BLACK TALENT IS SCANDALISED IN SA
RACISM was anchored on the false notion that blacks were subhuman.
The struggle against racism in all its forms – colonialism and apartheid – was about rescinding this falsehood.
Despite the existence of a constitution that guarantees equal rights to all South Africans, irrespective of race and gender, the struggle for black people to regain their pride is far from over.
Incidents of racism that crop up from time to time show that many in our society still believe in the notion of black inferiority.
Under the current constitutional dispensation it is relatively easy to isolate white racism and deal decisively with its overt manifestation.
But we, black people, have a far bigger challenge than dealing with white racists.
We are our own enemies, doing a lot of damage to ourselves and reversing the gains of the struggle. Many blacks have emerged as the worst perpetrators of the idea that blacks lack necessary sophistication to do things the right way.
The ANC-led government, whose historic purpose is about doing everything in its power to disprove such notions, seems to be doing quite the opposite.
The manner in which black executives and other senior officials in state-owned enterprises are treated is worrying.
These companies have become slaughter houses of black integrity.
Hardly a month passes without a senior black manager in a stateowned company or government department being put to the guillotine.
Some are suspended for ridiculously lengthy periods for reasons that are unclear, if they exist at all. Some have to face the indignity of being subjected to kangaroo courts with threats of political blackmail.
Some are punished for refusing to toe the political line and dish out tenders to the “right” people.
Some have been forced to play the game of politics as a survival tactic, to the detriment of the companies they lead. Sometimes some of them are cleared of wrongdoing after their integrity has been tarnished beyond repair.
And in some cases they are kicked out and paid off under opaque contractual arrangements.
In the last decade or so a variation of this has been experienced by a number of black executives at the Land Bank, Eskom, SAA, SA Express, SABC, Transnet, Petro SA and the Post Office. Put together, all that has happened to a number of black executives in these companies leads to one unfortunate conclusion: that black people are incapable of running these complicated organisations.
Alternatively, that there are no black people well qualified to be managers. The following factors appear to be the main drivers of this unfortunate state of affairs.
First, some of the ministers under whose portfolio state companies fall, have proved that they lack the necessary supervisory acumen. This is a political problem that can be traced to the person who appoints the ministers.
The ministers have failed to perform their duties as shareholder representatives of the state.
For such ministers, political interference – dictating to CEOs who they should appoint and to what position – is the ultimate shareholder mandate.