Black people constitute 87% of the economically active population, yet just 9% of CEOs are people of colour. Sixteen years ago the country was liberated through a protracted negotiations process that began way before political prisoners were released in 1989. The people of South Africa gained political freedom, both black and white. Unfortunately economic liberty was not so readily available for millions, but for the political elite it was. They were in perfect positions to take advantage of the situation. No one should blame them for it.
Nelson Mandela once said, “We do not want freedom without bread, nor do we want bread without freedom.” Unfortunately millions have freedom without bread. A select few have freedom and bread in abundance. Having said that we cannot overlook the fact that with liberation we also gained the right to make our own bread, sell it and run the bakery. However the man running the bakery and making the bread is still white. I can already imagine someone calling me anti-white, implying that I am saying white people have no business running businesses. That is not true, as the Freedom Charter says, “The people shall share in the wealth of the land.” It doesn’t say the blacks.
There is no denying that the economy is in white hands. Given the choice to give up political power instead of economic power, most would give up the former. The politics of today are controlled by money. He who has the money can buy politics.
One cannot fault the white CEO for not wanting to relinquish his position to a person of colour. He too worked for many years to ascend to that position. While this CEO was working hard to make his way to the top there were other equally ambitious white people who were working just as hard to be the chief in charge. What does that mean? It means that there was a larger pool of well-qualified white people to run large corporations. In the meantime black people were studying Bachelor of Arts, and were teachers and nurses and doctors. Black people were not exposed nor allowed to study certain professions. Yes, I’m blaming apartheid, sue me.
Suddenly liberation was won. Men and women who had worked hard all their lives to run companies started hearing murmurs about affirmative action, they were fearful of losing their jobs. Some hired black talent but never really transferred skills because of the natural human instinct of fear — if I teach him everything I know he is going to push me out and I will no longer be needed because I am a white male. This means people of colour don’t ascend as quickly. They feel sidelined, disgruntled and, demotivated, quit and become Tenderpreneurs. Tired of fighting what they think is a losing battle, they leave what they see as racist corporate South Africa behind. These are just some of the reasons we are in this position.
If we take a look at the Freedom Charter which is the basis of our much-praised Constitution. We read the following, “We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities.” The truth is we do all enjoy equal opportunities since liberation but some have to fight ten times harder than others to even have a sniff at the opportunities.
In 1998, then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki opened a debate in the National Assembly on “Reconciliation and Nation Building”. He delivered a speech that made many people angry. He said, “A major component part of the issue of reconciliation and nation building is defined by and derives from the material conditions in our society which have divided our country into two nations, the one black and the other white. We therefore make bold to say that South Africa is a country of two nations.
“One of these nations is white, relatively prosperous, regardless of gender or geographic dispersal. It has ready access to a developed economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure…
“The second and larger nation of South Africa is black and poor, with the worst affected being women in the rural areas, the black rural population in general and the disabled. This nation lives under conditions of a grossly underdeveloped economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure. It has virtually no possibility to exercise what in reality amounts to a theoretical right to equal opportunity, with that right being equal within this black nation only to the extent that it is equally incapable of realisation.”
It has been twelve years since Thabo Mbeki said those words. Twelve years later 91% of CEOs of some of the largest and most influential companies in the country are white. Many saw the speech as being divisive, as opposed to constructive. It made many uncomfortable.
I read an article that slapped me in the face yesterday. A survey conducted by Business Unity South Africa found that among the upper management echelons of all 295 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), 91% had white CEOs. Nobody can truly say this is right — after all it has been more than fifteen years since we were liberated. Some say that precisely the reason that 91% of these companies have white CEOs is because we have ONLY had sixteen years of liberation. There aren’t qualified people of colour because of the time frame.
Therefore there hasn’t been enough time to develop nor groom black talent in that space of time. A reasonable comment. Saying that the ANC had no experience running a country and needed a lot of time before it would be allowed to run a country made common sense. We didn’t listen to what would have been “common sense”. Sometimes common sense slows things down. Had we taken what Dr Martin Luther King Junior called, “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” the black person would still have no vote today.
Nobody is saying that incompetent people of colour should be made CEOs because that would prove those who want to say blacks cannot run large corporations right, and would defeat the purpose. We have competent black CEOs to speak of right now; the Sizwe Nxasanas and the Phuthuma Nhlekos of this world running multi billion rand corporations. More needs to be added to their number.
This issue of white corporate South Africa needs to be discussed; it can’t continue to be swept under the rug. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “Our strongest weapon is dialogue.” Let’s talk, and once we’re done talking let’s act.
@Ian Shaw – you got it in one; redistribution of wealth = redistribution of poverty.
Worse in SA it is not half half it is 80+:20- – and the 20- is the bit that works.
@Leon
The problem that citizens have with meeting state officials is common throughout Africa, and parts of east Asia (although the latter is changing now), and I suspect that this ties into corruption – state officials have no trust, no respect and no belief in the competence of their citizens, except to the limited extent that these citizens have obtained foreign degrees (and citizenship, apparently – interesting, if disgusting). The irony of this is that third world university degrees are often much harder (in terms of intellectual effort) to obtain. (I’m a bit old fashioned, and date RSA’s independence to 1910… We certainly in 1994 had, and to a large extent still have good educational institutions). Perhaps part of a continental solution is to propagandize the educational and business successes both of citizens and of people who have left, to impress on corrupt politicians that they might do better investing their loot in their countries than collecting interest in a Swiss account.
Johan Meyer
There were over 1000 tribes in Africa, all different. The Xhosa intermarried with both Khoisan and Whites (shipwrecks. Some of Mandela’s family are descended from Bess, a white shipwrecked girl who became the only wife of a tribal chief (who thought so highly of her he took no other wife).
Other tribes killed the Khoisan – especially Shaka who wiped out a number of tribes in his genocide, including John Dube’s tribe.
Souhern African white settlers are almost the only European settlers in history who protected the locals and their customns, and did not reduce them to a minority and THEN introduce democracy.
How often do you see an American or Canadian Indian, or an Australian aborigine on their TV?
@Lyndall Beddy
The relationships between linguistically Bantu ethnic groups and linguistically ‘Khoisan’ ethnic groups varied with time as well; likewise the intermarriage was not exactly from an equal relationship – mDNA passes from mother to children, so we know Khoisan women could be absorbed into Bantu society, but we don’t see much Khoisan (A-group) y-chromosomes among RSA Bantu groups, which suggest that men couldn’t. The relevant question is then still ambiguous – to what extent was their relationship genocidal, and deliberately so? Bantu groups generally to my understanding did freely incorporate willing Europeans – part of Winnie’s hatred for whites from what I’ve heard comes from her one white grandfather, who with his wife raised her, but would beat his wife (and probably Winnie as well) repeatedly.
As for whites, it depends on where – certainly we were much less genocidal than in the Americas or Australasia, but many of the ethnic groups we were in contact with had at least bronze age technology (including several Khoisan related groups – the Dutch settlers would trade north for copper), and the Zulus worked iron. Moreover, repeated slave raids by various groups had led to a fairly strong martial tradition, which made genocidal campaigns more difficult. But there were some (mainly Khoisan related) groups that were destroyed or reduced substantially, or destroyed as a group through intermarriage, by whites. Another example: the wars between the Dutch/Afrikaans and Xhosa due to mutual cattle theft – again, the Xhosa could effectively resist…
Johan Meyer
Even with white shipwrecked survivors, like with the Khoisan, the Xhosa would kill the men and incorporate the women and children.
However there are men who survived – almost always when they were not in a group but split off and survived by appearing in a village as one sole man. Two men from the Grovenor made it that way – the others were killed.
However the Khoisan were protected by law from the second British occupation. Farmers had to kill game to feed them, and they were not imprisoned for stocktheft but placed in house arrest (which is how their customns got recorded).
Not that everyone on the frontiers obeyed those laws then, just like not everyone obeys the law now.
Johan Meyer
The Khoisan did not die out – there are many short coloureds in the Cape – most are likely Khoisan, especially in the Karoo.
One coloured community in the Karoo was DNA tested and turned out to be almost 100% Khoisan.
Some coloured communities in the Karoo still say cartain words with a click – like “Kudu”.
@Johan @Lyndall
Interesting discussion, but off-topic. However – it is probably a symptom of the problem in SA – we keep on harping on the past. The ANC is blaming all their mistakes on ‘apartheid’.
Everyone agrees and accept -our past is BAD, bloody and not very pretty.
Similar things happened to all nations across the ages, but there is no point harping on the past.
If SA wants to move forward, we need to look at the past to learn a lesson from it, BUT we cannot keep harping on the past and looking at who to balme for what. Those people who messed up are all dead, and we are left with the mess.
The only way forward is to LOOK forward, not back.
@Lyndall Beddy
I said that some groups (perhaps tribes or villages would be better terms – the Khoisan macro-ethnicity certainly still exists) were destroyed – we can rely for instance on the diaries of the perpetrators, although it would take some effort for me to gather the references – expect a month’s wait, at least (work…).
@Leon
What Beddy and I (in opposition) are trying to do is to place RSA history in the international context, and see how we can understand it to allow for new possibilities. But to bring it back to what you were saying, we have several options, if RSA is to be a success:
1. We can have a super-enriched class, but ethnically more representative of the populace, at the expense of the rest of the populace (what Khaya Dlanga is effectively suggesting, whether he intends to or not),
2. we can subjugate other African countries, and have USA-style socialism for ourselves, or
3. we can subjugate (with some luck) the industrialised countries, and have USA-style socialism perhaps for the continent.
If we do not want to have a huge portion of the human race subjugated, we have to abandon the market system – the industrialised countries had their wealth at the expense of some of their citizens, and at the expense of other countries. I show the outline of the reasoning on a blog post… Also, right now, there is a dire need to stop international fishing and rebuild soils, etc.
Leon
I don’t agree – if you don’t learn the past, you make the same mistakes in the future.
But it is History one must learn,not myth,and school history books everywhere in the world are approved by politicians, who prefer Myths.
As Churchill said:
“The Victors Write History”
@Lyndall,
That is what I am saying – we need to learn from the past, not harp on it. The ANC still blaming Apartheid is not solving anything;
Look at Zim; what happened – the infrastructure started collapsing because it was not being maintained. This was because inexperience people via Affirmative Action took over government.
Towards the turn of the century their electricity grid started failing, then the sewerage systems which poisoned the water supply which caused cholera outbreaks from which they still suffer. The roads started falling into disrepair. This affected the economy so Mugabe started taking farms. Their currency went from being as strong as the US dollar to nothing in 10 years.
In SA in 2008 the electricity problems started, the Duzi that year was plagued with diarrhoea because a sewerage pipe was spilling into the river, in March 2008 the vaal dam was full of dead fish. Same problem. Hartebeespoort dam is totally rotten. The roads in SA are getting worse and worse. In October 2008 the govt passed the land grab law. Go figure..
What concerns me most is the effect of the WorldCup. These events are always run at a loss. The Greek economy is in collapse – they never recovered from the cost of the Olympics. You CANNOT recover 4 years of spend in 2 weeks. I predict a huge drop in the value of the Rand after the WorldCup.
Talking of a change in history; its now taught that the the Boere lost at Bloodriver…
Leon
Can you give me the exact details of which book reflects the boers as having lost at Blood River? I have heard from another source that racist history is in the new school text books,and I wish to pass the information on to Afriforum.
Sorry no Lyndall, my Son who is now at University was taught this in st 5, about 7 years ago. As somebody commented – the victors write the history.
Khaya, you are my Hero! While I may not agree with YOUR opinions 100%, Brother you are a breath of fresh air in a South Africa that is sadly “dominated” by the “views” of so-called educated black people – whose notion of research is gobbling down the garbage and propaganda that has become so commonplace in the Sunday tabloids, masquerading as newspapers, and whose notion of expressing their opinions on any current affairs issue is regurgitating the aforementioned garbage/propaganda!!