INTRODUCTION

It is conceivable that, during the age of an ‘African renaissance’ — as espoused by South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki — the interaction between established business and foreign policy will become more pronounced and intense. While the Deputy President will expect commercial interests to assume a central role in foreign policy, the tense relationship between established business and government will make this difficult to realise. Thabo Mbeki’s commercial diplomacy will therefore experience serious strain.

There is no guarantee that government and business will manage to get together in the foreseeable future. Yet, government and business need to engage in partnership as they need each other to succeed.

A further problem is that business is battling to adapt to the new South African political order. The post-April 1994 government pursues a social and political agenda which established business has not yet grasped. Since 1995, the government-business relationship has become more conflictual, and now seems to be in jeopardy. Outside interests’ suspicions of established business are growing. A working relationship between business and society is also sorely needed.

THE POLICY CONTEXT

During the African National Congress’ (ANC) 50th National Conference, calls were made for elaborating on the vision enunciated by South Africa’s Deputy President Thabo Mbeki of an emerging ‘African renaissance’ in domestic and foreign policy. This call will ostensibly become the movement’s major preoccupation in charting the way ahead in the impending post-Mandela era. In rededicating itself to the ‘Core Values of the Reconstruction and Development Programme’ (RDP), the ANC envisions reconstruction and development — the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy was not touched on in the Discussion Documents — as a "people-driven approach" that should be seen "as part of a broader African Renaissance, spearheaded by popular movements in many countries on our continent ..."¹ The approach in foreign policy is depicted as underpinning a "commitment to, and active promotion of, the African Renaissance" defined as "the rebirth of a continent that has for far too long been the object of exploitation and plunder."²

As ephemeral and elusive a notion as an ‘African renaissance’ may seem, it deserves to be taken seriously. It may be indicative of an emerging conceptual framework for public policy development and formulation on the part of a fledgling post-apartheid regime that is still trying to sort out a coherent transition in a highly complex environment. And as a harbinger of things to come, the notion of an African renaissance is growing in doctrinaire currency. The Mandela presidency, a crucial part of South Africa’s transition, has accented reconciliation and a reaching out to constituencies beyond the ANC’s African electoral constituency. The coming Mbeki presidency is being perceived as reflecting Thabo Mbeki’s presumed ‘Africanism’ accompanied by expectations that African interests will become increasingly paramount. Mbeki’s clarion call for an African renaissance may be seen as underlining this trend, one that may well be the dominant thrust of foreign policy in the second phase of the transition over the next decade.

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE AS RESURGENT AFRICANISM

To the extent that the notion of an African renaissance evokes an ascendent ‘Africanist’ tendency, there is a need to come to terms with the apparent deep ambivalence that this concept may hold in the once politically dominant — and still economically dominant — white community that defines the South African corporate sector. Traditionally, the ANC’s attractiveness to a large segment of moderate-to-liberal whites (as well as those further to the left) not just in South Africa, but also internationally, has rested on its non-racialism as opposed to what were perceived to be the more racially defined agendas of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Furthermore, Africanist tendencies within the ANC tended to be very much on the defensive ideologically, given the orthodox Marxist trend to define nationalism in general, including African nationalism, as reactionary.

In the months to come, a reconciliation regime and an Africanist posture increasingly clashed with each other. Both within and outside the ANC, pockets in the movement’s African constituency tended to be ambivalent about non-racialism as they perceived this as a convenient ideological cover for continuing white — and to a lesser extent coloured and Indian — ascendency at the expense of Africans. President Mandela’s politics of national reconciliation were perceived by these pockets as exacerbating such tensions. However, the commencement of South Africa’s political transition and the broader global backdrop to the transition were bound to create the circumstances for a reversal in the fortunes of Africanism. The ANC government is battling to come to terms with the pressing development imperatives of its core constituency in all its increasingly multi-class character: an emerging and impatient black bourgeoisie within and outside the ANC, a mass constituency of organised working class (represented by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)), and the working and unemployed poor in urban and rural areas. The resulting emergence of an affirmative action and empowerment agenda in response to these objective realities has eroded ‘non-racialism,’ a concept that, in any case, begs for fresh definition.³

The global collapse of Marxism as a coherent and confident ideology of change also contributed to the erosion of an ill-defined non-racialism amid an environment of post-Cold War nationalist resurgence throughout the world. And in a deeply divided multiracial and multicultural society such as South Africa, something more than non-racialism and facile notions of a ‘rainbow nation’ is needed to motivate a new sense of national identity on the road to nationbuilding. This is a far more difficult though no less essential task than Mandela-esque national reconciliation. Furthermore, non-racialism and Africanism, which have been thought to be rival tendencies, are not necessarily incompatible — as Mbeki masterfully conveyed in his seminal I am an African speech delivered on the occasion of the adoption of the new Constitution in May 1996.⁴ From a national identity-forming perspective, this speech should be considered as the intellectual foundation for the articulation of an African renaissance.

