Unwitting success

First National Bank’s abortive attempt to run a hastily conceived anti-crime campaign has placed crime firmly on the public agenda and led to one of the biggest public splits in the business community in the post-apartheid era.

FNB had planned to place 1,5-million posters in national newspapers, encouraging readers to send a generic letter to President Thabo Mbeki and enclosing envelopes with pre-paid postage.

FNB has certainly emerged the winner in this. Opposition parties, corporates and individuals have all joined in the debate about crime while the bank basks in the sunshine of positive public opinion.

Business Leadership SA (BLSA), Business Unity SA and Business Against Crime, are all part of the Big Business Working Group which lobbies government. They say they have been working with government for months to overhaul the criminal justice system and increase its effectiveness. There is a strong feeling among several business leaders — including Michael Spicer, CEO of BLSA — that it was inappropriate for one corporate to gain a competitive advantage in this way, especially as the campaign would have made no reference to other crime fighting initiatives.

BLSA chairperson Derek Cooper, who is also the chairman of Standard Bank, was only informed of the campaign after a meeting between business and government representatives. Standard Bank has denied any suggestion that it tried to prevent its rival’s campaign for competitive reasons. Cooper subsequently informed Spicer, and together they alerted government.

‘It put us in an extremely invidious position,” Spicer said, explaining that organised business could have been accused of bad faith by government. He said the tone of the campaign was acrimonious and inappropriately personal, and would have set back the fight against crime.

According to Spicer, organised business recognised FNB’s right to go ahead with the campaign — though it appeared that the bank had failed to consider the consequences — but leaders did ask CE Paul Harris to reconsider.

‘Harris invited government to a briefing. He told me that they did not threaten him — It was Harris’ decision not to go ahead. He was central in devising it, and he took responsibility,” Spicer said.

But Remgro chair Johann Rupert, a long-time business associate, whose company is a FirstRand shareholder through Rand Merchant Bank, has publicly disagreed with BLSA, saying that it is a ‘moral duty” to speak out against social wrongs. Rupert is himself a member of BLSA, and his leaked letter to Spicer made it clear that there were divisions within BLSA itself. Grant Thornton went ahead with advertisements last weekend highlighting the effect of crime, and PSG also ran an anti-crime advert.

Raymond Ackerman, founder of Pick’n Pay, has supported FNB and said he would organise 20 to 30 companies to demand action on crime.

The storm in the business world has spread to politics too. The SA Communist Party called the campaign ‘hypocritical” given the bank’s ‘reluctance” to address poverty, unemployment and access to credit. The ANC Youth League said crime should not be used to mobilise against a democratic state.

The great fnb debate

Pro:

Anti: