Under siege from sections of the tripartite alliance for failing transformation, organised business on Tuesday took the unprecedented step of launching its own take on economic transformation.
Dubbed the "first united business stance" on the subject, the paper covered its approach to black economic transformation, inclusive growth and high levels of unemployment.
Business Unity SA (Busa) president Jabu Mabuza said business had been on the sidelines for too long and now needed to champion inclusive economic growth.
"If we don’t transform, we will be transformed ... we are running out of time," Busa CEO Tanya Cohen said.
Ajay Lalu, MD of Black Lite Consulting, which deals with transformation issues, said: "It’s a welcome introspection from business that they concede that they haven’t performed well on transformation to date."
He said that the document was still a little scant on detail and that an end state of when transformation was achieved needed to be defined. "In my view, this will take a long time," Lalu said. Cosatu national spokesman Sizwe Pamla said it was not enough to have conversations of transformation "quietly in corners without the input of all stakeholders".
He said that inclusive growth needed to be based on a unified stance.
Cohen said the paper was a continuous process and other stakeholders such as company CEOs, labour and government would be consulted.
Mabuza said that the approach was different in that, unlike existing charters and codes that were unilaterally developed, the Busa document recommended collaboration between all social partners including government, business, labour and communities.
The paper was launched as Statistics SA on Tuesday reported that 48,000 jobs were lost in the first quarter of 2017.
Analysts and economists attributed this loss to the recession, the investment downgrades and the prevailing poor investor sentiment.
The country already has an unemployment rate of more
than 27%.
Investec economist Kamilla Kaplan said: "Depressed business confidence reflects expectations of suppressed future economic growth, which therefore indicates that the private business sector will not add jobs or boost investment at the
present time."
Econometrix MD Azar Jammine said: "There is no doubt the level of unemployment will keep rising until there are structural changes to the economy."
Busa's document on business’s approach to economic transformation:
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