by Cees Bruggemans
It is by now legendary, the trust deficit between government & business in SA, thereby undermining business risk-taking & growth.
But cast the net a little wider and what do you get?
The distrust story seems to be much more widespread, running in many parallel channels. That we are still generating growth is purely due to true grit, good assets, still surviving pockets of excellence, just doing it. And more such cliches.
But the headwinds on the nose are fearful as we manfully struggle onward. Also suggestive that we could outperform to a remarkable degree if only more people would be rowing for the team rather than according to own inclination and at best at cross-purpose to everyone else.
Indeed, we can speak of low-intensity civil war. Such conflicts are corrosive, deeply damaging if fought militarily, but still enormously disruptive when socially pursued.
We are not unique on this score. Nearly every country has deep currents, some genuinely killing. Think of modern Democrats & Republicans, Conservatives & Labour, and so through every modern country, but also between business & labour, between rich and poor, between social classes, language groups, genders, age groups. Culturally, socially, economically, religiously, ideologically.
What could possibly still be said about any of this, only adding fresh paint to old saws? We call it competition, don’t we?
Yet there is some stuff that appears very SA specific. It may be too important to leave to chance (or elbow grease?). More explicitness may assist in addressing these sores, even if painful.
Government has reportedly a deep distrust of private business, especially white capital, something that has historic & ideological origins. Distrust sows distrust and vice versa, so don’t be surprised if a rule-making, taxing, social-engineering, encroaching state is viewed with private suspicion, especially if it doesn’t run its own turf well. The public sector could do a great deal better and government actions too often undermine rather than support the national growth effort and the addressing of structural shortcomings, giving business apparently ever less reason to focus locally.
But it seemingly goes much wider.
Today, there are more and more groups in political opposition, left and right, that target government as a big beached whale, to be devoured at leisure, while no love seems to be lost from governmentâs side either.
Business/labour has had an adversary relationship, even if words can’t quite capture the depths of the dysfunctionality prevailing at times. Yet in recent times we seem to have broken new ground for despair, at least for this generation.
Another distrust is that between the upcoming generation and business. And again it is mutual.
Ambitious people are all of all times, and so are impatient ones. Also people who don’t quite make the grade, except in their own eyes, which can create reality deficits, especially within large organisations.
People even will desperately seek more education, hoping such additional qualifications will overcome something that they can’t quite grasp. The rub is often not in the extra qualifications, as in the original base choices. Beyond that loom inherent talent, beyond that personality, beyond that politics (or is it more like location, location, location?) and beyond that prejudice (gender, language, age, nationality, race, religion, ideology, sexual preference, and a long list of other things caught under âstuffâ, including most body parts & mannerisms).
At least, a rational examination would suggest such a line-up, using efficiency rules as far as possible. In less efficient structures governed by different mindsets, the priority rankings might be quite different, invariably more basic & emotional, but not any less real on the receiving end.
And lets face it, despite our glorious modernity, we are a complex amalgam of rational drivers & emotional hangups, strange bedfellows giving the weirdest outcomes, often defying explanation, for where do you startâŚ.
Is there a Doctor in the House, a good listener, deeply empathic, with excellent bedside manners?
This is a long entry into very sensitive territory. We too have our gender wars, and when examining the past, our language wars (of which quite a bit of revival in new shapes). With an awful lot of symbolism all round. But the real sore wound is race. And youth.
And here we can observe two very critical dimensions in tandem.
Businesses love to hire professional talent, invariably young (for still fresh, eager, creative, malleable and cheap, everything being relative, though allowing for clear exceptions, even if not too many).
But business doesnât do palace revolutions. Instead, strict guidelines as to who is in charge, who are the champions. Not unlike the military (you are in the army now). Beyond them resides the great body of foot soldiers, from whose ranks future champions may crystallise, but this being a very trying boot camp and winnowing process, as only evolution teaches us.
This has hardly ever been explained to the incoming generation, unless seeing parents laid low (or succeed wildly) and having learned from it. But especially first-generation high flyers may have little guidance and must find their own way. This is a brutal process where only the best, most shrewd (dare I say most lucky?)Â somehow survive, like the single birdie making it out of a nest of seven (or more) eggs. Or the first 24 hours for any lion cub for the first time entering the great wide world, when half get killed and only a few specimens may grow to 7 years old before finally capturing their own harem by turfing an old lion out.
