He always wore a jaunty hat, and he was a man of many hats. Those hats were critical to bringing business and the government together to fight for SA at a critical time. And the tragic loss this week of the late, great Jabu Mabuza is an occasion to reflect on that time, and the remarkable effort he led.
When the CEOs of most of SA's largest companies got together at the beginning of 2016 to work with the government to try to reassure investors and rating agencies in the wake of the Nenegate debacle, it was Mabuza they chose to lead them in what became the CEO Initiative.
At that time he was already president of Business Unity SA and later added the presidency of Business Leadership SA (BLSA) to the hat collection, which included being chair of Telkom and later Eskom.
We now know just how deep the rot of state capture was in those final years of the Jacob Zuma presidency and it makes what business leaders did, and the way they interacted with the government, all the more remarkable.
Off Mabuza and the CEOs would go on roadshows with Pravin Gordhan - who was still finance minister - and Gordhan's Treasury officials to meet investors and rating agencies.
One of the roadshows included leaders of all three trade union federations; another conference included an archbishop. Memorably, Mabuza and some of the CEOs were with Gordhan in March 2017 when Zuma recalled the team as they landed in London, even before the roadshow could begin, and fired the minister.
The rating agencies, by all accounts, had never seen anything like it, nor had the investors attending some of the conferences and World Economic Forum outings at which this collaboration was on show. There were frank conversations behind the scenes.
But though the business leaders and the government disagreed in private, they agreed to work together in public. The approach was to be honest about SA's severe economic and sociopolitical challenges, but convey a positive message that business and the government were working together to address them.
There's little doubt this helped to at least postpone full-on junk status ratings downgrades - ironic, in a way, given that the long-feared downgrade eventually happened after President Cyril Ramaphosa had taken over.
But the ratings battle was in a way only a small part of a much broader business effort, in a poisonous political environment, to counter the "white monopoly capital" narrative by showing business's patriotism and its commitment to doing something to save the economy, and the country.
The CEO Initiative rapidly shifted to working to do something about growth and joblessness. Drawing on big business's resources of skills, money and mentorship, it put in place the youth employment scheme and SME Fund (which supports small and medium enterprises). At BLSA, there was a campaign and a pledge to combat corruption, including in the private sector.
Mabuza was the natural leader. He somehow knitted all the business egos and their efforts together, bringing an almost folksy ability to speak truth to power in a way that gained trust.
"He was very charismatic, with an amazing brain, and he just knew how to bring people together and move them forward," says one business leader.
Another quotes Mabuza as telling Zuma at the start of a difficult meeting: "When families fight, we do it in our own home, not in public. But I need to tell you this family is not whole."
It worked both ways - Mabuza challenged business, too, to transform and demonstrate its commitment to inclusive growth. He certainly gained Gordhan's trust - as the minister's heartfelt tribute to him in Business Day shows - and the debate over Eskom's future did seem to shift markedly during his tenure at the power utility.
There cannot be many countries where business has stepped up in the way it did as the political and economic crisis deepened in the final stretch of Zuma's tenure, nor many where business forged such an unusual, if frequently uncomfortable, partnership with the government.
That legacy of working together has proved to be a crucial one in the era of Covid, when business has again stepped up in a major way, first to work with the government to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and the lockdowns on the economy and now to deploy its resources and expertise to support the government in the vaccine rollout.
The man with the hats could be justly proud.
• Joffe is contributing editor
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