For the ANC, the reconciliation of non-racialism and Africanism, among others, appears to mean going back to stating the obvious: "that South Africa is an African country."⁵ The notion of an African renaissance may therefore be interpreted as a repositioning of South Africa to undertake a renewal agenda that is organically internal and external. On the one hand, the notion of an African renaissance becomes a motivating ideological framework for forging a nationbuilding agenda that transcends race. It also aims to enlist the participation of all sectors of South African society in the nation’s domestic renewal, both for itself and for the external role that South Africa is called on to play in the rest of Africa. But this message must be carefully crafted, for it could easily conjure up images of division and tension.

On the other hand, the vision of an African renaissance seems intent on addressing and redressing Africa’s bottom rung status in a global stratification of power dominated by North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Thus defined, a South African renaissance-driven Africa policy could merge into a broader ‘South-South’ focus that could potentially position the country as a strategic bridge between North and South. This should be the rationale behind initiatives currently under way: from Pretoria’s involvement in mediating an end to the civil war in Sudan, to the resolution of the stand-off between Indonesia and East Timor in the run-up to South Africa’s future leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and ultimately in becoming a permanent member of an expanded and restructured United Nations Security Council.

Placed in its historical context, a South African-led campaign for an African renaissance, grounded in South Africa’s domestic renewal, should amount to a late twentieth century revival of pan-Africanism. This revival should be spawned by the post-apartheid reconciling of South Africa with its African environment, a process that is uneven and far from complete. The outcome of this process is largely contingent upon the extent to which key South African constituencies come to identify their interests and their future with those of Africa. This is the mega-challenge facing the Mbeki presidency.

THE GOVERNMENT-BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

At the Attracting Capital to Africa summit, held in Chantilly, Virginia, the Deputy President acknowledged the importance of "our own, African business sector, which has a critical role in continuing the African Renaissance into the 21st Century, capable of both acting on its own and in partnership with international investors."⁶ No doubt with the interest of corporate South Africa in mind, he continued: "For instance, the exploitation of the continent’s huge mineral resources, which is currently one of the most important growth sectors of the African economies, can no longer be the preserve of companies from outside our continent."⁷ This came in the wake of the American Minerals coup in Congo-Zaire at the expense of Anglo-American and served to underline the vested economic interests at stake in South Africa’s emerging Africa policy.

Nevertheless, the questions arise: How mutual is the perception of a shared interest in a South African-led renaissance in Africa between corporate South Africa and the government? How deep is the mutual commitment for a renewal at home that would serve as the springboard for a continental rebirth starting with Southern Africa? Certainly, a renaissance is not likely to happen or gain dynamic momentum without the participation of the South African corporate sector. But much rests on how the South African corporate sector perceives its interests vis-à-vis those of the government, and in particular, the prospective Mbeki government, and the interests of South African society as a whole.

The South African corporate community is in a unique position with respect to South Africa’s ongoing transition. As fate would have it, this transition is unfolding at a time that is hardly the most propitious for a newly emerging African state. The historical moment of the South African transition is one characterised by the post-Cold War accelerated globalisation of capital which has enhanced the balances of forces internally and externally in favour of capital. The ANC, in its discussion document on foreign policy, acknowledges globalisation and the drive toward liberalisation as realities that cannot be avoided, noting that "the monopoly companies of the advanced capitalist countries, particularly trans-national corporations, set most of the agenda" to the point that "the real danger exists that political and economic policy of governments throughout the world can be dictated to by these corporations."⁸ What the ANC discussion document has to say, by implication, about these monopoly companies could be indicative of an ANC/government perception of South African capital as well.

Within the post-apartheid context, and South Africa’s reconfigured power equation between government, business and labour — represented within the corporatist framework of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) — globalisation would appear to give corporate South Africa added leverage over its rival social partners in the tug-of-war over the terms of domestic renewal. Looking first at the domestic implications of an African renaissance in terms of renewal, a recent issue of Business Map observed that, while the government’s GEAR strategy had increased business’ comfort zone, "there remains mutual suspicion and tension" between the government and the business community.⁹

INVESTING IN BLACK SOUTH AFRICA: THE RENAISSANCE AT HOME

How far an ANC-led government, given its constituency pressures, can go in accommodating the comfort zone of big business without alienating its followers and fuelling increased political and social instability, becomes a major question which should be of concern to the corporate community. Given the strong indications that a Mbeki government will give priority to a development-driven racial empowerment agenda, aimed at redressing the legacies of apartheid, the question that the corporate community must grapple with is the extent to which it is willing to enter into partnership with the government in advancing such an agenda in the national interest. In short, to what extent will corporate South Africa engage the government in public-private partnerships to overcome the under-development of black South Africa?

This question begs a further one that has to do with the GEAR strategy, the cause of much of the tension within the ANC’s Tripartite Alliance: If black South Africa is approached as a developing country, is a GEAR strategy without a decisive state interventionist component, capable of achieving the government’s and the ANC’s development objectives? If not, is corporate South Africa capable of summoning within itself the political will to engage government in a public-private interventionist partnership aimed at stimulating the economy, so that GEAR can deliver on its employment targets and development aims?

