This week’s revelation that senior African National Congress members may have bagged the lucrative foreign-owned stake in Telkom could uncork a debate on empowerment which is simmering in the ruling party.
The consortium is led by Andile Ngcaba, the former director general of communications and a powerful ANC personality; Smuts Ngonyama, the party spokesperson and national executive committee member; and businesswoman Gloria Serobe.
Divisions over the form empowerment should take have been surfacing for months, with different ANC leaders taking conflicting positions. The one view is that too many of the same ANC-aligned businessmen are getting too many big deals, and that these are not sufficiently broad-based to make an impact on poverty.
In a speech in September to the Black Management Forum, read by Ngonyama, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe said: ”… it seems that certain individuals are not satisfied with a single bout of empowerment. Instead they are beneficiaries of repeated bouts of re-empowerment. We see the same names mentioned over and over again in one deal after another.”
The other view, often amplified by Ngonyama, is that ANC members are part of society and cannot be precluded from sharing in the goodies.
The purchase of the stake by a consortium led by Ngcaba provoked an immediate protest by the Congress of South African Trade Unions. The majority of the federation’s 1,7-million members are also members of the ANC.
Complaining about the loss of 24 700 jobs at Telkom since 1997, the federation said the deal would ”epitomise the very worst form of so-called ‘black economic empowerment’ which benefits only a tiny elite”. It was further evidence, said Cosatu, of a ”culture of corruption and self-enrichment”.
The revelation that sections of government oppose the final sanctioning of the deal chime with the increasing internal impatience with deals that enrich and do not empower.
A report in the Financial Mail this week suggests that BEE guidelines soon to be released by the Department of Trade and Industry weight black management and skills training more highly than ownership.
Could the tide in the ANC be turning back from the empowerment charterists to the Freedom Charterists? Since 2000, the members of ANC Inc have exercised enormous influence over policy in the ruling party.
With a growing generation of ANC members and leaders now in business, they have used their positions to ensure that BEE is now the apex of economic policy. And they have benefited from being at the frontline of the charge for black partners by corporate South Africa.
In a 2002 interview, Saki Macozoma said: ”Generally there are lots and lots of ANC people in business. People have begun to see that if we don’t run the economy, we’re playing marbles. And in the ANC, we ask: why shouldn’t it be our people?”
Two years on, the circle of ANC Inc’s influence and prosperity has grown well beyond the trio of Macozoma, Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, to include the likes of Ngcaba, Ngonyama, former Justice Minister Penuell Maduna and former North-West premier Popo Molefe.
Second and third layers are coming to prominence, most doing business where they can leverage state power and market their political knowledge.
But their journey is not uncontested. Cosatu has become more vociferous in its criticism of the trajectory of BEE. With President Thabo Mbeki taking a step to the left — it is thought that Motlanthe’s speech represented the presidential view — the new charterists now face a challenge from the old.