There cannot be many countries where the business community has stepped up to help the government fix the economy to the extent that business has done in SA. But does it deserve to be congratulated for doing so?
One could argue that the partnership business has forged with the government to try to tackle the energy, logistics and crime crises holding back SA’s economic growth is simple self-interest — that business is doing no more than ensure it can do business, in an environment that had become ever more hostile to this.
Yet three things stand out from Tuesday’s briefing by President Cyril Ramaphosa and Business for SA on the partnership’s progress.
First is the extent of resources that business has committed over the 16 months since the partnership was formally launched last year. Companies have coughed up R250m in cash, not counting their contributions in kind, enabling the government to make use of the services of more than 350 experts to help with fixing the problems ailing priority power stations, among other crises.
Fifty-seven companies have contributed 9,000 hours of expertise to working with Eskom to intervene in these power stations. The private sector has invested R700m in key rail corridors, deploying more than 500 security personnel to Transnet freight rail to help stop the vandalism and cable theft stopping the trains. It has put up R57m for a forensic analysis centre to help the National Prosecuting Authority push ahead with prosecuting priority crimes and try get SA off the greylist.
All of that may seem small in the context of the companies’ balance sheets. But their counterparts in other countries, where the electricity, railways and law enforcement authorities work, do not have to make those kinds of investments to assist a government struggling to get the economy back on track.
Nor is it an easy or quick fix. But the second standout is the extent to which these investments of time and money, and the high-level collaboration between business and the government, has had an impact in starting to turn around the electricity and logistics sectors.
The government’s Operation Vulindlela task team has done a lot of the heavy lifting to get reforms rolling in those sectors; and the energy and national logistics crisis committees set up by the president have done much to get Eskom and, to a regrettably lesser extent Transnet, to improve their performance. But collaboration between government and business has been important to all those initiatives.
Which brings us to the third standout, which is the extent to which Ramaphosa publicly recognised the contribution of business on Tuesday. He has not always done this in the past; indeed when business stepped up in a major way to help the economy and the vaccine drive during Covid, it was offered no thanks, nor even recognition for its role. Not that it should necessarily need it. But when company CEOs are donating corporate time and cash, and goodwill, to solve problems that the public sector should ideally have been able to solve itself, it doesn’t harm to give them a bit of love.
That is why it was appropriate and welcome when Ramaphosa made it clear that the partnership with business had “played an essential role in supporting and accelerating this agenda for growth and jobs”, and pointed to the impact that the deployment of engineers and project managers that it enabled has had.
It can only help to ensure further progress as the partnership steps up its efforts in phase two.
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