Anecdotally, there is a general perception that corporate South Africa is not willing to invest in the new South Africa and that this lack of domestic ‘business confidence’ may have a negative impact on the flow of direct foreign investment into the new South Africa. The extent to which this is true and to which there is a causal link between internal business confidence, or the lack thereof, and direct foreign investment, remains to be documented empirically. But the perception exists among important segments of black opinion. The recent exchange between Moelesti Mbeki in his interview with COSATU General-Secretary Sam Shilowa is indicative of this perception:¹⁰

"Q: Do you think there is what one could call an investment strike by the business community of South Africa?

A: There are some who are of the view that it is a risk to invest in South Africa and I’m talking here about South African business people. They say it is a risk because of labour, because of low returns, because it is not competitive ..."

The fate of the R2 billion Mayivuke initiative to revitalise the Johannesburg central business district (CBD) and inner city neighbourhoods — at the launch, Deputy President Mbeki placed the project in the context of generating an African renaissance — could serve as one indicator of where the corporate community stands. Standard Bank Group Chairperson Conrad Strauss was quoted as saying that the banking group "believed the city centre could be revitalised through public and private partnerships", while the R650 million Standard Bank Precinct, the R200 million Park Station upgrade, the ABSA banking group campus, the R17 million Westgate Station redevelopment project and several other initiatives may be indicative of such an urban renewal trend.¹¹

Apart from the CBD, the Mayivuke initiative is set to extend into such deteriorating areas of the city as Hillbrow and Berea (where some foreign African immigrant communities have reportedly established ‘no-go’ areas), as well as Braamfontein, Pageview, Vrededorp, Newtown, and the eastern suburbs of Bellevue East, Randview, Judith’s Paarl, Troyeville and Jeppestown. However, it is reported that the corporate community has indicated that, unless something is done to gain control over the crime epidemic, there will be no new investment into the CBD/inner city, Mayivuke notwithstanding.

Apparently, this message was delivered after the appointment of South African Breweries’ Meyer Kahn to take over the restructuring of the police service, a major government outreach to the corporate community. Moreover, all the major banking institutions in the city are alleged to be involved, or to have been involved, in ‘red lining’ in the Mayivuke target areas, while property is being bought up by Nigerians, Zairians, Congolese, Mozambicans and other foreigners. Thus, it remains to be seen how much momentum this CBD/inner city renewal initiative will generate and how far the corporate establishment’s commitment will extend. In the first quarter of 1998, the decline of the Johannesburg CBD continued apace with the closing down of the Carlton Hotel, thereby marking the end of an era for central Johannesburg.

GEAR: THE INTERVENTIONIST IMPERATIVE

Where a working consensus on South Africa’s renewal is likely to be the most critically needed in the coming Mbeki era, is on the government’s macro-economic strategy. If, in the wake of the 1997 COSATU congress, the non-negotiability of GEAR has been overcome by a realisation that it is an important framework in need of further articulation on issues such as social and economic infrastructure investment, productivity and job creation, the corporate business community could play a critical role in forging a strategic public-private partnership consensus for development.

The fear in some quarters is that, in the absence of such a consensus accompanied by an interventionist commitment to stimulate the economy, a recession could be forthcoming that would have grave consequences.

Observing that the "principles and discipline of co-operation are easily espoused but ... difficult to accomplish," Mokoena focused on "the failure of South Africa’s public and corporate leadership to co-operate to save the country from an impending recession and potential economic decay."¹² The reasons why such grim prospects may be looming, are due to a whole host of issues concerned with ‘market failures’: inequality, failure of competition, under-utilised resources, externalities and public goods. "That South Africa is facing under-utilised resources is not an academic concept", said Mokoena. "The country has grown sluggishly in the past three years, shedding 70 000 jobs"¹³ while failing to produce new ones. In the meantime, "the poor seem to be getting poorer while a recession looms. All at a time when the opposite should be happening, given global events."¹⁴

To turn this situation around, the Keynesian solution of "increased government expenditure to employ idle labour and unused capital resources" is proposed in a manner similar to Roosevelt’s New Deal response to the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States. President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ in the 1960s, waged under the auspices of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and its Community Action Programmes, is similarly relevant.¹⁵

Perhaps it is time for South Africa to consider such a solution, given that our workforce cannot take full advantage of the information revolution through historic educational deficiencies. In this case, "public works expenditure has never been more in need", in terms of road construction and repair, the building and extending of bridges, dam construction and other infrastructural enhancements.¹⁶ A Keynesian stimulus would generate two kinds of multipliers: the first multiplying the effects of investment spending in terms of total income; the second multiplying credit and money supply.¹⁷ The trade-off, however, would be to sacrifice increases in wages and a shorter work week in favour of accelerated government expenditure on infrastructure-based public works projects coupled with a reduction in the interest rate — if it were possible for organised labour and management, perhaps within the framework of NEDLAC, to come to such a quid pro quo. This gets at the heart of what Mokoena is advocating in "the three Cs: commitment, co-operation and co-ordination", and where Trevor Manuel’s introduction of the policy of off-budget expenditure via public-private sector partnerships (PPPs) could prove crucial.¹⁸

In the assessment of Business Map, if managed well, the PPPs offer a source of direct investment, including foreign, which could feed economic growth and employment, as well as serve as a source for the delivery of social needs.¹⁹ What is missing in this neo-Keynesian mix is decisive government leadership aimed at remobilising its own Tripartite Alliance constituency to take advantage of the type of intervention being proposed. This missing link, in turn, reflects a peculiar malaise within the ANC and its constituency, rooted in the double-edged impact that the country’s ‘miracle’ transition appears to have had on the liberation alliance. This is alluded to, but not fully elaborated on in the recent publication, Comrades in Business by Heribert Adam, his wife Kogila Moodley and Frederick van Zyl Slabbert.²⁰

THE RDP REVIVED?

