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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The debate is likely to gather fresh momentum in the wake of Thiel’s very public decision in an already fractured US political landscape. Ditto locally, through the growing popularity of entrepreneur-turned-politician Herman Mashaba’s creation ActionSA.
More for you to read today:
- RW Johnson: South Africa’s very own Reichstag fire. Historian reckons it reflects the end of SA’s own “Weimar” period of attractive democracy, weak governance and ineffectual politicians losing control of the economy.
- Oceana, something’s fishy – analysis of late financials and whistle-blower allegations.
Excellent piece by BizNews’s Justin Rowe-Roberts on the back story to the JSE’s latest scandal. - Was Bain’s capture of SARS fuelled by the dictates of organised crime? Brilliant analysis by Adv Erin Richards who unpacks Zondo Commission evidence which exposes some of multinational consultancy Bain’s decidedly dodgy connections.
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