Drew Forrest and Jaspreet Kindra
Business leaders across the racial spectrum reacted with caution this week to the labour movement’s plans for an economic summit, while a key representative of big business was positively disparaging.
There was little indication that organised business believes much can be achieved by its participation on economic matters, but there was more sympathy for the idea of a broad civil society front on HIV/Aids.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions announced last week it would mount an all-embracing civil society meeting at which alternatives to government policies would be explored. It intended to invite “black” and “white” business.
The clearest response came from a senior representative of big business, who asked not to be identified. He said little would be achieved by an encounter of the type proposed by Cosatu. Big business had limited appetite for such an engagement with a movement that “has almost certainly damaged the investment environment” by its recent actions.
Business did not want to be used as “useful idiots” in a union campaign to undermine disciplined macro- economic policy and privatisation.
“My experience is that if the common elements are loosely aspirational, and there is no underlying commonality, a beano of this kind will amount to little more than hot air, grandstanding and scapegoating.”
The 1998 job summit, which business attended “because it felt it was a political necessity”, was a failure for these reasons.
The executive emphasised that business was not saying it refused to talk to the unions. “We want to talk in a more focused, realistic way with particular goals. We want a serious encounter without point-scoring, which is not happening at the moment.”
Cosatu had got the better of business representatives in talks on amending the Labour Relations Act, because business was disorganised and poorly prepared. The view that government or business could create jobs was a fallacy, the executive said. Employment was the product of greater investment.
On HIV/Aids, he said business could not be expected to shoulder the entire burden. “The scale of the problem is such that it must be addressed by government, donor agencies, labour, business and multilateral organisations. We are willing to play our part, but we cannot pull all the chestnuts out of the fire.”
Simon Mathysen, president of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc) also said he had had no contact with Cosatu on the summit plan. However, he said he understood labour’s fears that the government’s growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy was destroying its membership.
At the same time, Mathysen emphasised that government’s macro-economic policy had helped the country “get on track”. Cosatu and government are talking past each other, he says. “I think the government and labour should hold a workshop on Gear.”
South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) head Kevin Wakeford said he had not been approached by Cosatu and did not wish to comment on problems in the tripartite alliance.
Reacting to Cosatu’s attempts to mobilise churches and civic bodies on Aids, Wakeford said Sacob would support any broad-based initiative to tackle the epidemic.