MONDE NDLOVU AND JON FOSTER-PEDLEY: An antidote to apathy — how to leverage 30 years of freedom

Three decades since the euphoria of SA’s first democratic election, the May election day approaches with less glamour and more gloom. With the dream of economic equality out of reach for many, a sense of apathy threatens to disenfranchise the very generation that stands to inherit the promise of those first free elections.

SA retains the top spot for the world’s most unequal country; in the higher echelons of business inequality is also rife. Black people, who make up 80% of the employable population, account for just 17% of top management roles. Black entrepreneurs are struggling to access markets because of inadequate funding and bigger players standing in their way.

We also face an enormous skills challenge. Just 6% of those who start school go on to graduate with a degree within six years of matric, compared with about 50% in the UK and 55% in Finland. Like a cork in the bottle, this is preventing the considerable talent and effervescence of too many South Africans from finding their fullest expression.

All of these issues will rightly be with us in the ballot box. But there is no single lever to pull (or party to vote for) if we want to reduce inequality, unlock greater economic participation among black professionals, and build a workplace skills revolution to drive economic prosperity. Like all complex problems, this calls for co-ordinated action across government, business and civil society, working at multiple levels.

But before you let that overwhelm you even further, each of us has a role on this long walk to freedom. In particular, we believe there are things we can each do to create positive change, even in small ways. If we want things to change we have to help ourselves. Many of us are quick to point the finger at government or big business and focus on all the things they are not doing or are doing wrong. But it is surely a truism that we won’t address these challenges if we don’t also step up to do what we can.

We need to ask ourselves what we can each do to cultivate a deep sense of inclusiveness and belonging in our homes, businesses and our communities. This will be different for each person. As successful professionals ourselves, for example, we can be intentional to ensure others follow in our footsteps and find ways to mentor others and lift and shape our communities as we rise. It may also mean that we need to step into the role of activists. Can we hold government, our employers — and ourselves — accountable for driving change and building an inclusive future?

Powerful tools

If more people had called out what was happening at Steinhoff before the problem got out of hand, might we have staved off its inevitable collapse? When we see or learn that something is wrong and we do nothing, by turning a blind eye to it we tacitly give our approval. If we continue to do nothing, we enable wrongdoing.

SA is blessed with many excellent institutions, from the JSE and Reserve Bank to courts and institutions of higher learning. Though imperfect, these organisations are powerful tools for change and can be important catalysts for economic development if we can work with them, influence them and nudge them in the direction of positive change.

This does not imply agreement. In fact, it may require us to throw down the gauntlet in some instances. As Martin Luther King reminds us, sometimes doing the right thing might require doing the “wrong” thing. In business, for instance, we need more corporate guerrillas who will stand firm for the development and advancement of Africans in business and who will articulate their views on the lack of African leadership development, and create space for this talent to emerge and shine.

While the Employment Equity Amendment Bill legislates for transformation, the power essentially remains in the hands of individual leaders and lobby groups to drive the change needed. As former Black Management Forum (BMF) president Lot Ndlovu said, “The new economic dispensation should match the aspiration for economic freedom and the fulfilment of the highest ideals of our democracy.” And we’re not there yet.

In the tertiary education space it may mean that we have to disrupt an education system stuck on serving a derivative economy that had its heyday 60 years ago. The old SA’s wealth was built on an extractive economy with a few highly skilled people and a deliberately undereducated mass population that provided mostly labour. The new SA needs to give masses of people the ability to create modern prosperity by working at higher levels of sophistication and complexity, and only mass education and workplace learning can provide that.

Nurture scholarship

We will also get more done if we work together rather than as lone wolves. Organisations such as the BMF have provided an essential platform to forge networks and ideas to build the nation since 1976. Imagine how much more powerful we can be if we forge links with other networks and find common ground to build on.

Knowledge shapes policies and builds economies, and we need African knowledge that is relevant and useful to power our transformation. We thus need to nurture scholarship and work to improve access to higher education, so that more people with the potential can join the African knowledge-generation machine and more African thought leaders are given a voice in the world.

The German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that we shape the world through our words; that we literally speak our reality into being. As South Africans we need to be prepared to stand up for what we believe in and what we need and want. Now is not the time to stay silent.

It may feel like we are facing insurmountable obstacles in this country, but through the small individual actions that shape our daily lives and those of our businesses and communities, we can make a positive difference. The antidote to apathy is action. Let’s do what we can, where we can — and get out and vote on May 29 if you can too.

• Ndlovu is MD of the BMF and an alumnus of Henley Business School Africa. Foster-Pedley is dean and director of Henley, chair of the Association of African Business Schools, and chair of the British Chamber of Business in Southern Africa. This article is based on a conversation at an event co-hosted by the BMF and Henley Business School to explore avenues for collaboration in transformation.