ANC jobbery on display in Sandton

Yesterday's Business Day carried a short but vivid leading article from the Financial Times on South Africa's twenty years of democracy under the headline "SA's dream not yet fulfilled". It contained the sentence "The ANC is a coalition held together by little more than jobbery." Jobbery is not a word we see often in South African writing. The Google definition is "the practice of using a public office or position of trust for one's own gain or advantage". Nothing could demonstrate the truth of this better than last night's ANC manifesto "Endorsement" shindig at the Sandton Convention Centre.

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This was billed as Jacob Zuma endorsing the Gauteng Provincial ANC's manifesto. Zuma famously said at a gathering of business leaders in Durban last year that businesses who supported the ANC and gave generously to the party would be rewarded. He was scorned and derided in Parliament by DA Parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko. Zuma has always ducked the charge he is inviting, neh encouraging, corruption and cronyism. It was easy to see why, looking around the room at this gathering of the new black middle class - actually the rich - and a handful of whites, many of whom owe their new-found wealth to the largess of ANC officials dishing out handsome government contracts. In such a world Chancellor House is not just justifiable but necessary: institutionalised, and legal, predation on fat, tasty investments that in turn feed party coffers.

Gauteng ANC Chairman Paul Mashatile, in a polished and relaxed speech, boasted that Gauteng is the fourth largest economy in Africa, that along with its three metros the provincial government has a budget of R250 billion per annum. Not chump change by any means, and offering ample opportunities for graft.

Then came the endorsements. First, Jimmy Manyi representing the Black Business Council, urging the ANC to set up a new Ministry for Small Business and tightening up Affirmative Action and BEE legislation to further advantage blacks. "We are not racist" he boldly claimed. "We just want 51%. Whites can have the rest." Oh, thanks old chap, I thought, that's jolly decent of you. So if a white person sets up a business, he has to give more than half of it away before he can derive benefit from the discriminatory legislation governing doing business with the state. Black entrepreneurs can keep all 100%, or course. Is this likely to be a spur to entrepreneurship? Will whites risk their time, effort and cash in such an environment?

The purpose of this legislation, of course, is to gouge more of the economy away from whites and put it in the hands of blacks. Is this actually the way enterprise works? I'm not sure it is. Manyi was particularly scornful of fronting, which admittedly is unethical, but in giving 51% of your business away who's to say the new majority owner shares your vision for the business and can contribute meaningfully to its success? It's easier to get a pliable black face. No wonder many white owned businesses try and find loopholes.

I sometimes think ANC people imagine entrepreneurship just happens, somehow magically, and that blacks must have some of it (no, a majority actually). It's their right, after 350 years of discrimination. But two wrongs do not make a right. Some radical new thinking is needed here to avoid the economy clogging up on more and more regulation and entitlement.

Then we had Qedani Mahlangu, MEC for Infrastructure Development and head of the ANC election campaign in Gauteng, offering apologies from the ladies from Wiphold, who could not attend but wished their support for the ANC to be conveyed to the audience. I happen to know that at least one of these ladies is passionately anti the current ANC and along with other sensible comrades is desperate for a change in leadership. Trouble is, she cannot be seen to vocally oppose the current lot. Mahlangu, in her speech, seemed to be emphasising what the ANC should be rather than what it was. Perhaps the views of the Wiphold lady are rubbing off.

A supposed representative of the Chinese community, with the help of an interpreter, gave a ringing endorsement of the ANC, for ushering in democracy and rights for the formerly underprivileged marjority. This, from a country that has used rampant state capitalism to bring half a billion people out of poverty in 30 years without a sniff of democracy. Is this why the ANC is such a proponent of the developmental state? They have the Chinese model to follow. We couldn't help notice the T-shirts handed out to everyone as they arrived had a prominent Made In China label.

Then there was Eric Ichikowitz. In the words of my companion, "Instead of presenting himself and his company as arms dealers, traders into the rest of Africa who rely on the ANC government for introductions and favours or "investors in the ANC" with a raft of kickbacks,  he followed ANC identity politics and presented himself as a Jew although he has no mandate from any Jewish community.

