‘Lamberti, time to change’

MARK LAMBERTI has represented the entrepreneurial hero for me for much of my commercial life, and I have admired his skill and determination, and his successful results .

However, these results have been in the mould of the typical South African businessmen and I have quite recently only started to understand the costs to others, through which these successes have been largely achieved.

Much of our commercial success is achieved upon the backs of poor and marginalised groups – and, without a pool of poor, unjustly treated people, there is no real likelihood of us privileged people becoming or remaining wealthy. Within Imperial, this culture is particularly in evidence and no doubt Mr Lamberti fitted in very well.

He would be well advised to settle promptly with the lady whose career he came so close to ruining and ask Eusebius McKaiser to coach him on how to exclude institutional racism from his business and personal style, otherwise he will likely end his life in commercial disgrace as South African society latches onto the inappropriateness and illegality of much of our societal commercial and other actions by privileged and power.

He can also try to watch “The Fall” and study “RhodesMustFall”, to better understand the hole that he and many others of us like him are in.