to support the organisation by joining our various initiatives and where we continue to push ourselves up the learning curve as much as possible.
The SARIPA Board and I wish you all a safe and healthy 2021 and we hope to all see you again (in person) in the very near future.
Dr Eric Levenstein (Chairperson)
