Ann Bernstein, launching the CDE Conversations, contends: “Democracy needs strong institutions, a free press, an independent judiciary and the rule of law, among others. It also needs opportunities for citizens to engage with one another, to disagree, but perhaps also to find that sometimes you share more in common than you suspected. The CDE has always been a place where we’ve encouraged debate among people with different histories and from different places in our society.”
On these pages you’ll read some of our panellists’ views about race, growth and development.
A true glass ceiling
Sipho Pityana, executive chairÂperson, Izingwe Holdings, says South Africa’s corporates are trapped in the pre-1994 racial mode — a major challenge Âfacing the country.
We need South African business to demonstrate active, enthusiastic commitment to the policies designed to transform the economy.
All business leaders must take up the issue. Thus far we have left this conversation to the leadership of black forums and other lobbying institutions.
The limitation of the two reports dominating our discussions on these issues in recent months is that both are only quantitative analyses. The Presidential Black Business Working Group’s report and the Commission for Employment Equity show that we’ve made pathetically slow progress in meeting employment equity targets since 1994.
If you did a qualitative analysis you would find stories that attest to marginalisation of black talent, that speak to tokenistic appointments where there is little or no regard for expertise, no expectations on performance, affirmation of subordinates of those black appointees, marginalisation of black seniors and a never-ending battle for recognition, appreciation and reward. Indeed, [there is] unmitigated and systematic destruction of self-esteem.
South Africa’s corporate environment is littered with black “pigeonholes”, places deemed suitable for blacks to occupy, even though they’re highly qualified in engineering, IT, law or other Âstrategic areas of the economy. This is a waste of human capital in a country that says it lacks skills. It is the result of racial prejudice in the workplace — a true glass ceiling.
Why do black professionals cooperate? They feel their career progression will happen only if they accept jobs in non-core areas. They job hop. They become rolling stones gathering no moss. Then they branch out to BEE initiatives, where again their skills are underutilised and they are inevitably disappointed by the realities of preferential procurement.
They find more prejudice in South Africa’s corporate world. But when they say: “I have a professional auditing firm with a range of skills,” they are told: “You are too small and inexperienced to be awarded a contract.” So the experience they had in corporate South Africa is repeated as they try their own luck, sometimes made worse by the “old boy” network.
Black people looking at ownership face capital constraints and demands for a track record. You’re asked if you have the balance sheet to buy into a company and as soon as you have a healthy balance sheet you get labelled “the usual suspects”. I’ve never heard the Ruperts, Oppenheimers or Ellerines called “usual suspects”.
The biggest challenge in South Africa today — the skills shortage — is compounded by racism in the workplace. Marginalisation of black skills contributes to the shortage. South Africa’s collective business leadership should have more conversations of this kind, not to talk about numbers, but about how we can address these problems.
A new sense of self
Seeing no trade-off between diversity and growth, Bobby Godsell, chief executive, AngloGold Ashanti, makes the following points:
First, without a constructive, honest way to talk to one another about race we will not build the nation we dreamt of in 1994.
The dialogue about race that essentially employs the grammar of the apartheid era, only changing the labels, is not useful.
In our society for 300 years whites have had power, wealth, status and citizenship. Blacks have been subjects, poor and second class. This history has created racial prisons for both black and white South Africans and other minority groups and it’s going to require considerable time and effort for each of the groups to escape from these prisons. Black and white South Africans need to give new and positive meaning to their sense of self and the role that race plays in defining this self.
This is what Steve Biko was writing about — creating the space for black South Africans to define their own identity in their own terms.
White South Africans need to strip out the assumption of privileged, prejudiced superiority that has defined in practical terms what whiteness has meant and has turned whiteness into the concept of chauvinism, as described by NP van Wyk Louw, rather than nationalism, a distinction that continues to be very useful.
A nationalist is somebody who thinks well of himself. A chauvinist is somebody who thinks he’s better than other people.
Black South Africans, I think, face a similar challenge.
This process of creating a new sense of self should be profoundly exciting and creative. We should celebrate one another’s progress in this project.
South Africa’s economy — our wealth-creating machine — has so far utilised the energy, creative talents, wisdom and dress code of 5% of the gene pool of our nation. The 5% is the male half of the white race. How much better is it that we now have access to 100% of this talent pool? Fully utilising this pool will require much effort.
Human nature defaults to familiar software. It’s easier to hire and promote someone from your own group — race, gender, class — than to risk an outsider. Yet this inbreeding comes at an immense price. We need a core of skilled, professional and managerial people that demonstrates access for all races and genders.
If we are to address the challenges of development and poverty and the marginalisation that exists in our society, then our wealth-creating machine will have to become more efficient and surely the 100% gene pool will do this; fronting will not. Surely giving somebody a grand title, a big office, a fancy car and no real function is the most perverse form of racism.
