Damn South Africa’s political and economic past. For, had our country developed along normal lines, Vuyo Jack, empowerment rating company Empowerdex’s CEO, would probably be better known as a musician or filmmaker.
The man widely regarded as the de facto minister of black economic empowerment (BEE) wishes he were doing something else. Jack says one of the reasons he became a chartered accountant was that he saw the plight of local musicians and moviemakers, and decided that he had to study ways of making and managing wealth. Otherwise, he would be spending more time before the piano than before a PowerPoint presentation.
Now he is saddled with establishing whether white-owned business is dancing to the government’s tune of ensuring that the economic cake is shared with blacks. And, instead of thinking of what art critics will say, he has to field accusations by all across the political and economic spectrum about his participation in and input to the BEE debate.
BEE activists say that the new ratings his company helped to script are so watered down that there is no point in continuing to monitor empowerment. Leftists, such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s Neva Makgetla, accuse the process, which Jack has given his past four years to, of promoting ownership by the few and not doing enough to encourage investment and job creation. BEE exponents are unhappy that the government engaged a private company to help draft broad-based empowerment codes.
Jack says he is unmoved by the criticism and that there would not have been a similar furore had the government asked foreign companies to help draft the codes. “I think that the government has been pragmatic. We are not the only ones; lawyers and other people involved in BEE were also consulted. I think it is quite unjustified.”
Jack acknowledges the criticism and says most of it has been incorporated in the latest draft. He warns, though, that all involved should be neither too practical nor too idealist. “There is a Zen saying about the need to keep your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground. It means that the two [idealists and pragmatists] must align their strategies.”
All these delay the launching of the Vuyo Jack Trio (the choice of a trio must come from his admiration for jazz pianist Oscar Peterson who performed most of his great works with such formations). But he does not mind. “There may never be another chance to make an input to the economic development debate. Who knows, 10 years on, I may be more worried about my retirement and preservation of wealth.”
Jack even sees similarities between running a business successfully and being a virtuoso musician. “You can have great ideas, but if you do not have technique, those ideas are dead. If you hone the technique, the music — or business idea — comes through. Be flexible but be disciplined. Oscar Peterson is very rooted in classical piano and he applies that [training] in playing,” says Jack.
One of Jack’s two favourite movies is Schindler’s List. The other, The Colour Purple, he loves because it celebrates “female power” and tells the story of the “human soul through the dynamics of music”.
Thus the script of Jack’s calling may have changed or, rather, taken a different turn, but a storyteller he remains. “I liken what we are trying to achieve to a parable. There was once a kingdom where the minority ruled and threw the majority in a well of economic oblivion.”
According to Jack’s parable, the “elders” did not like the state of affairs so they overthrew the former leaders. “But the [new] leaders had to ask themselves how they were going to get the rest of the people in the well out. In the past, we used one rope, ownership, to pull out those in the well. It was not sufficient. Only people at the top of the well were being extracted; the rope was not long enough.” The story in the end is about those who have been extracted from the well, and those who were never inside, creating ropes to get everyone out of the well, thus making the elders happy.
At this stage, Jack will then be able to go back to his first love. And he may just use the experience he gathered in the process. “I hope that one day when my grandchildren ask, ‘Grandpa, what did you do to extract those who were in the well?’ I will be able to tell them. Maybe make a movie of it.”
Don’t bet against it being a jazz musical that tells the story of the politics and the intrigue that is black economic empowerment.