Premium: Peter Thiel’s dumping Facebook raises business execs in politics conundrum

During the late 1990s and right through the noughties, I hosted a quarterly supper club and annual gathering of South African CEOs (and their partners) in what we called The Ibandla. It was an invitation-only club with strict Chatham House rules. As a result, our A-Type Personality members usually defaulted to brutal frankness.

Among the most hotly contested topics during these off-the-record engagements was whether business leaders should be more closely involved in politics. It's a global debate. One back in the news today after Silicon Valley icon Peter Thiel said he will now focus on supporting Trump-Agenda candidates – and cut a 16 year relationship with Facebook.

At the Ibandla, one group argued for complete isolation, pointing to the lashing even moderately critical business executives received from notoriously thin-skinned Thabo Mbeki. The other side argued that without the trust built during such engagements, business and government would never be able to work together in the national interest.

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