While the negotiated transition allowed the ANC to ease its way non-violently into power, and to avoid the bitter experience of a protracted ‘transition through attrition’ — which is what its hard-liners reportedly would have preferred — there was a cost. It not only gave up the armed struggle and underground operations coupled with a strategy of isolating the apartheid regime internationally, it also gave up mass mobilisation beginning with the dismantling of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the centrepiece of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM).

Amid growing status divisions that began surfacing within the ANC Tripartite Alliance between exiles and internals, Robben Islanders and non-Robben Islanders, accompanied by the fast-tracking of several key cadres into lucrative positions in the public and private sectors, a growing rift began to emerge between the ANC leadership and its broader grassroots constituency. The result has been a loss of mobilisation momentum that, it could be argued, has weakened the ANC’s leadership and governing capacity. Hence, for example, the lack of dynamism in the Masakhane campaign.

A mass democratic remobilisation for development linked to the type of ‘War on Poverty’, proposed by a coalition including the South African Council of Churches, the South African NGO Coalition, COSATU and the Department of Welfare, as a corollary to a public works-driven Keynesian strategy — assuming a central role for the Ministry of Public Works (which curiously seems to have adopted a low profile) — is suggestive of the broad mobilisation framework that could put flesh on the three Cs. Within the framework of GEAR, such a combined political/ socio-economic development initiative could re-energise the RDP and the Masakhane campaign and provide a strategic focal point for public-private partnerships involving the corporate sector. In the process, such an initiative could provide an urgently needed re-socialisation vehicle for transforming the struggle legacy of a culture of non-collaboration — the essential target of Masakhane — into a post-struggle culture of social discipline for development. This may be an unavoidable precondition for stimulating the level of accelerated growth necessary to give renewal content to the African renaissance, as espoused by the Deputy President.

On the part of the government, waging the moral equivalent of war, such a campaign would require it to go back to the drawing boards of the RDP. This structured framework could link national, provincial and local government structures in something like a National Development Management System that would proactively, as well as responsively facilitate delivery to community-based participatory development initiatives. The latter could be encouraged by introducing an OEO-styled Community Action Programme (CAP) component based, perhaps, in the Ministry of Public Works, and linking national and provincial offices of community development (or OCDs).

Such a framework could be complemented by a development brigades programme, motivated by the ANC Tripartite Alliance. A brigades model is currently under consideration by the National Youth Commission. The brigades would interact with the public works and community development components of this initiative while providing outlets for intergenerational leadership training and civic education aimed at resocialising communities for the post-apartheid/post-struggle dispensation. The brigades could also interact with and reinforce the Masakhane campaign and community policing initiatives.

A campaign of this magnitude might provide the raison d’être for a continuation and strengthening of the Tripartite Alliance as a transitional ruling cartel, as opposed to its fragmenting into the type of party political realignment that many in opposition to or on the outside of the ANC are wishfully hoping for. Only when the South African transition has matured to a more advanced stage will the relevance of the Alliance begin to be called into question. Short of breaking up, another option that has been identified is a government that "is likely to be progressively paralysed" in the absence of a state interventionist component to macro-economic strategy.²¹ Perhaps the type of Keynesian initiative outlined above might avoid this scenario. Nevertheless, such an initiative should ideally not be an exclusively ANC-driven project. Rather, in the national interest of broad-based nationbuilding for renewal toward realising the renaissance vision espoused by the Deputy President, a Keynesian-driven mass remobilisation for development campaign would have to be as broadly inclusive as possible, attracting multiparty/movement participation, as well as major private sector involvement.

Given the off-budget PPPs approach that the government is adopting to generate support for social and economic infrastructural development, the South African corporate sector’s role in a major Keynesian initiative would be pivotal, should the incoming Mbeki government move in such a direction. Such a campaign, in fact, might be very much in the interest of the Deputy President as a mass support-building strategy, given the fact that the nature of his authority, unlike Mandela’s, cannot rest on charisma, but will have to be grounded in substantive initiatives giving content to an African renaissance vision that may otherwise run the risk of being placed in the ‘buzzword’ category. That being the case, Mbeki’s racial redistribution strategy, within the context of a broader trans-racial nation-building project, would depend for its credibility on the extent to which it facilitates the broadening of capacities across the broadest spectrum of South African black society, as opposed to benefiting a narrow black élite.

What corporate South Africa — either as individual entities or as a collective — must decide, is what type of black empowerment it wants to help facilitate. Black perceptions — particularly those of the black élite — reflect suspicion that the corporate powers-that-be are more comfortable with essentially clientelist black élite empowerment as opposed to more broad-based empowerment benefiting larger sectors of black society. It is presumed that this would be more in the interest of an incumbent ANC government. The verdict remains out. However, the direction that corporate South Africa elects to take, could have a bearing on whether the country experiences enhanced stability and at least sufficient economic growth and continued evolution as a liberal democracy or descends into economic stagnation, and political instability accompanied by chronic social unrest.

