In my current capacity, and previous one as president of the local business chamber, I had cause to attend many meetings, conferences, lekgotlas with government departments and entities of all stripes. Always in the company of fraternal business organisations, we congratulated ourselves that government was listening and engaging, in the hope that our input would make a positive contribution to policy formulation, problem-solving and capacitation.
Alas, I, and many of my colleagues have come to the conclusion that most, if not all of these engagements are mere window dressing, and box-ticking exercises by the conveners. There is no real intention or appetite of taking even a smidgen of the input on board.
There is undoubtedly a great deal of ‘meeting fatigue’ amongst the business representative organisation community. For myself, I have become extremely selective in responding positively to the number of invitations that cross my desk.
It’s not as though the problems – polycrisis seems to be the in phrase at the moment – besetting the country, and more particularly the business sector, are unknown. The business community is beyond adding to, or expounding on, these issues – they are keen to discuss solutions and mitigating strategies.
An example is the ongoing decline in water service delivery by Ugu. At the earliest stages of what has now become an undeniable crisis, a group of retired water engineers approached the leadership of the district and offered their services, to stem what would become today the effective dysfunctionality of the reticulation system. After being shunted from pillar to post by the powers that be, they gave up in utter frustration.
Simply, ideology had trumped expediency, because the incumbent management and political leadership did not want themselves portrayed as incapable or incompetent.
The upshot of this unwillingness for true and effective engagement that is underpinned by rapid execution of shared strategies, is that businesses are rapidly becoming more and more independent of government services.
Many businesses are investing heavily in their own power and water infrastructure to ensure their survival. The sobering result of this is that government utilities are going to be receiving less and less revenue from business, when in fact they require every bit of revenue to fix their ailing infrastructure.
While business organisations profess in public to be willing partners with the government to fix the country, in private, most of their members are rapidly taking steps to mitigate the results of stagnant strategies, poor execution and policy uncertainty.
Vijay Naidoo is the CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum. He writes in his personal capacity. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
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