I do not believe there’s a trade-off between diversity and growth. In my experience today’s young graduates, diplomats and apprentices are better educated, more IT competent, more global in outlook, more responsible and exciting than their equivalent in my day. We’ve a major problem of what I can only describe as male menopause. It’s a group of ageing white men who think that the world has gone to hell because the next generation is not as good as it is. This gets compounded with race and gender and it’s just not true. Phoney empowerment will collapse in on itself very quickly.
Finally, beyond these two clusters of thoughts, we do need to have a clear vision of the destination of our journey. Our challenge remains to build a non-racial, non-sexist society. This is what our Constitution enjoins. It is the tradition of the ANC. It is enshrined in the Freedom Charter. It is also the core value of competing political parties in our country and non-racism stands at the heart of all of the major religions that have South Africa as its home.
We will know that we are getting close when white and black South Africans are as comfortable with the label African as they are with the label South African. We will know that we are getting close when black South Africans stop using the word African as a synonym for black.
The real problem
Professor Brian Figaji, CDE board member believes that:
- We accept our history is based on separation and oppression, which was based entirely on race and gender;
- There is a persuasive practice in our country of overt gender discrimination throughout the society;
- Our political change was a negotiated settlement, which implies that we chose evolution over revolution;
- The eradication of the feelings of superiority by the previous privileged group will take a long time;
- The previously oppressed will make increasing demands for access to the benefits the new order has to offer; and
- It will require a large investment in education and training to make up for the many years of unequal investment in the people of this country.
Given this context and its predication on race and gender, redress is not in dispute. Now dialogue is about how we achieve this redress, over what period of time and what priority we accord this action.
This seems to be simple and yet it’s proving to be difficult because of perceptions, because of questionable intentions and ever-changing strategies and a change in the environment that seems to demand an immediate focus on growth. Ben Booysen writes in the HR Highway magazine: “Black economic empowerment and affirmative action is the main focus while the issue of skills retention has taken a backseat.”
This seems to indicate that we should give something else a backseat and so it’s the either-or choice. The assumption often in our society is that every black person appointed is an affirmative action appointee and therefore is incompetent. I get a feeling that those issues are changing slowly.
There are some birth pains in this new society because the society was born out of a negotiated settlement.
Should we delay some of the pains? Take stronger painkillers? Or have an abortion? We ask these questions while knowing we must keep in balance the issue of redress or corrective action, growth and development and the satisfaction of the electorate and political stability.
So-called affirmative action is not the real problem. Instead:
- There’s a level of patronage involved in some appointments that consequently doesn’t yield the best Âperson for the job;
- We are afraid of getting rid of black people when they prove to be incompetent; and
- There’s a lack of opportunity given to black people.
The quote below comes from a report from the National Commission on Higher Education, printed in 1996 as a framework for the transformation of higher education and to spell out higher education’s role within the transforming state.
“… There can be no doubt that the scarcity of high-level skills is hampering economic development as well as South Africa’s competitiveness in the world market. If South Africa is to compete economically on the world stage it will need increasing numbers of competent higher-education-trained professionals and knowledge workers with world-class skills to strengthen its enterprise.”
Well, let’s look at what has happened in education in the years since this report was published. We dabbled in outcomes-based education without real preparation for it. We placed a limit on the extra remuneration that we could pay science and maths teachers because we wanted equality. The original focus was on penalising schools that were doing well — the Model C schools — rather than funding and supporting the weaker schools.
The National Qualifications Framework was approved. Saqa [the South African Qualifications Authority] was established. The Setas [sector education and training authorities], with a huge income from training levies but weak implementation and no action strategies, are alive and well. Education and labour departments are at odds with each other about the new turf created by the Setas. Colleges of education were closed and for two years nothing happened and two years later bursaries for teacher training were reinstituted.
Teachers are offered severance packages because there are too many in the system and so we lose the experience and appoint the inexperienced. Technikons and universities are merged and they shrink in numbers from 36 to 22. The full impact of this disaster has yet to be calculated.
Recently South Africa lost a contract to manufacture the new Ford range of motor vehicles to Australia because we did not have policies in place.
And so I ask myself if all this confusion is a result of redress and affirmative action.
A negotiated settlement — evolution — does not mean the repair of the damage of the past is going to be any easier or any cheaper than reconstruction after a revolution. We have not invested the money in the level of resources that reconstruction would require in this country.
An honest assessment
In conclusion Bernstein said: South Africa has an unemployment rate close to 40% and for young people (18 to 30) unemployment is more than 60%. In 80% of public secondary schools one person per annum on average passes maths at a level sufficient to enter university.
I think the discussion about race and empowerment has to start with these facts and how we are going to change them dramatically.
All over the world we know that small family firms drive entrepreneurship and yet South Africa is obsessed with how we transform the corporate sector. An unintended consequence is that we are falling behind in creating a dynamic and entrepreneurial society. South Africa’s competitiveness compared with other developing countries is slipping and I am concerned that while so much attention is focused on employment equity in existing companies, we are not creating sufficient new companies. South Africa will not become the country we all want if we do not speak honestly about race and growth. Important choices lie ahead and more honest engagement on difficult issues is going to be essential.