The prototypical renaissance corporate strategy could be that of Sanlam. Noting that the Sanlam Development Fund has financed projects to the tune of R750 million over the past two years since its launch, its track record is seen as indicative of how South African private sector finance can pay off.²² Former Development Bank of Southern Africa head, Nick Christodoulou, initiated the Fund, motivated by the notion that the corporate sector needed to be involved in development finance and setting out to demonstrate to asset managers and institutional investors that, with sufficient information, the risks were not that high and that the area was indeed a growth market. The Sanlam example points to the potential for corporate South Africa to join with the public sector in financing a veritable, albeit modest, Marshall Plan that could enhance South and Southern Africa’s prospects to pursue a relatively autonomous development path, lessening dependence on, while simultaneously attracting foreign capital as a participant in national and subcontinental development.²³

But if corporate South Africa has the potential to catalyse a Marshall Plan for South and Southern Africa under the banner of the Deputy President’s African renaissance, this would presuppose definitive moves by the corporate community to forge itself, along with its counterparts in the black business community, into a core constituency for promoting an African renaissance. This prospect focuses the spotlight on the nature and potential of corporate South Africa’s interest in Southern Africa and the continent as a whole.

POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA'S ECONOMIC EXPANSION INTO AFRICA

Quite apart from the emerging African renaissance theme, South African business has been making rapid inroads not only in its own Southern African neighbourhood, but also beyond. This trend, since the 1994 transition that ended apartheid, is well documented. For example, as Zaire’s transition into Kabila’s Congo began to escalate late last year, Standard Bank of South Africa expanded its operations into Africa. But South African corporate entities should note that increasingly massive trade imbalances threaten a backlash if South African expansion is not in the form of fixed investment and joint ventures.²⁴ In 1995, South Africa’s exports to Kenya were worth R940 million compared with imports of R111 million; with Tanzania, the gap was R611 million on imports worth R627 million; the trade deficit continues.

No doubt, South African trade expansion into Central and East Africa has given impetus to the trend toward the incorporation of these subregions into a Southern African Development Community (SADC) that has yet to make major headway in the ‘deepening’ of core co-operation among SADC’s Southern African members. Thus, Kenya and Uganda have been targeted for admission, while some of the same thorny trade issues with its more immediate neighbours that South Africa has to deal with, are confronting it in East Africa. Hence, the upcoming talks between South Africa and Kenya: the former’s trade surplus with the latter, issues pertaining to tariffs, subsidies and market access, along with two agreements relating to double taxation and investment protection are on the agenda.

Similar bilateral discussions have been taking place between Uganda and South Africa, and African states further afield. Another illustration of these is the August 1997 meeting of the South Africa-Egypt joint commission accompanied by a delegation of twenty Egyptian businessmen, bankers, developers and industrialists.²⁵ The Egyptian delegation included the chairperson of the Egyptian Social Fund — something of an Egyptian PPP — financed by the government, the private sector and foreign aid contributions, and dealing with literacy, health, social infrastructure, and small business development, among others. This is a model that could be studied, perhaps by NEDLAC, for its possible application in South African reconstruction and development.²⁶

Meanwhile, South African mining companies and Eskom have interests and aspirations that are continental in scope, while the Standard Bank Group has a presence in fourteen African states. Hence, Deputy President Mbeki acknowledged that the South African corporate interest in the African renaissance, as outlined at Chantilly, is grounded in a solid base. The question is whether or not the South African public and private sectors can come together in elaborating a coherent strategic plan for the country’s economic engagement with the rest of SADC and the continent as a whole.

Starting with SADC, last year’s publication of the UNCTAD World Investment Report is suggestive of the type of engagement required from the South African private sector: the increasing of direct investment in other SADC states, and technology transfers and export growth by South African companies relocating or investing in neighbouring countries. The two preconditions for the kickstart recommended by the report are:

the opening up of free access to the South African market for exports from its SADC partners, currently limited to members of the Customs Union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland — BLNS);



the acceleration of economic growth in South Africa itself which, in turn, links back to the Keynesian stimulus proposal recommended above.

The report suggests that South Africa should pursue a manufacturing strategy that moves it into an ‘upmarket’ category to facilitate a regional economic division of labour with its neighbours. This is seen as futuristic, given economic conditions in South and Southern Africa. However, many of the issues raised in the report appear to complement a recent critique of South Africa’s relationship with its SADC partners.

Peter O’Brien recommends a ‘win-win’ strategy that emphasises:

regional investment/production arrangements over trade deals;



investment complementarities within sensitive industrial branches (i.e. textiles and clothing, leather and footwear);



the accompaniment of investment flows by intraregional technology transfer (from South Africa to other countries);



the deployment of skilled professionals in the organisation of regional production in a manner that reverses the brain drain from the rest of the region to South Africa; and



the accelerated exploitation of programme opportunities in infrastructure, tourism and media.²⁷

O’Brien’s suggestions and those of the UNCTAD report will require, as a matter of urgency, PPPs on a regional scale if these suggestions are to be implemented. Here, the Southern African private sector’s lack of integration into the SADC Programme of Action becomes a major missing component in regional co-operation.

