Watching the drama on both sides of the Atlantic, I am struck by the stark differences in behaviour between big business in SA and the US.
Organised commerce in SA views the political class — and I mean everyone in the political class, from the DA to the ANC — as a bunch of toddlers fiddling with a grenade. At very least, you need to watch over them eagle-eyed, not daring even to blink. At worst, you need to throw yourself among them and prise that grenade from their hands.
This attitude to politics began in the mid-2010s, when it became clear that Jacob Zuma was a catastrophe. Business interests funded Cyril Ramaphosa’s bid for the ANC presidency in 2017 as a matter of national emergency. And while he was settling in — and disappointing — as president, some of the DA’s largest funders began working on that miscreant child too. Efforts were made to push the ineffectual John Steenhuisen out and recruit a credible black leader to take the party to an electoral victory in 2024, saving SA from disaster again.
In the meantime, organised business became involved in the engine room of the national state, getting integrally involved in energy, transport, crime-fighting and more. Business leaders feared that without their involvement SA’s basic plumbing would never work again.
The story goes on. When the ANC lost its majority last year, and the spectre of a populist coalition beckoned, business was there again, banging ANC and DA heads together, reminding each of the mayhem ahead if they did not listen, and reminding the DA in particular of who paid the bills.
And when the government of national unity (GNU) began imploding earlier this month, you guessed it — organised business was there once more, trying to save the day. SA business regards itself as the adult in the room. If it steps outside, even for a moment, chaos will descend.
Contrast this with business in the US. It has latched onto the most childlike, the most unstable, the most truly frightening figure in US politics, and taken him for a superhero. The tech industry is the most glaring culprit, flinging off its seat belt and riding the hurricane that is Donald Trump.
He would, they reckoned, smash the regulators’ inhibiting their technology, silence the workforces challenging their authority, sweep the fudge and muck from the bureaucratic state and free them to shape the future.
Not yet three months into his administration, the more farsighted among them are beginning to see the disaster. Among European regulators and jurists, there is talk about whether it remains tolerable to keep European data on US-based cloud-computing platforms. And in the incipient trade war, suspended for now, there is talk in the European Commission of slapping retaliatory tariffs on services imported from the US. The US tech industry may well lose one of its biggest markets thanks to its alliance with Trump.
The behaviour of US financial institutions has not been quite as reprehensible, but it hasn’t been a whole lot better. Convince yourself that goading a mob to invade the Capitol is not that serious, that Trump’s talk of tariffs is a bluff, his promise to deport millions of immigrants bluster, his threat to use the justice system to destroy his enemies just working off anger. Discount all of that and you are left with tax cuts, which is pretty nice.
The stock market crash last week is one thing. But the run on US treasuries that was narrowly averted on Wednesday threatened the plumbing of the global financial system. History may come to see Wall Street as a man whistling with his hands in its pockets as the world began to burn.
US business could take a lesson from its tiny counterpart at the tip of Africa. When politics looks like it’s breaking, it actually is.
SA business faces a problem of its own though. How long will the political class tolerate the intense attention? The Zuma debacle triggered a degree of business involvement in politics that surely has a shelf life. How close are we to the expiry date? It’s hard to tell.
• Steinberg teaches at Yale University’s Council on African Studies.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.