Not business as usual at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town after the outbreak of coronavirus in South Africa. Picture: ESA ALEXANDER/SUNDAYTIMES
With corrupt factions circling the president and the populist Left mobilising hard, one can see how the most important business proposals could be lost or even how business might find itself scapegoated for SA’s manifold failures. So what should business do next? This is not the time for business to obfuscate what it really thinks the country needs to do, and not a time to “go along to get along”. It has to find ways to communicate how bad things are for SA’s prospects and the consequences for everybody — not just business — if nothing significant changes.
The state can be fixed, but it’s important to accept that this will take years — time we do not have. In every sector of our economy — agriculture, local government, food distribution or wherever you look — we have to free up private actors, the only capacity SA now has to build a bridge away from disaster.
This is not a libertarian argument for a minimalist state. SA desperately needs a capable, honest state that can enable business growth and provide public goods and services that, in a highly unequal society, far too many people cannot provide for themselves. But to do this the state needs tax revenues. And to obtain that, business must flourish.
We must recognise that merely having priorities is not enough. Business needs a more effective strategy to shape the debate. Summits and talk shops do not work. Finding the lowest common denominator between competing interests will not be sufficient to get SA out of trouble. Business has to make it clear that presidential leadership is vital, and that compacting without leadership is inadequate.
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