BUSINESS IS NO MESSIAH
Can business be a trusted leader, or even a strong ally, in
the broader fight by civil society in speaking truth to power? This debate is
one that frequently emerges in the "Why doesn't business speak
louder" schools of thought that permeate newspaper letter pages. This is
especially so in times of when drastic
populist remedies are floated, such as the ANC Youth League recent nationalisation
proposals.
In fact we probably
expect too much of business in South Africa. Nor is there much clarity in what
we understand by "business". For instance:
1.
What do we mean by organised business? Is it Business Unity SA, comprising mostly
medium sized businesses? Or "big"(i.e. multinational type) business?
Or is it crony capitalists, who are not so much about business as they are but
about exacting rents via the state from business and society in general. Some
black business forums are not about business in the conventional sense at all,
as the SA Communist Party's Jeremy Cronin pointed out recently. They look to
the state, not to the market for sustenance. They represent (not surprisingly), a majority of
public service officials or quasi-officials in black professional and business
bodies. On the other hand, formal institutions for business to consult
government tend to focus on technocratic, not overtly political, issues. The National Economic and Development Labour
Council (NEDLAC), is supposed to be a bargaining place on practical matters for
business and labour, with a largely fictional civil society participation.
2.
With whose mandate do the "captains of
industry "speak? For their shareholders? For their Boards? And how risks
averse are those shareholders and boards, interested as they are mostly in
profits (despite the ANCYL's ignorance about who "owns" the mines –
answer: major pension funds whose beneficiaries are mostly black).
3.
Who do the business organisations represent?
Certainly not small businesses, which simply do not have the cushions that big
business does in agreeing to more onerous compliance procedures or sector wide
wage agreements. Who speaks for them, and amongst those that claim that they
do, how many have a mandate they can tie their members to? Answer: None.
4.
Also, do not mistake the interests of business
with those of the market. The two are not always the same thing. Bigger
businesses, just like big government, can absorb very great efficiency costs
and actually pre-empt the price signalling functioning of the market. An
example are the "temporary sole suppliers" that still dot the South
African business landscape, many of them leftovers from the apartheid era siege
economy. Pro market and pro business are not necessarily always the same thing.
5.
Then there is the issue of effectiveness when
business does speak. The medium is too often the message when business talks.
While the negotiating partners on the side of government and labour change fairly
regularly, many spokesmen for business, however courageous, are the same people
who have been speaking for business for a decade or more. People on the other
side of the debate have tuned them out long ago. They have stopped listening. They believe
they have heard it all before, and they are not convinced that business
"cares". We also need new
voices and new ways of messaging.
Business does have a right to make its interests clear. Indeed,
it must do so if it is to grow and prosper. The broader society benefits
because in that process of growth, business creates jobs, which increases per capita
wealth , empowers individuals to look after themselves without a nanny state,
and strengthens their buying power, stimulating local service and consumer
goods industries. Taxation permitting, it also allows households to save, which in turn provides funds governments can borrow against
instead of relying fickle and expensive foreign capital to finance the economic
infrastructure that enables further economic growth.
But beyond that it is difficult to expect too much more from
business, except, importantly, in funding alternative civil society and other voices ,and properly thought out
corporate social investment and development projects, as well as conforming to
the wider sustainability ethos. Beyond that it is too big an ask to expect
business to do what we are not prepared to do ourselves through our own
engagement and participation, as voters and citizens in a still free South
Africa.
The truth of the matter is that in South Africa several
business voices, from both English and Afrikaner capital, have shown considerable
courage in putting forward views in support of the broader democracy we are so
painfully building. There is a long history of business-government engagement
that goes back to the apartheid era, where business organisations engaged with
the National Party government especially in the 1980s and, for that matter,
with the ANC in exile. That these engagements had an impact is clear, but how
much of an impact is less easy to measure. Such engagements must and will continue,
but they are not the normal business of business. Businesspeople
are, after all, South Africans just like the rest of us, with all our imperfections.
It is in the last resort up to individual South African and those civil society
institutions that are totally independent of the state, to continue the fight
to broaden and entrench our democracy. As Bob Marley more succinctly put it in
his famous Redemption Song, it is 'none but ourselves" that can free our
own minds and "emancipate us from mental slavery.