These realities are again of all times and parts of the planet.
South Africaâs reality is an upcoming black generation who sees itself fit to govern. This has been achieved, mostly by elderly elements, in politics. And copy-catting them is a whole (much) younger army in the business sector.
The basic message is one of âwe are ready, make wayâ. Yet the daily reality often remains for many (not all) maddeningly different in texture, perhaps more so in locally owned businesses than in internationally held subsidiaries. Friends of management in terms of gender, culture, language and other contributes (such as skill and talent) tend to keep winning the juicy parts, while often a heavy dose of tokenism in less critical areas of the business keeps the numbers game legitimately alive.
For many an infuriating reality, indeed for both sides of the aisle.
For the rejoinder is as old as the hills. If you want so desperately to run a company, kindly create your own. This company belongs to private shareholders, not to the nation, or government or your age cohort, gender, language group or race. This isn’t a democracy. This is a field army run by delegated business generals, even if having to act strictly within regulatory guidelines.
Clearly, one or both are in the wrong economic system. Business owners and managers may discover they are no longer participating in a capitalist market system, in which rule of law and property are central, as compared to those challenging them mixing in elements of social third ways which donât quite have their base in the constitution, wanting to transform in ways that clearly would change the rules of the game.
Of course, in a democracy everything is up for grabs, including the constitution. So nothing need to be forever, provided enough people say so.
Meanwhile, this divide runs deep, creates enormous tensions below the surface (and above it) for both sides, and detracts from work. And GDP (the Holy Grail).
Stiff school fees are the price for normalising a miscast society but hopefully not losing the plot in doing so, by for instance handing the keys to the drinking cabinet to populists bend on destruction, by whatever sweet name they choose to call it.
And if this isn’t enough, we also have (worldwide) the interface between business trying to win customers and keep them (often with practices at best deplored, but therefore not less legitimate) and especially a 25-yr old generation extremely streetwise and skeptical (mainly because parents or other family or friends suffered some corporate run-in).
Such tension can be viewed as creative destruction, assisting in making for better supply side responses over time, and therefore to be welcomed. But at what cost? Comparable to the necessity of having regulators, police, armies? Costly but necessary in the long run. But can’t it be had somewhat cheaper, please?
As regards SA, the political arena is a productive caldron of competing ideas, though one would wish it to be populated by less destructive, costly elements. Something for the electorate to sort out over time, hopefully not taking forever (but look everywhere in the world and despair).
The distrust between government and business is a matter of strategic priorities. One appreciates the preoccupation with political control, and the wish for societal transformation, but both could be achieved so much more effortlessly, effectively and surely by being rational rather than emotional about economic choices. Something for future leadership cadres to ponder. Better mousetrap and all that, although there is some incongruity about who is setting traps for whom.
The bigger challenge is to engage with impatient youth, many of whom clearly have not had the right role models, are radicalising at a deploring pace, and who may end up destroying much of what they want to inherit effortlessly.
Businesses themselves have clearly a sensitive role to play here, though few CEOs may feel it will add anything to the bottom line or their share option values, except in the long term. And as Keynes correctly observed, we will all be death by then, while only quarterly results now still really count. So don’t confuse me.
Business  visionaries, of which there remain some, and political ones (of which there remain how many?) need to hold up mirrors and measuring sticks, so that even the most talented get it, and start their own businesses as the only real shortcut to an otherwise devilish difficult dilemma-cum-evolution-problem (though hopefully realising that own businesses have their own evolutionary greasy pole, just like any corporate ladder).
But address it we must, possibly more pressingly than the land question. And that should signify something. Greasing the remuneration scales may have helped, but only ends up wetting more appetite, for it is too often seen as reflected ability rather than bought complicity. Try explaining the difference one day to the less dull of mind.
As to all those gender, age, language, cultural enclaves, grow up, will you. Or better, look abroad at what is best practice globally yielding the best mix of results from diverse labour forces and talent pools.
But there is some of the rub. This is still a very young country, on all sides of the aisle, rubbing each other raw, while grappling with misunderstanding or at best misinformation all round.
All very costly, in growth, jobs, political stability foregone.
And yet we somehow keep making it. True grit, even if the corporate base keeps emigrating because things at home (supply & demand wise) are simply not enticing enough. They, too, need incentivisation, just as much as the impatient young, to bring their best.
