/ 21 October 2003

Business has one voice — but it’s not speaking clearly

Who speaks for business? The creation recently of the overarching business body that enables, so it is thought, black and white business to speak with one voice means this question begs to be asked.

The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc), the Federated African Business and Consumer Services (Fabcos) and the Black Business Council (BBC) purportedly represented black business. The South African Chamber of Business (Sacob), the Afrikaanse Handelinstituut (AHI) and, until recently, Business South Africa supposedly represented white business. Alongside these are the Black Management Forum and the South Africa Foundation.

Sacob, the AHI, Nafcoc and Fabcos have recently joined to form the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of South Africa; and the BBC and Business South Africa now form Business Unity South Africa.

The plethora of business groupings partly reflects the fact that business is by no means homogenous. Big business, small business, exporters, importers, industrialists and retailers all have different interests. But exactly who do these organisations represent?

How many actual business people does Nafcoc represent? Patrice Motsepe stands out as the only really high-profile empowerment person playing any sort of role in Nafcoc. Where are the Cyril Ramaphosas and Mzi Khumalos? The same question can be posed to the white organisations. Sacob has been bleeding members, and two regional bodies left last year.

The AHI supposedly speaks for Afrikaans business, but this is not so easy to define in 21st-century South Africa. Rand Merchant Bank is not necessarily an Afrikaans business because some of its top management graduated from Stellenbosch.

Another reason to ask this question is that, aside from the libertarian Free Market Foundation, nobody apparently stands for neo-liberal or conservative economic ideas.

Flawed or not, business people everywhere tend to take these as an article of faith. Most business people would agree to the primacy of the free market — except where it affects them directly, of course.

Raymond Parsons, as head of Sacob, expressed the orthodox view. What views about the economy does Sacob hold these days?

The Democratic Alliance was long thought to be the voice of business. Boasting a former editor Nigel Bruce of the Financial Mail , from the days when it was seen as the voice of corporate South Africa, it should, one supposes, represent the Inanda faction of business. Yet the DA has inexplicably come out in support of the basic income grant, a conservative economist’s idea of a joke.

So perhaps the African National Congress represents business interests? Wrong again. Like Star Trek’s Borg, the ANC assimilates many potential opposition interests. One of the areas of opposition the ANC has neutralised is business, broadly defined. It has done this by adopting the growth, employment and redistribution policy, an orthodox macroeconomic policy.

But the ANC in government has not followed up with the microreform business would clearly like in labour law.

The question as to who really represents business is urgent. Clearly, government pressure has led to the latest business body marriage of convenience because it wants to liaise with one non-racial body.

How can the government be sure that domestic business in general buys into its broad-based black economic empowerment strategy, or any other policy, if there is no business body that will honestly reflect the views of its members?

A sign that even the flimsy business consensus of the past is gone is that the government’s apparent backtracking on privatisation has been greeted with near silence. On vital issues such as employment equity law, society has had to do with vocal comment from odd quarters such as the South African Institute for Race Relations. Whoever Race Relations represents, it is not organised business.

Black business, on the other hand, had to form a completely new body, the Black Economic Empowerment Commission, to come up with recommendations on black empowerment. Nafcoc has been notable for internal faction fighting rather than positions on the economy. What has Fabcos said recently, at all?

If individual white and black business organisations have had difficulty voicing their collective opinions, there is little chance the unified body will make its presence felt on important economic and political issues. The new business bodies may each speak with one voice, but will they say anything sensible?

Reg Rumney is executive director of Businessmap Foundation