Three of South Africa’s largest business chambers on Saturday signed partnership agreements with the fourth, the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce.
This move could signal the start the unification of black and white business in the country.
The agreements were signed at Sun City in the North West where Nafcoc held its national conference.
President Thabo Mbeki attended the event late on Saturday. Mbeki witnessed the signing ceremony by the presidents of Nafcoc, SA Chamber of Commerce (Sacob), the Afrikaanse Handelsinstitituut (AHI) and the Federation for African Business and Consumer Services (Fabcos).
”We can’t be showing the world these differences after 1994,” Sacob president Christoph Köpke said at the conference before the signing ceremony.
Köpke said the lack of unity in South African business would result in the stagnation of its relevancy for international business contact. The chamber movement continued to be racially aligned, he said.
Mbeki said unity and co-operation within the black business community and between black and white business were essential to transform South Africa’s racially skewed economy into one that belonged to all its people.
”The fact that our economy is still not representative of the people of our country, eight years after our freedom, points to the enormous challenges we still face,” he said at Nafcoc’s banquet.
Nafcoc has recently been plagued by divisions due to differences of opinion about a proposed merger with Sacob as well as allegations of financial irregularity.
Mbeki said: ”None of us need a Nafcoc whose defining character is seen by the South African public as one based on perennial infighting, back-stabbing, dishonesty, selfishness and corruption…”
”We need a Nafcoc whose leadership and members are impatient against the corrosion of the culture of modesty, against honesty, in favour of truthfulness, respect of sharing and moved by hostility to corruption.”
This leadership and members should be prepared to defend Nafcoc’s credibility and move away from what had characterised the organisation in recent years, he said.
”We need a leadership that must espouse and advance not only the interests of its members, but pursue these goals in the context of the transformation of our society as a whole.”
The President said all South African institutions, both governmental and non-governmental, should be united around the strategic objective of transforming the country into a home for all its people.
Mbeki also called for closer co-operation with chambers elsewhere on the continent. This would help to dispel the message that Africa was a continent of hopelessness, but rather send one that the continent that conveyed hope, was Africa.
Mbeki said he had seen an item on the agenda about black economic empowerment happening at a snail’s pace. This was indeed the case, he conceded.
Former Nafcoc president Sam Motusuenyane said Patrice Motsepe, the newly elected president of Nafcoc, had the mandate of the organisation’s constituency to provide leadership. But he warned Motsepe that power corrupts.
He said: ”Power intoxicates. Don’t get intoxicated.”
Motsepe responded: ”The success of this organisation has never depended on one person. So I have to over-emphasise this — I have no intention of staying for more than one term.”
He said he would not continue serving as president of the organisation when his term ended in 2004. – Sapa