Madoda Vilakazi on Nedlac’s hopes for its own new dawn
Weak, divided council didn’t do enough to combat state capture
● The executive director of Nedlac, Madoda Vilakazi, says it could have done more to resist state capture.
“But if you’re sitting in government and someone in government says ‘There is no corruption, what corruption?’ — that is a challenge.”
He believes President Cyril Ramaphosa’s influence will help restore the effectiveness of Nedlac, the National Economic Development and Labour Council — which is being questioned again right now after the Department of Labour ignored agreements reached by the council on the minimum wage bill.
“If you have someone at the head of government saying ‘We need to stamp out corruption’, then it gives impetus to us,” says Vilakazi.
Nedlac’s mandate in terms of the Nedlac Act requires it “to strive to promote the goals of economic growth”.
Vilakazi, who was appointed almost exactly two years ago, concedes that it sat by while the government, one of the major partners in Nedlac alongside business and labour, destroyed the economy.
“Unfortunately, that’s how things have happened. We wish things were done differently and we could have intervened better than we did.”
A task team was set up in Nedlac last year to help avoid credit rating downgrades, but he concedes it was very late in the day.
“Some downgrades were triggered by the dismissal of a finance minister at a very strategic time,” he says.
“There is nothing Nedlac can do to ensure that a minister doesn’t get dismissed. Some of these things are totally out of our hands. We can only deal with the aftermath of what has happened.”
He says Nedlac was weakened by a lack of unity.
Most damagingly, the business entity in Nedlac couldn’t even agree about the impact of downgrades, let alone how to avoid them.
The Black Business Council, which shared the Business Unity South Africa seat at Nedlac, furiously opposed the Busa view that downgrades were bad for the economy and to be avoided by all means possible.
Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan accused them of supporting state capture. Busa ended its agreement to share its Nedlac seat with the Black Business Council, and it is no longer represented at Nedlac.
It has applied to be admitted in its own right, and this is being considered, says Vilakazi.
How divisive will this be for Nedlac if the Black Business Council still can’t see why junk status and state capture are bad for the economy?
Vilakazi says he believes its views have changed since Ramaphosa took over from Jacob Zuma.
“I think going forward everybody is now reading from the same hymn sheet.”
Nedlac is supposed to be an influential institution where business, labour and government meet to discuss key issues.
But the most key issue of all, that of state capture, was avoided.
“Nedlac will be a lot more effective as long as everybody plays their part and there are no holy cows. That has been a big problem,” says Vilakazi.
“If everything that needs to be dealt with is not dealt with in a more united and forceful way, we can’t face things head-on.”
He says Nedlac is in a much better place than it was.
“There are no holy cows now, everybody is free to discuss anything. And we are happy about that because that is what we are about.”
Maybe. But perhaps when it comes to the Department of Labour, which oversees Nedlac, it feels it still needs to tread carefully.
Last week, Vilakazi said that the department’s bungling of draft policy agreements on the minimum wage had undermined its work.
This was after the department, and specifically the minister, Mildred Oliphant, was roundly slated for changing agreements on the minimum wage bill reached at Nedlac after three years of debate.
The department bungled a key definition of “worker” in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, thereby excluding independent contractors and task-based work from the minimum wage bill.
When such mistakes are made, “it does undermine the work of Nedlac”, Vilakazi was reported to have said.
He says he was misquoted, and there’s “a lot of misunderstanding” of the role of the Department of Labour.
“People are just amplifying the negatives.”
Ramaphosa promised in his state of the nation address that the national minimum wage would be passed into legislation on May 1.
Vilakazi accepts that this will probably be delayed — owing to the need for public consultation, not bungling by the department
He concedes that the definition of a worker slipped into the bill by the department was not what Nedlac agreed to.
“But they’ve admitted that was a mistake. My view is it has been blown out proportion.
“The substance of the legislation presented to parliament is what was agreed to at Nedlac.
“In my view, the Department of Labour has done what is expected of it.”
Vilakazi, 53, cut his teeth in union politics in the early 1990s and worked closely with mineworkers’ union boss and subsequent South African president Kgalema Motlanthe, who was his immediate superior and taught him the importance of integrity and how to lead “in a democratic manner”.
He also introduced him to the work of Karl Marx. Vilakazi says he wouldn’t describe himself as a Marxist, but a socialist.
“I want everyone to have what is needed to live. This uneven distribution of wealth is unacceptable in my view.”
He says as leader of Nedlac he is either accused of being a sellout or of “doing the bidding of your masters”.
He says in the past the government has not always accorded Nedlac its proper status, as intended in the legislation.
“We would beg ministers to do the things they were meant to do by law, such as bringing legislation to Nedlac before taking it to parliament, and sometimes they would just not do that.
“There were pockets of resistance within the cabinet. We had challenges.”
He believes that with Ramaphosa this attitude will change.
“Things will improve now, and we’ll work better with government. and with all the departments in the economic and labour market sector. I hope.”
We wish things were done differently and we could have intervened better than we did Madoda Vilakazi Executive director of Nedlac