Racism still haunting Cape buiness

The spread to outlying suburbs and townships still discouraged, says chamber chief

DESPITE 20 years of democracy, the “ghosts of apartheid” still haunt the Western Cape’s business sector.

That’s the warning from new Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Ruben Richards. He is the organisation’s first chief executive, as the chamber has reconstituted as a non-profit company.

Richards’s view is that old structures continue to play a large role in discouraging the spread of business to outlying suburbs and townships. While the city centre could absorb only so many people, the reality was that many of the surrounding areas established during apartheid were simply not built to foster successful business districts.

“If you take a place like Mitchells Plain, the urban design was a classic apartheid urban design,” he said. “It was a dormitory town… there was no design for business, industry, commerce or economic selfsustainability.”

Richards wants to use his time as chief executive to help change this mentality and encourage the growth of business in areas outside the city centre. To achieve this, the chamber has spent the month holding expos throughout the Peninsula to spread businessrelated information.

The communities had responded positively to the expos, he said. The event on Tuesday for Khayelitsha, Athlone and Mitchells Plain attracted about 150 people seeking information to help their businesses.

Richards said people in areas further from the city centre also encountered bigger challenges in communicating with centrally located government entities. Hoping to ease this process, the chamber took along representatives from the Western Cape government, the city government and other institutions to provide information relevant to emerging businesses.

The expos were also intended to encourage individuals in the townships and suburbs to join the chamber. Richards said he wanted to show small businesses in these areas that they could also benefit from the advocacy and investment work of the chamber.

As the former secretarygeneral of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and a current peace negotiator for gangs, Richards hoped his history of facilitating collaboration would help him act as a conduit for business synergy.

“I think the biggest challenge facing business and commerce and industry is inclusion. Inclusion and collaboration rather than exclusion and competition.” Richards said the viability of business in the Western Cape was evident in this month’s cel- ebration of the chamber’s 210th anniversary. It also meant there were many opportunities to empower all businesses in the province.

Though the larger companies would continue to secure the major contracts, the resulting sub- contracts created a trickle- down effect, he said. Expanding the array of businesses in the chamber would enhance its ability to spread the benefits of these big contracts across the Peninsula.

Youth are another group at the forefront of the chamber’s interests. Richards views them as a group often marginalised from business, and he said he hoped to pursue the creation of a youth chamber.

“One of the greatest chal- lenges that we face in our economy is a lack of understanding in the youth of how business works,” said Richards. “That is an important energy source for the economy.”

The youth association would aim to inspire entrepreneurship. It would show young people how successful businesses operated and encourage them to emulate the behaviour that they observed.

“There is a lack of appreciation for what business means to an economy in South Africa,” said Richards. “That’s one of the bigger crises in the economy, where you have a generation of people growing up thinking that the government is the source of our revenue.”

alexandra.wilson@inl.co.za

VISION: Ruben Richards