The missing private sector and civil society components in SADC may have much to do with the apparent lack of a strategic approach to the sorting out of priorities of expansion versus the deepening of the Community. For example, the post-Mobutu Congo’s incorporation into SADC is questionable in that its admission should have come wholesale, as opposed to being phased in, linked to an emergency, and to a longer term stabilisation and political transition programme factoring in broader Great Lakes regional security issues.

Uganda’s Museveni, on the other hand, has voiced a reluctance to join SADC in the absence of some meaningful accommodation between SADC and the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Yet, Uganda is probably as good a candidate for full membership of SADC as any. In the case of Kenya, it should be subjected to political and economic conditionalities prior to any future consideration of its joining SADC as a full member. The question remains why South African and other SADC leaders have not contemplated a ‘halfway house’ between full SADC membership and non-membership. This could take the form of an associate membership category that would allow SADC to balance and manage expansion versus deepening, especially given the front-and-centre deepening issue of fast-tracking the SADC Trade Protocol into a regional common market.²⁸

The region’s private sector could play a particularly constructive role in the deepening process by actively supporting SADC organisational reform and restructuring as a means of enhancing its efficiency in implementing the SADC Programme of Action. Although the SADC reform and restructuring programme was agreed to at the Blantyre summit, the question will be how vigorously it will be implemented, given the vested interest in the status quo among member states.

Although there has been a growing clamour for the region’s business community to find its voice within SADC over the past several years, an organised private sector complement to the organisation has proved elusive. This is a problem that may have as much, if not more, to do with the internal politics of the region’s business communities — especially the South African business community — than with any resistance from SADC governments and the Secretariat in Gaborone. In fact, at the Blantyre summit, the heads of state opened the way for constituency-building within SADC by mandating the establishment of a National SADC Committee in each member state, "involving all key stakeholders" to create "a strong linkage between regional and national initiatives ..." Such a structure could provide impetus to any number of ideas that have emerged in the recent past to bring the region’s business communities together.²⁹

THE QUEST FOR SADC'S PRIVATE SECTOR DIMENSION

The need is great for SADC governments to move closer to their local private sectors and vice versa (since the attitudes of foreign investors tend to be coloured by the attitudes of the domestic business community). The need for SADC, as an organised subregion, to pursue a diplomacy of market enlargement in meeting the challenges of African development and growth, is equally great. The adaptation of information technology to facilitate trade between the smaller SADC countries through internet/ website networking for access to tender data — a strategy that could also apply to enhance co-ordination among different country-based Chambers of Commerce and Industry — should be considered. The need for South Africa, as the Chair of SADC, to convene a meeting to formalise a SADC Chamber of Commerce becomes critical. The investment by SADC in a promotional programme with active private sector involvement to raise the profile of SADC is a worthwhile idea. It might involve, among other things, the drawing up of a business marketing plan for the region which could be executed by a public-private marketing entity like a SADC Development Corporation.³⁰

Amid this wealth of ideas, there existed in pre-transition South Africa, something called the SADC Business Council, backed by the Norsad Fund that, according to speculation, had failed because the Business Council emanated from the SADC Secretariat and not from the private sectors of SADC member states. This is where the initiative for a SADC chamber would have to emanate in the future. This brings us to the present, and to attempts under way to motivate a South African-led private sector organising initiative among the Southern African members of the Eastern and Southern African Business Organisation (ESABO).

ESABO resurfaced last year in the run-up to the Blantyre summit. Indeed, the "SADC agenda requires strong regional business organisations."³¹ As the latest attempt, since the defunct SADC Business Council, to organise a business voice in the affairs of the region, ESABO emanates from a dialogue among business communities that began in 1993 and gathered momentum at the 1994 Maputo exhibition of the then Preferential Trade Area (PTA) for Eastern and Southern Africa, the precursor to COMESA. At the exhibition, a charter was adopted that established ESABO as an independent, stand-alone entity. A secretariat was elected, initially based in Zimbabwe under Lloyd Clark, who gave it up after eight months to be succeeded by Ron Haywood, prior to his becoming the current Chairperson of the Board of Armscor.

After a hiatus, there was an attempt to revive the momentum at the 1996 UNCTAD meeting in Midrand, with an UNCTAD consultant hired presumably to examine those issues pertinent to attempts to move ESABO forward. After a report was submitted, a decision was made to move the Secretariat to Nairobi. However, at the April meeting of the World Economic Forum in Harare, Chris Saunders of Tongaat-Hullett was charged with the task of organising a Southern African business council within ESABO, back-stopped by the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB) within the framework of Business South Africa (BSA).

