David Beresford
The adage that it is possible to lead a horse to water, but difficult to make it drink is proving well-founded where the business community is concerned as it approaches its “moment of truth” before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Corporate South Africa faces three days of hearings before the commission next week, but indications are that it will be less an occasion for the disclosure of facts and more to do with public relations – for those who bother to participate in the event.
About 70 companies, business organisations, unions and individuals have made submissions to the commission. A number are refusing to release their offerings before the hearings get under way.
But a taste of attitudes towards the inquiry is provided by the Chamber of Mines, representing one of the most profitable and controversial sectors of the economy.
The chamber sums up a century of mining in South Africa with a six-and-a-half-page document that fails to deal with any of the contentious issues that dog the industry.
The submission opens with the claim that mining was “largely instrumental” in the development of South Africa’s infrastructure, providing employment for people from “deep rural areas and from neighbouring countries” and “contributing to economic activity in these areas”.
The point that those areas remained among the most poverty-stricken on the subcontinent is overlooked.
The wages issue is dealt with in three paragraphs and in terms of percentages (“since 1960 the wages of black employees have increased in real terms by 492%”). It does not deal with other calculations that show, for instance, that a novice miner’s pay in 1973 was less in real terms than was paid by mining bosses in the late 19th century.
The chamber suggests that racism on the mines was entirely the fault of the state, or the employees themselves – characterising it as “the product of statute, common law and customary arrangements”. And the deaths of an estimated 84 000 workers on the mines is not mentioned in the submission, which only notes that mining “is dangerous”.
Anglo American is the only one of the mining houses filing a separate submission, but declined to release it this week. Gold Fields of South Africa, which was particularly notorious during the apartheid era for the brutality of its private police force, is apparently not putting in an appearance.
The list of submissions is in many respects more striking for those who fail to appear on it.
Shell, for example – which allegedly played a crucial role in shoring up the apartheid state by ensuring oil got through to South Africa – has failed to account for itself.
Mercedes-Benz still has to make a submission. Casspirs and Buffaloes became as much a symbol of political repression in the townships during the 1980s as the AK-47 was of revolutionary struggle.
The vehicles were built from Unimog chassis and engines supplied by Benz. Unimogs were also used by the South African Defence Force for transport and combat vehicles.
Afrikaner business shows itself more concerned to involve itself in the soul- searching exercise represented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The insurance giant Sanlam, for instance – while claiming to have led something of a rebellion against petty apartheid from the early 1970s — acknowledges that it benefited from apartheid, relative to disadvantaged groupings. “The past cannot be undone, but contemplating these events leaves us with a deep feeling of sadness and regret.”
Similarly the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, while arguing that apartheid was counter- productive for the white business establishment, concedes that it disadvantaged black business.
“Separate development in the end meant social engineering with brutal human costs and enormous wastage of resources. As a business organisation we should have appreciated much earlier that moral and economic realities militate conclusively against even the loftiest interpretation of separate development.”
Admitting that “fellow South Africans were gravely wronged”, it offers its “sincere regret for these failings” and “apologies to those affected”.
But perhaps the most telling insight into the relationship between big business and apartheid is provided by the man who fell victim to PW Botha’s wagging finger – the former chief executive of Barclays Bank, Chris Ball, who was driven out of the country by the former state president’s charge that he was sympathetic to the ANC.
In a closely reasoned submission, Ball argues that business leaders – whether through conditioning, or a lack of a conceptual frame-work – did not have the intellectual grasp to understand their manipulation by the apartheid regime. “Most businesses were bystanders, passive rather than innocent,” he says of apartheid.
Ball stresses his anxiety not to personalise his submission, but says that Barclays’s attitude to apartheid was directly related to the attitude of the chief executive officer of the day. “My predecessors were sensitised, but passive, my successor conservative.”
Businesses were directly involved in the defence industry “and profited from it”, he says.
“The involvement in the security apparatus was in the supply of equipment, not in participating in security activities, which were fairly well hidden from most business people.
“The regime did try to obtain information from banks about payment flows to underground organisations, made in many cases through Barclays.
“We resisted those enquiries, though there was probably leakage of information by members of the staff who supported the regime. Business, including the banks, was active in rebutting and frustrating sanctions.
“There was a genuinely felt belief that sanctions would not improve conditions in South Africa, or even produce change.”
The truth commission hearings on the business sector get under way in Johannesburg on Tuesday, November 11, with oral testimony from companies including Barlow, Eskom and Armscor.