Business leaders aren’t pawns, Ramaphosa

The electorate won’t do it. The government can’t do it. Now business is going to have a whirl.

Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa and some ministers met with business leaders, after months of increasingly strident corporate warnings that South Africa was heading towards collapse.

It was agreed that business would get involved in rehabilitating four sectors: energy – where it is already involved – transport and logistics, and crime.

In a country where talk of radical concepts such as expropriation without compensation of private property and nationalisation is not simply hot air, business has always been skittish of drawing fire by entering the political arena.

That it has done so now is an indication of how perilous our situation is.

From the government side, too, there is a pathological antipathy towards anything smacking of private enterprise.

That the government agreed to meet is the other compelling indication of how perilous our situation is.

While this could be a win-win situation, the CEOs will have to be as hard-nosed in their approach to the government as they would be in any corporate deal-making.

If not, the ANC will simply pick their brains and their pockets, take the credit for any solutions implemented, and send them packing with a pat on the back.

Businesses should keep in mind that aside from the ruling party’s ideological antipathy its hostility has a practical aspect: in SA, it’s private enterprise versus criminal enterprise.

The ANC is a massive criminal operation.

Both it and its talentless cadres rely for survival on the money that is illegally diverted from legitimate businesses and the budgets of government departments.

The Sunday Times, citing anonymous sources, said Ramaphosa outlined firmly to the business leaders what the parameters of the new relationship were.

Business and government were going to be “working together”, said Ramaphosa.

His words do point to the biggest problem that organised business is going to have in its new relationship with a disorganised government.

They have to understand that the ANC is not looking for a partner; it’s looking for a lackey.

Another signal of there being a significant disparity in commitment comes from the composition of the groups.

The private sector sent a high-powered group; the state sector, less so.

Organised business was represented by the CEOs of BLSA and Business Unity SA.

Also in the business delegation were Nedbank CEO Mike Brown, Standard Bank CEO Lungisa Fuzile, Sanlam CEO Paul Hanratty, Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neil Froneman, Toyota CEO Andrew Kirby, Remgro CEO Jannie Durand, Rothschild SA executive chair Martin Kingston, Sasol CEO Fleetwood Grobler, and Nolitha Fakude, chair of the Minerals Council.

Some, like Adrian Gore, the irrepressibly upbeat CEO of Discovery and head of Business4SA, have always had a strongly conciliatory approach to government.

Others have become considerably more outspoken in recent months.

Ramaphosa’s team was somewhat lacklustre, some ministers there, but not Justice Minister Ronald Lamola nor Police Minister Bheki Cele, who sent his deputy.

While Ramaphosa speaks endlessly about the critical necessity of social compacts, his interaction here with organised business is very different from how he engages with organised labour.

The latter is between respectful equals; in contrast, he appears to view the business leaders as gullible pawns who will do his bidding.

But if they are to succeed in the objectives, they must prove him mistaken. They can only do that by being having clarity of what they want in return for what they offer.