There are several issues raised by the SACOB-based Southern African business initiative within ESABO, that have implications for the role of corporate South Africa as a partner in a South African-led renaissance in Southern Africa and beyond. Some of these implications were alluded to during the December 1996 Windhoek meeting, without anyone being aware of ESABO. Some have to do with money and structure. For example, just as there once existed a SADC Business Council, there also existed a PTA Chamber of Commerce and Industry which remained moribund because the constituent country chambers, dependent on their governments for funds, remained without such resources. This continues to be a problem in Eastern and Southern Africa which is why much depends on a South African private sector initiative. However, South Africa has its own problems that reflect SADC countries that are saddled with legacies of racial division. These, in turn, are reflected in their indigenous business communities and accompanied by the related cleavages between white-dominated big business corporate sectors and disadvantaged black-dominated small, micro and medium enterprise (SMME) sectors.

These tensions were expressed at the Windhoek US-Japan/SADC conference. One Zambian delegate to the conference observed that there was a problem in dealing with South African business chambers which are ‘too large’ for chambers from neighbouring countries. It was noted, however, that the chambers and related organisations from Zambia and Zimbabwe were beginning to find each other. But, compounding the questions of organisational and economic scale, are problems of mutual trust. One black South African specialist on the country’s business community observed that South African white businessmen do not trust their African counterparts in other SADC countries. This mirrors the domestic distrust and tensions between white-dominated corporate South Africa and black-dominated SMME South Africa. Whereas South Africa has the resources and organisational capacity to give impetus to a business and private sector voice within SADC, the country’s domestic politics of race relations within the South African business community is already seen to be complicating this effort.

THE RACIAL POLITICS OF SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS

There are reported dilemmas within BSA over who should be invited from South Africa and from neighbouring SADC countries for membership of an ESABO-affiliated SADC wing. A number of questions need consideration:

Which of the several business organisations in South Africa should represent South African business in the planned body?



What relationship should the new body have with governments and donors?



Who should finance it?³²

As an example of the thorny issues emerging from these considerations, it was pointed out that the South Africa Foundation — as a result of the anti-sanctions, quasi-propagandistic role it played in the past — is not trusted by the government, while the National African Federated Chambers of Commerce (NAFCOC) remains estranged from BSA. Thus, Jaco de Villiers of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI) — which does have a collaborative arrangement with NAFCOC — proposed an alliance of BSA (which includes the AHI, SACOB, and the Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services) and NAFCOC as one way of overcoming these dilemmas.

Another source believes that various South African business entities should join the proposed regional body as independent elements, and that a forum, which allows for differences, should exist for a national position.³³ As it is, none of the black business formations appear to have any relationship with these regional organising efforts. This goes for those within BSA, like the Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services (FABCOS) and the National Black Business Caucus (NBBC) — which was established, originally, to bridge the divide between FABCOS and NAFCOC — and the National Black Business Council (initiated by the Department of Trade and Industry), which is supposed to embrace all black business organisations, including the new kids on the block: the empowerment consortia of NAIL, RAIL, and others.

In whichever way these issues are resolved in the establishment of such a regional business body, it has been pointed out by one source that government will not recognise any structure motivating the formation of this regional body if it is not black-led. This is why government itself, ultimately — perhaps the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) — may have to take the lead. In such an instance, a South African National SADC Committee of stakeholders may serve as a catalysing instrument. Further, the work of such a committee could be augmented by a consultative advisory role for the SADC Diplomatic Corps of Ambassadors and High Commissioners in Pretoria, a group that is very keen on the idea of an organised role for the private sector in SADC. The DTI, in the meantime, has its hands full, just trying to motivate co-operation between government and the private sector, and sorting out internal wrangling over structures intended to serve the needs of the SMMEs. It is doubtful whether it could stretch its resources to intervene in the structuring of an acceptable South African vanguard to a regional private sector organising initiative. All of which brings things full circle, back to the domestic politics of enlisting the support of corporate South Africa in joining with government to give momentum to an African renaissance. Here, the final issue that needs to be addressed is one of transforming the corporate culture of South African big business.

A CORPORATE CULTURE OF TRANSFORMATION?

When it comes to the three Cs of ‘commitment, co-operation and co-ordination’, the threatened failure of the DTI’s cluster programme initiative is not seen as boding well for the level of public-private sector co-ordination required to generate accelerated growth.³⁴ This, in part, is being ascribed to the nature of the country’s business culture and the possibility that "a free market system ... may be too sudden for the budding economy of a developing country." Thus, while the DTI claims that cluster programmes have been successful in other emerging markets, "South African industry, which is accustomed to holding its cards close to its chest, is sceptical of the benefits of openly sharing business information with competitors within South Africa and abroad."³⁵ The question of corporate cultural transformation is also relevant to that aspect of black empowerment having a bearing on the recruitment and mentoring of black professionals within the policy and decision-making hierarchies of corporate South Africa. After all, these are the individuals that corporate South Africa will increasingly have to rely on if their corporate strategies are to place them on the renaissance track.

Here, the experience expressed by Ramotena Mabote, a reporter at The Star, may be instructive of the wider problem of transformation in the corporate world. With respect to his corporate environment, Mabote observed: "On the face of it, there is change at The Star: the newsroom boasts more blacks today than ever before. There are even senior black executive members. All this cannot be ignored. But decision-making remains largely white. Despite the fact that in almost every decision-making conference there is a black face or two ... the process remains mostly white and male. The subs’ room, where the gatekeepers of information sit, remains white."³⁶ He concludes: "It is not about the number of blacks you appoint to strategic (token) positions. It is about the commitment to change by the same whites who have been there over the years and also about acknowledging that this is now a different country."³⁷ This perceptive candour may get at the fundamentals facing corporate South Africa, as it contemplates its role in bringing about an African renaissance at home and abroad in the rest of Africa.