He overlooked that Jews have recently been celebrating their Passover,  which commemorates  their fight against Pharaoh and for freedom and is associated with the subsequent receiving of the Ten Commandments which the ANC's president (and other leaders) regularly break,  like No adultery, Don't steal,  Don't covert others' wealth, Don't use God's name in vain, Don't murder, Don't lie .."

There was Chris van Biljon, CEO of the Ekurhuleni Business Initiative, calling on whites and Afrikaners to support the ANC. "We don't want to go back to 1994 and start all over again!" The ANC is the leader, he bellowed out to wild applause. He epitomized the type of National Party supporter of old who moved effortlessly from one form of crony nationalism to the next and was welcomed with open arms. Nice to have an injection of skills, from insiders who really know how to play the game.

Displaying the most chutzpah of all was Ashwin Willemse, former rugby Springbok turned TV commentator and businessman. He spent 15 minutes telling his story of hopeless boy from the Cape Flats becomes Rugby Player of the Year, and how this story identifies with the ANC's Good Story to Tell. The audience was on its feet cheering and screaming. Do they know that Willemse through his ex-convict buddy Gayton McKenzie scored R61 million of Goldfields shares in the shady BEE deal overseen by Chairperson Mamphela Ramphele?  (The same deal, by the way, that netted ANC Chairperson Baleka Mbete R25 million in shares!) The Mail & Guardian reported in February "Numerous sources said McKenzie had stayed at Willemse's house while they worked on the deal." Maybe they do. Maybe this makes him even more of a role model, in this mad scramble for riches.

Finally, the ANC "DP" Cyril Ramaphosa took the stage (in place of the billed Jacob Zuma) and began with a long-winded joke about sharing a stage recently with the Rev Dr Kenneth Meshoe who he upstaged because he was Chairman of the Students Christian Movement at varsity whereas the soon to be Reverend was just a plain member. When Ramaphosa (reminder: jobbery= the practice of using a public office or position of trust for one's own gain or advantage) launched into the similarities of the 12-point National Development Plan and the ANC manifesto my companion and I could take it no more and left.

This evening we witnessed how the ANC has brilliantly captured the hearts, minds and wallets of a growing and influential segment of society - black professionals and business people who buy into the Good Story (I agree with Richard Poplack, this is "one of the finest election ploys in the history of democracy.") and want to be part of it, not attempt to create another more honest, less self-serving narrative. Dressed up in the lingo of social justice, the struggle and the developmental state, it all sounds so worthy, natural and convincing. But it's a way of thinking that buries the bad news of 35% unemployment (which is going higher and should be treated as a national emergency), incompetence (the appalling state of our education and health systems), cronyism (the Guptas), grand theft and larceny (Goldfields and numerous other questionable BEE deals), bare-faced corruption (Nkandla) and insipid economic growth (2% when our African rivals are hitting 6% plus).

If South Africans in their numbers don't wake up soon we will see the country's wealth divided between smaller and smaller groups and inequality continue to rocket. The business class is just as culpable as the political class. BBE is a faustian pact between government (or more accurately a small number of people connected to government) and big business. As Tuli Madonsela said in another context, it's a licence to loot. It's a mindset that has poisoned our entire society. Can we ever root it out?

A start has been made, which I applaud, by some BEE beneficiaries to give back. Foremost among these is Patrice Motsepe, who now gives 50% of his annual income from all his business interests to the Motsepe Foundation which spends it on education, health, enterprise development (ED) and other initiatives. Cyril Ramaphosa's Shanduka Black Umbrellas, an NGO, is making a difference in the ED space. This kind of CSI should be supported by generous tax breaks to encourage greater investment by business in social development projects.

Sir Ernest Oppenheimer set the standard in 1954 when he wrote in the Anglo American annual report: “The aim of this Group is, and will remain, to make profits for our shareholders, but to do so in such a way as to make a real and lasting contribution to the communities in which we operate”.

60 years later, can integrity, honesty, humility and a social conscience replace jobbery in the governing and business classes? If they can we will all be better off in the long run.