While blacks were getting into the boardrooms of South African companies, they had limited decision-making powers due to their non-executive status, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Friday.
A total of 405 blacks held 558 of the 3 125 directorship positions of the companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
”However, roughly 83% of these are non-executive positions,” she said.
She was speaking at the Economic Empowerment Rating Agency’s (Empowerdex) book launch of Trailblazers: Recognizing South Africa’s Black Pioneers and Prodigies.
By 1997, there were 98 black directors, and by 2003, there were 307 black directors on the boards of JSE-listed companies.
Research conducted by Empowerdex late last year revealed that only 15 listed companies had predominantly black boards, while 166 had at least one black board member. There were 143 companies without a single black board member.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said it was heartening that five of the top 10 most influential black executives featured in the book were women.
”This is proof that the emphasis placed on gender empowerment in new regulations, such as the codes of good practice, are already taking effect.”
She said Trailblazers showed that the ”so-called BEE gentlemen”, also known as the ”usual suspects” were no longer hogging board positions.
”While it was not uncommon a few years ago to see a few BEE kingpins … sitting on nine to 12 boards each, directors are no longer spreading themselves that thin. Today the 15 most active directors sit on an average of four boards each.”
This was a far cry from the record 29 board positions once held by Anglo American’s Leslie Boyd.
On remuneration, she said black directors were still not being paid ”anything near” what their white counterparts were receiving.
”The top 10 black directors are paid almost a third of that paid to the JSE’s top 10 directors.”
She said the struggle for South Africans was no longer political, but economic, and its success depended on transformation.
She quoted from Mamphele Ramphele, who tops the list South Africa’s most influential black executives: ”Personal enrichment should not be confused with black empowerment, one cannot be fabulously rich on behalf of others”. – Sapa