CONCLUSION

The foregoing has been an attempt to survey the issues facing corporate South Africa. In analytical fashion, it has argued that it may be useful to develop appropriate strategies for internal and external change in the corporate world that would facilitate coming to grips with policy issues affecting South African business and South Africa as a whole. This analysis was not intended to be definitive, but rather to pose questions and illuminate options of how corporate South Africa, as individual entities and as a collective, on its own initiative and in conjunction with government and labour, may tackle the challenges facing South Africa on the road to an African renaissance.

ENDNOTES

ANC, The Core Values of the RDP, Umrabulo: Discussion Documents for the ANC National Conference 1997, p. 44.



ANC, Building on the Foundation for a Better Life: Strategy and Tactics of the African National Congress, Umrabulo: Draft Strategy and Tactics Document 1997, p. 29.



L Mda, A House Divided, Tribute, December 1994: "The ANC stands accused from within its own ranks of affirmative inaction of failing to ensure that a representative number of black appointees reach positions of power in government." See also, ANC, Nation-Formation and Nation Building: The National Question in South Africa, Discussion Documents for the ANC National Conference 1997, pp. 50-58.



TMbeki, A Nation that is Proud to be African: Statement by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, on Behalf of the ANC, Marking the Adoption of South Africa’s New Constitution following an 11th Hour Agreement by the Country’s Major Parties, The Star, 5 September 1996.



Ibid., p. 29.



T Mbeki, Address by Executive Deputy President Thabo Mbeki to Corporate Council on Attracting Capital to Africa’s Summit, Chantilly, Virginia, US, 19-22 April 1997.



Ibid.



Discussion Documents for ANC National Conference, op. cit., p. 65.



New Policy Directions in South Africa: Update, Business Map SA, 12 August 1997, p. 2.



MMbeki, Economic growth high on Shilowa’s agenda: Interview with COSATU General-secretary, The Star, 15 September 1997.



Renewal Part of ‘African Renaissance’, Business Day, 18 July 1997, pp. 1-2.



MMokoena, Why the Good Ship New South Africa is Slowly Sinking, Business Report, 8 August 1997.



MMokoena, Great Depression Solution Could Stimulate SA Economy Now, Business Report, 7 July 1997.



Mokoena, op. cit., 8 August 1997.



Mokoena, op. cit., 7 July 1997.



Ibid.



Ibid.



Mokoena, op. cit., 8 August 1997.



Business Map SA, op. cit.



H Adam, K Moodley & F van Zyl Slabbert, Comrades in Business, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 1997, p. 59.



MMbeki, Belief that ANC Alliance will Split over Capitalistic Moves is too Simplistic, The Star, 29 September 1997.



Sanlam Forges Ahead with Development Strategy, Sunday Times, 28 September 1997.



Ibid.



M Ashurst, South Africans Displacing European Investors in Central and East Africa, Business Day, 29 November 1996.



SA and Kenya Weed Out Thorny Trade Issues, Business Report, 29 September 1997.



SA and Egypt Slow to Formalise Co-operation, Business Report, 21 August 1997. Undated clippings also refer to bilateral interest between Egypt and KwaZulu-Natal, as well as to the establishment of a joint SA-Uganda commission to "look at creating a ‘secure an conducive’ macroeconomic environment and facilitate private sector activities and increased interaction in that sector between Uganda and SA."



P O’Brien, SA’s Neighbours Find Liberation Dividend Has not Materialised, Business Day, 22 September 1997. "Southern Africa needs a ‘win-win’ strategy to overcome the discontent that exists in the region between SA and its neighbours."



FKornegay, Why the Great Lakes Crisis Raises the Stakes for Southern Africa, The Sunday Independent, 3 November 1997. Reconsidering Zaire’s incorporation into the SADC, which previously had been rejected twice, "could become a key component in a stabilisation strategy for the Great Lakes region." Further, "Zaire’s admission to the SADC could be linked to next year’s expected general to install a post-Mobutu government," which of course did not to happen, given that the Mobutu indispensability scenario was overtaken by events subsequent to the publication of this article. The issue of conditionalities in SADC’s incorporation of new members, however, does not even appear to have come up in the organisation’s deliberations.



Presentation by Honourable Lt Gen M S Merafhe — Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Botswana at the African Leadership Forum, 9-11 September 1997, Maputo, p. 9.



The Private Sector Stake in Southern African Development, unpublished report, Windhoek, 4-6 December 1996.



SADC Agenda requires Strong Regional Business Organisation, Business Day, 4 September 1997.



Ibid.



Ibid.



A Disturbing Trend in the Face of Shared Economic Initiatives, Business Report, 1 October 1997.



Ibid.



RMabote, Yet More Colour on Still White Tale, The Star, 5 September 1997.



Ibid.