Leading CEOs are to meet President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday to update him on progress with their efforts to partner the government in tackling the country’s economic crisis.
Organised business agreed with the government in early June to work together on energy, logistics and crime, the three priority areas business identified as critical to turning around the economy. They are establishing joint working groups which will report back to the president every six weeks.
CEOs such as Discovery’s Adrian Gore, Anglo American’s Nolitha Fakude, Remgro’s Jannie Durand and Sanlam’s Paul Hanratty are among the 10 to 15 CEOs who will attend Tuesday’s meeting. Government ministers and directors-general, as well as Eskom and Transnet leaders, are expected to join.
The meeting comes after the CEOs of more than 115 companies pledged last week to use their collective resources and expertise to tackle the socioeconomic crises facing SA and reverse its downward trajectory. “We firmly believe in the immense potential of our country,” they said in the pledge, in which they committed themselves to “being a force for good”.
The partnership initiative is designed to work through high-level joint structures in each of the priority areas, overseen by a joint strategic operations committee which will ideally meet every two weeks.
Business Unity SA’s (Busa’s) Cas Coovadia said the energy initiative was going well, with private sector players working with the government in some of the national energy crisis committee (Necom) structures. Business leaders are also involved in the national logistics crisis committee, where they have been meeting with Transnet and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan to try to make progress with SA’s dysfunctional rail and port services.
Coovadia said there has not been as much progress with establishing the crime and corruption workstream. Security and police leaders are reluctant to sit down and share information, “but we are working with the president to get that going”.
Since the signing of the pledge, many more business leaders called in wanting to support the initiative, Coovadia said.
It builds on the partnership that business, under Business for SA (B4SA), forged with the government to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic. At its height it mobilised about 600 private sector professionals to work full time on a pro bono basis on healthcare, workplace and economic issues and subsequently on the vaccine rollout. It also follows the creation in March of the Resource Mobilisation Fund, which raised R100m to assist the government with the experts needed to support Necom.
No option
Critics charge that the partnership will prove as frustrating as ever for business, which has tried many times before to work with the government and get it to take action on the economy. There are concerns that it may achieve little other than to give Ramaphosa and his party credibility ahead of next year’s election. However, most business leaders believe they have no option but to try to help.
Coovadia admitted recently that there has been a long debate at Busa. “We asked ourselves, do we try to support government and get no traction and become party to the process of little happening? But we felt that the consequences of refusing to do so were horrendous,” he said.
“Many of those involved are global businesses that have remained invested in SA. We indicated to the government that we believe in this country. If we do a few things right we can begin to turn the ship around and we want to do that,” Coovadia said. “But the president has got to champion this in government.”
The business grouping is led by a reference group of about 25 CEOs working through the B4SA platform. Though they came under pressure to deal with a range of socioeconomic ills, the business leaders insisted that the focus be on just the three priority areas of energy, transport and logistics, and crime and corruption.
Fakude and Sasol’s Fleetwood Grobler lead the business participation in the energy workstream, while logistics is led by former Exxaro CEO Mxolisi Mgojo and Toyota MD Andrew Kirby. Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman and Durand lead the crime and corruption workstream.
The presidency did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Updated: August 1 2023
This article has been updated to reflect that Paul Hanratty is CEO of Sanlam not of Old Mutual. We regret the error.
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