EMPOWERING THE ELITE

Of all the schools in the country that could do with a R7.5m leg up from Cell C, the privileged Hilton College isn’t one of them

For a company in the deepest of junk status, lavishing a multimillion-rand sponsorship on SA’S most elite school doesn’t seem to be the most obvious way of spending sparse resources. Yet Cell C claims it’s doing the right thing by giving R7.5m over three years to SA’S most expensive school, Hilton College, which sits on a sprawling 1,762 ha estate in Kwazulu Natal’s midlands.

Two weeks ago, headmaster George Harris informed parents of a “substantial partnership” with Cell C that would allow the school to use the money for “whatever purposes it chooses”. As a quid pro quo, Cell C gets “discreet branding of first-team kit and certain sports equipment”.

It suggests some elements in corporate SA are pretty out of touch with the society in which they operate.

Unfortunately, Cell C executive marketing head Doug Mattheus didn’t do much to counter this impression when I asked him whether his company wasn’t just helping an elite school that hardly needs a leg up. “We ask ourselves the same questions when it comes to our sponsorships of the Ferrari day, or the polo. The polo is also quite elitist at Inanda, but we do all these things for different reasons,” he says.

But Hilton? After all, the school that first opened its doors in 1872 and which charges R253,660/year has no shortage of well-heeled graduates it could call on for cash if it were ever to run short. What’s the reason?

Says Mattheus: “We want to tap into those kids who use a lot of data, and we want to speak to their parents and sister schools. We don’t want to come across like we only look after schools that don’t need money.” (Note: Tiso Blackstar, which owns the Financial Mail, is a co-sponsor of the Hilton Arts Festival, which takes place at the college.)

Mattheus says Cell C asks “questions of all our sponsorships to try and ensure we get the right return”. He admitted Hilton is the only school it sponsors in this way, but says it has a number of other sponsorships that “filter down to the grassroots”.

“But we’re acutely aware of where we live and how we live, and how we have a social responsibility to uplift everyone,” he says.

At least Harris says that even though Cell C hasn’t stipulated how the money will be spent, the school has earmarked it to finance “underprivileged boys who wouldn’t otherwise have had an opportunity to come to a school like this”. He says Hilton isn’t “one of those independent schools that turns a blind eye [to society]”.

Harris is someone who does actually know how tough it is for government schools to raise funds. He previously worked with 40 government schools when he headed the Royal Bafokeng Institute in the North West. “I’ve worked in underprivileged schools and it’s very difficult to get money from anyone,” he says.

But if Cell C really wants to improve the society in which it operates, you have to ask whether this is the best use of its cash. Most state schools try, but fail, to raise even R1m/year. And the disaster unfolding in

SA’S government schools will surely have devastating ripple effects on Cell C’s operating environment.

The company could, for example, have helped any of the 5,175 government schools across the country — 21% of the 24,000 schools — that have either no water or unreliable water supply; or the 58% of schools that don’t have any computers; or the 70% that don’t have libraries; or the 34% that have no sports facilities. Fortunately, not all of corporate SA is as tone deaf. Tiger Brands, for example, began serving breakfasts at no-fee schools in Alexandra in 2011. It now feeds 64,000 learners at 92 schools every day.

Cell C’s move is all the more surprising as its finances are, in all likelihood, more precarious than Hilton’s. Last year, it twice came close to filing for business rescue as its debt ballooned to R23bn; it was technically insolvent and had to restate its customer numbers down from 25m all the way to 15.3m. Mercifully, a white knight in the shape of the Levy brothers’ Blue Label rode in at the last minute with a R5.5bn cheque to save the company. Yet Moody’s still rates it as junk and says “its liquidity position remains weak”.

Without rehashing Cell C’s recent brush with sexism, it’s not a company that has illustrated a deep empathy with large parts of its community.

Some private schools aren’t much better. A few weeks ago, another elite private school, St John’s, was deeply embarrassed when it gave a teacher found guilty of egregious acts of racism a “final warning” and gave him back his chalk. It was a deeply flawed move, illustrating just how out of step that school is with the mood of the country. Eventually, the school relented and fired the teacher, but not before doing deep damage to the wider society.

Cell C, unfortunately, seems to have displayed exactly the same sort of tin ear for the society it relies upon to use its network.

Cell C could, for example, have helped any of the 5,175 schools across SA that have either no water or unreliable water supply