Black business flexes its muscles
Linda Ensor
THE politics of black business and its views on the slow pace of economic transformation will be high on the agenda as this week kicks off.
The Black Business Council, which caused controversy by backing President Jacob Zuma, is holding a two-day consultative and policy-making conference in Johannesburg from Monday.
Not all of its affiliates, which include the Black Management Forum, the Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants of Southern Africa‚ the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals and the Black Lawyers Association, endorsed its position, which is likely to be hotly debated. The conference is expected to be attended by Cabinet ministers, CEOs and representatives from business, labour and civil society, with Zuma delivering the keynote address at the gala dinner on Tuesday night.
The focus of the conference will be on transformation — why it is necessary and why it is taking place so slowly — with feedback on the government’s black industrialists programme.
Officials from the government’s economic cluster of ministries will make presentations. The council’s annual general meeting will elect new office bearers during the conference.
There will be a one-day annual forum on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which has been of significant benefit to SA’s trade with the US, on Monday in Washington DC.
Assistant secretary of state for African affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield and US trade representative Michael Froman will deliver opening remarks at the event, which brings together African trade ministers including Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies, who will participate in the Africa Ministers of Trade consultative group meeting, which will discuss the future of the US-Africa trade relationship beyond Agoa, which terminates in 2025.
More than 1,000 health activists from the Fix the Patent Laws campaign will march to the Department of Trade and Industry in Pretoria on Tuesday to demand a change that will make medicines more affordable.
It will also be a week in which the national broadcaster continues to make the news as well as broadcasting it.
SABC chairman Mbulaheni Maguvhe will present the SABC’s annual results on Thursday and could clarify what it intends to do about its former chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, whom the board apparently wants to retain in an acting capacity until December.
Nongovernmental organisation Right2Know (R2K) is organising a “national day of action” on Wednesday — the International Right to Know Day — when it will march to top SABC advertisers to call upon them to pull their advertisements until the SABC takes meaningful steps to tackle its crisis. R2K is calling for an end to political interference at the broadcaster.
Throughout the week, the 17th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora takes place in Sandton until next Wednesday.
The ANC’s national executive committee will meet on Friday to discuss feedback it received from structures on its local government elections performance. This could involve a discussion of how events, such as the controversy over Zuma’s private residence in Nkandla and the court judgment about it, affected the party’s election campaign.
Parliament closed for a twoweek recess on Friday.