Combat nuclear with consumer power

It appears that a nuclear noose is being looped around the necks of all South Africans — businesses, municipalities and consumers.

The sinister fog around the procurement process leads us to believe that the purpose of the nuclear programme is not to advance a secure, sustainable and affordable energy solution that improves the lives of all South Africans, but rather to fill the pockets of the very few: the politically connected and their network of patronage.

Since the energy minister’s nuclear procurement determination in December 2015, Eskom and the minister have been insisting that SA both needs and can afford nuclear energy. This is inconsistent with the minister’s own findings in 2013 that SA should avoid as long as possible large-scale, long-term investments in nuclear, and instead look to better options including coal and gas, and hydro, small-scale solar photovoltaic and other renewable energy sources.

The promoters of nuclear power ignore overwhelming expert opinion that says we do not need and cannot afford nuclear: some of the most vocal critics of the nuclear decision, like Anton Eberhard, a professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, are respected, qualified voices, having previously been commissioned by the Cabinet to inform our national strategy for an energy-secure future.

The scorched-earth passage of this nuclear programme continues to have a devastating effect on our institutions, our politics and our courts. It has laid waste to individual careers. It has made all of us more vulnerable — whether rich, poor or middle class.

It may not be too late to clear the fog and protect our futures. Customers have a choice not to buy services and products they do not want. It is time for big business and larger municipalities to publicly declare that they do not want and will not buy nuclear energy: we need clean energy for a clean state.

Very recent stirrings of courage notwithstanding, South African corporate leadership, as observed by various commentators, has merely "gone along to get along". Things used to be different. What has become of the enlightened and bold leadership that established and resourced the Collaborative Business Movement (CBM) — when "white capital" became "good capital"?

In the darkest hours before the dawn of a politically free SA, between 1989 and 1995, the CBM was the key architect of a high-trust environment that helped bring together leaders across the political and ideological divides. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, senior business leaders of the CBM worked towards a specific mission of facilitating a transition from an apartheid regime to a democratically elected government.

And they succeeded by putting trust-building at the heart of their activities and creating trusted networks. Together, they worked single-mindedly to arrive at a democratically elected, ANC-led government of national unity. You merely have to juxtapose this with what has happened in Syria and Egypt, to appreciate what a remarkable outcome this was, however imperfect.

Once again, we need a united group of bold business leaders with a shared sociopolitical vision and moral language.

We need leaders who embrace their agency and understand their power — leaders who actively wield that power for the national good.

Business must embrace its legitimacy. In his address at the Mining Indaba, AngloGold Ashanti chairman Sipho Pityana drove home the point: "It cannot be business as usual. We need to wake up to what our young students sense already, which is that the business community has a vital role to play in saving SA. But time is wasting.

"First, the business community must accept that it is a valid voice in society — it sends children to school and helps provide for retirement. It invests and builds infrastructure, provides medicine and healthcare, and allows us to communicate."

And business must acknowledge its power and focus this leverage through organisation. Harvard professor Yuhua Wang conducts extensive research on state institutions and state-business relations. He demonstrates in his book Tying the Autocrat’s Hands: The Rise of the Rule of Law in China, that authoritarian regimes will only respect the rule of law when they need "the co-operation of organised interest groups, which are not politically connected, that control valuable and mobile assets".

South African government "leadership" is certainly becoming increasingly autocratic; the democratic project of our country is hanging on by the thin thread of our courts. This behaviour is apparent in the hardening of the security cluster, the use of the organs of the state for personal agendas, and the flagrant disregard for the questions or dictums of Parliament, our courts and even governing party elders.

When you are not the chairperson of a foundation related to the president, or do not dine regularly in Saxonwold or at Nkandla, you cannot phone a friend to make your troubles go away. People or businesses that are not politically connected depend on the just use of the "rule of law". Business must use whatever power it has to protect this institution.

If business wants to survive, it simply must get better organised for united action. Thus we need a core group of bold leaders who organise for a specific desired outcome. What concrete actions ought business (and local government) leaders take? South African business, together with larger municipalities, can exercise their agency through their customer power.

Organised business can assert that it does not need or will not pay for nuclear power. When it comes to need or affordability, there is no comparatively compelling case for nuclear energy in SA.

Business needs to say that we do not need and cannot afford nuclear energy. Business and its partners in local government and civil society need to demand the release of the Integrated Resource Plan so they can engage and influence this roadmap. Business needs to embrace its legitimacy as a vital voice in our public sphere; and business must organise for clean energy for a clean state.

If SA desperately needs leadership to pull us back from the crisis we’re in, there must be a role for business leaders when their influence clearly affects the public sphere and the lives of all South Africans.

Hollard chairman Adrian Enthoven said in his address at the annual Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert Honorary Lecture: "We cannot stand by and allow this systematic raid on our institutions to succeed. The South African democratic project is not a project of a political party, or government or Parliament.

"It is our project. As citizens, we collectively own and are the ultimate custodians and guardians of our democracy. They must not be subverted on our watch. There needs to be a clear metaphorical ‘line in the sand’ that cannot be crossed."

For a start, we must insist on clean energy for a clean state.

•Raghubar is an entrepreneur in the media, marketing and technology sectors. He is a fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative and a 2016 Yale Greenberg World Fellow.