It’s taken almost 30 years for Corporate South Africa to wake up and smell the freeze-dried instant coffee – out of the 200g jars that cost R150 a pop! Our country has been in trouble for a long time and Gasant Abarder argues in a new #SliceOfGasant column that they now want to commit to building SA because it is hurting their bottom line.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
Every morning, I wake hoping I have the confidence of Elon Musk (and also some of his gajillion bajillion dollars in my bank account). But I just can’t do like Elon and fix things that aren’t broke for the sake of my ego. And I can’t fix my broke – staring down another fuel increase this week.
Elon makes daily changes to a once very successful platform that was Twitter. He has since called it X and made the user experience and the interface horrible for its users. Maybe the X, as in X-Men, is a reference for his desperate need to be a superhero. He could be a superhero. But he chooses to be more Lex Luthor than Superman.
(The irony of this example is Superman is an alien from another planet. Elon wants to go to Mars. Go figure!)
Elon isn’t one of our finest exports. He can really make a massive difference to the world. But he is too busy propping up Donald Trump and MAGA’ing – Making America Great Again.
Back home, I was intrigued to read that a group of 115 CEOs of big corporates want to make us less morsig and more MASAGA – Make South Africa Great Again. In a statement last week, the CEOs write that they are committing themselves to building South Africa.
It is about bloody time too. It only took them 30 years to wake up. The question is: Do they really have a choice?
Let’s look at the facts:
- We have a lame duck president and leadership.
- There is no light at the end of the tunnel with the Eskom power crisis.
- We’ve battled three decades of crime, unemployment and inequality.
- Less than 10% of the population have all the wealth.
- We’ve lost billions to corruption by a bloated government.
- Heads haven’t rolled despite promises against those who’ve stolen from South Africa.
- The cost of living has become unmanageable for the vast majority.
- There is zero austerity or goodwill shown by our leaders.
How do we fill this leadership vacuum? Is it time for the government to reach out to the brightest minds and have a national dialogue towards putting political differences aside and fixing things once and for all? Do we need to run South Africa like a PTY Ltd with accountability and performance management? Why are we outsourcing our future to the government?
The CEOs and their companies are as culpable as the government. For decades they have sat by and watched the balance sheet go into the red and all prospects for growth tanking. They have been of the worst proponents of implementing broad based black economic empowerment. They have been terrible corporate citizens and poor partners to project South Africa.
These have bled us dry of our last cents and so their move feels a little like their hands have been forced.
It’s the little things that matter. Why are we still paying over odds for airtime and data – among the most expensive rates in the world? Why do these expire like perishables?
Why is there tax on books and sanitary pads when kids are failing and young girls are staying out of school because they can’t afford what they need when they are menstruating?
Kids in Cape Town have gone weeks without training and playing sport because those guys at SAFA couldn’t care less about waterlogged fields. It would cost very little for a corporate to sponsor a weatherproof synthetic surface in a community.
They’re seeing that we’re cancelling our Discovery Vitality, dropping our household content insurance in the hope Little Johnny doesn’t accidently throw the flat screen off the TV stand, and gambling with our future by cutting retirement plans. It’s all we can do to afford the crazy prices of the products and services they shove down our throats.
When interest rates have gone down, you have kept the prices of basic foodstuffs and services sky high and shown very little goodwill to fellow South Africans. Corporate SA owes us all. This is the least you can do. And why only 115 and not 15 500 companies?
This is a good start, and we will be watching – with some skepticism and cynicism. If they’re sincere, we should all help these corporates to MASAGA (hold the MSG please).
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Picture: Unsplash