Business has the power — and the obligation — to transform SA, V20 sherpa and Bidvest chair Bonang Mohale said at the Singularity SA Summit 2025 in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
“If business is transformed, SA is transformed,” he said.
Mohale, who is also chancellor of the University of the Free State, was scathing in his assessment of SA’s leadership crisis 31 years into democracy, saying too many in power had “succumbed to greed” and “stolen more than what they invested”.
Mohale challenged the private sector to act decisively on issues of pay equity, supplier development and infrastructure delivery.
“Business employs 16.5-million people. Government employs 1.3-million. So, if business is transformed, SA is transformed,” he said during a panel discussion.
“Imagine if we as businesspeople didn’t talk platitudes about gender equality and pay parity but we delivered social justice by paying women the same as we pay men for work of equal value.
“Imagine for a moment if we didn’t hold lectures about paying small and medium enterprises in 30 days, but we actually paid them in seven days, because to them, cash flow is the difference between life and death.”
Mohale positioned business as the only social partner — alongside government, labour and civil society — with the technical capacity to implement complex projects on time and within budget.
“Imagine … if we as businesspeople said, ‘Not on our watch’ ... We would then not have waited 16-and-a-half years to end load-shedding,” he said.
Panellist Mxolisi Mgojo, who is also president of Business Unity SA and B20 co-chair, echoed the call to action. “My grandchildren, my children, it’s their future,” he said.
“You can’t sit on the side and pretend that things are hunky-dory when you see that they are not hunky-dory and think that by sitting on the side things will be better for the generations to come,” Mgojo said. “Today, as bad as it is, we are eating the fruit of those who planted seeds 40, 50 years ago.
“The question is, what seeds are we going to plant today that our children and our grandchildren and the future generations are going to harvest?”
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