WORLDVIEW: Genie out the bottle, elite fighting back dirty but resistance is futile

Once again this week I was reminded of the tyranny of distance this week. South Africa's navel gazing mass media focused its attention on an "open letter" by the hapless Duduzane Zuma. An event that turned from misguided to bizarre when the poor fellow's ghost writers misspelled his name..That wasn't the only clue that the letter was drafted in the Saxonwold Shebeen. Its half-truth-laden "facts" look to any rational mind as a last gasp defence of the crony capitalist Gupta family, who are now very obviously on the run..But what is easily missed in the local drama, though, is how the Duduzane letter mirrors a global theme. The old order of control by elites is buckling under sustained pressure. It has passed the point of return. A new world of transparency and truth is slowly gaining the upper hand..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Consider, for instance, how this week the UK government announced that all 900 London listed companies will now be required to publish the average salary of their employees – and highlight the multiple of this earned by their CEO. Where London goes, expect the rest of the financial world to soon follow..The cage rattling of corporate elites is also being seen in increasingly vociferous shareholder activism, mostly from American hedge funds..Fresh from forcing BHP Billiton to reverse its shale gas folly, New York-based activists Elliott Advisors won a demand to appoint three directors to the board of Dutch group Akzo Nobel. Corvex Management is having a go at French food group Danone. And Daniel Loeb's Third Point is shaking up the management of Swiss giant Nestle..But it is on the political front that most pressure is being exerted. It was on this ticket that Americans elected Donald Trump and the French the even more unlikely Emmanuel Macron – both of whom are turning out to be more of an idea than a solution. Beneficiaries of the political status quo, however, are fighting back..The Chinese government, shaken by weeks of street protests, has jailed three young democracy activists in Hong Kong. The corrupt Ukrainian government launched a fake news campaign against anti-corruption campaigners – and passed a law targeting NGOs. And in Thailand the military junta whose statutes include a ban on gatherings of more than five people, is attempting to jail the former prime minister for apparent "incompetence"..As South Africans can attest, desperation leads to irrational acts. I well remember in the mid-1980s how great writing (or so I thought, anyway) was destroyed by government censors, with newspapers often hitting the streets with huge sections of the copy inked out..We live in a period of seismic transition. Wherever you look from income inequality to education and medicine, systems are no longer fit for purpose. The old world order is broken. Disruption is fast becoming the norm..Whether in business or politics, age-old control structures are being challenged by the newly empowered armed with the gift of the Internet Age's absolute transparency. The genie is out of the bottle. Not even Donald Trump (or China) is capable of putting it back. Think of that the next time you buy a share, or consider a job offer.

WORLDVIEW: Genie out the bottle, elite fighting back dirty but resistance is futile

Related Stories

Meet Tshepo Mahloele – Big Capitec shareholder, ABSIP’s “CEO of the Decade” now accused by Holomisa as kingpin of corrupt network

PREMIUM: Making of a great editor – the George Palmer playbook

Premium – BizNews global portfolio: ASML joins – so does Adobe as Bull takes hold again

Alec Hogg: Helen Zille predicts SA choice will be DA or EFF