Business more trusted than the ANC to get SA working
In the 1980s a group of white business people travelled to Lusaka, the home in exile of the ANC, to meet their fellow South Africans to discuss the future of their country. In some circles this was looked at askance, as business dabbling in politics.
Back then, two things were as clear as mud: first, apartheid was becoming unviable both as an ideology and business; and second, even though the apartheid regime was militarily stronger than the ANC at any time, it could no longer continue shooting unarmed blacks protesting in the townships.
The ANC’s campaign to isolate Pretoria was scoring unimaginable successes. The black caucus in the US managed to get the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Sanctions Act passed, dealing a devastating blow to apartheid’s laager economy.
Beyond the African safari, as the trip would be known, business continued supporting efforts towards a peaceful negotiation of apartheid’s end in 1994.
Today, almost 30 years since the end of formal apartheid, the country finds itself at an inflection point.
The government is presiding over a failing state in most respects. Some of its entities struggle to pay salaries. Its state-owned rail network, Africa’s largest, is failing commodity exporters, which cannot get their produce to lucrative markets.
SA’s state-owned ports are failing to handle imports and exports due to inefficiency and underinvestment. This has resulted in SA losing its role as a gateway to the rest of the continent. To its international partners, especially in the West, SA ’ s geographical position — virtually surrounded by oceans — is becoming more precarious by the day.
As in the 1980s, business is getting increasingly concerned about the state of the country, especially its low-growth economy. In the past few months business organisations have partnered with the government to tackle some of the most pressing problems, including the crime and corruption, energy, transport and freight logistics crises.
Several other initiatives, such as tackling the ticking bomb that is youth unemployment, have been under way for years now. These efforts are over and above the billions business spends through enterprise supplier development and corporate social investment programmes, and much more paid in corporate taxes each year.
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Since the dawn of all-race democracy, business has sought to stay in its lane for fear of upsetting the ANC, which had colonised the moral high ground. But in recent years, the ANC’s corruption has loosened its grip on that terrain.
Until now, business’s role in politics has been to support multiparty democracy through political donations, mostly to the parties that are represented in parliament. However, the new partypolitical funding law has made these donations tricky for businesses. Most are happy to support multiparty democracy, but few are willing to have their generosity disclosed, as required by the new funding regime.
For the past few months, chair after chair of listed companies has been complaining about the obvious lack of the political leadership required to dig SA out of its quagmire.
The platform for this ritual drum beating of grievances has been the companies’ AGMs and annual report statements. This is the safest space, with minimal reprisals, since they are obligatory and few politicians bother to pay attention to these regulatory statements and events.
Company chairs, mainly retired business executives, can get away with quite a lot — unlike CEOs, who have to maintain working relationships with thin-skinned governing party ministers.
Former Nedbank chair Reuel Khoza has said it. Trevor Manuel, chair of insurer Old Mutual, has said it. And this week, Johann Rupert, chair and founder of investment company Remgro, said it.
In typically unvarnished remarks at the company’s AGM, Rupert told stakeholders that SA’s politicians are “decades behind the curve” because they keep talking about nationalisation and still believe the government creates jobs.
The ANC came to power believing it could deliver on the promises of its Freedom Charter, a document that argued for wholesale nationalisation of mines and banks. After taking power in 1994, Nelson Mandela put the brakes on the nationalisation talk and replaced it with a mixed-economy narrative.
But about five years ago, ANC comrades started talking less, and more quietly, about the mixed economy. Instead, after being
THIRTY YEARS SINCE THE END OF APARTHEID, SA FINDS ITSELF AT AN INFLECTION POINT
THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THERE IS MORE BUSINESS CAN DO — AND INDEED SHOULD DO
increasingly rejected by voters, they began talking more loudly about nationalisation again. In 2017, the party resolved to nationalise the Reserve Bank and expropriate land without compensation.
Both resolutions, which were meant to neutralise Julius Malema’s EFF, have been fudged by senior ANC leaders, seemingly in the hope they would die a natural death.
Back to business. As part of civil society, business occupies a unique role and polls indicate it is now more trusted than the government. Unlike NGOs and civic bodies, business has both resources and urgency.
The question that arises now is whether there is more business can do — and indeed should do — to orchestrate a course correction in SA’s body politic, beyond giving a helping hand and decrying the sorry state of affairs.