Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-12

ANN BERNSTEIN: Well, thank you, Mr Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.  As somebody who has throughout my professional life worked to train Apartheid and to do a little bit to move the country away from the system of racial discrimination, I've worked in business funded training organisations all my life.
 That's the base on which I will be talking today.  The kind of work that I've been doing and the two projects that you mentioned.  I'm hoping in talking about the international study that we have conducted on looking at business in new democratic societies and their role in economic development;  that we can throw an international perspective into what has here the two.  I think being a very narrowly focused look at business in South Africa without a wider perspective on business more generally.
 So, the first topic I'll look at is business in society and the two conclusions coming out of the research which we conducted which I think do challenge a number of our ideas and assumptions that have been prevalent in our conversations in the hearings so far.
 Let me start first by saying that listening to a lot of people here, on the one hand I wondered why Helen Suzman representative of the Progressive Party for 13 years from 1961 to 1974 and why the Progressive Party was always so short of money?
 On the other hand it did sometimes feel as though business was being asked when did you last beat your wife and do you still do it?
 So, I do think it's important to have a slightly more objective perspective on business and the dynamics of business in society.
 Let me start first by saying that often people like to talk about business as though it were a political party or as though it were a trade union.  The fact of the matter is, I think has been very amply demonstrated in the last day and a half, if you look at the very different individuals that have come to represent very different companies before the TRC, you will see that business is actually a description of a category of activity.
 Which makes it very difficult, because all want to generalise about, myself included, but that's the critical thing one has to bear in mind;  that one's dealing with very individualistic, actually a highly competitive sector with each other and it is a rather cut throat business.
 It's also very - it's a very sort of different kind of business from Government or anything else.  These are people who generally get up in the morning and say I'm going to make a better product than you today and I'm going to put you out of business.
 So when we start talking about business as a collectivity and what they might do other than running their businesses it gets very complicated and I think that is a very important issue that needs to underline how you think about business in South Africa.
 Having said that, one moves to the next point, which I must say I do disagree with Prof Terblanche rather fundamentally.  I think interest in the business sector differ a lot and those interests change over time.
 So, for instance, if you're a manufacturer even in the '50's, '60's and later, objectively speaking you have a fundamental interest in as big a market in South Africa as possible.
 That's not what Apartheid was about.  Now, it doesn't necessarily mean you saw that interest, or that that interest overruled all your - let's call it views and fears and stereotypes and prejudices as a White South Africa, but that's one of the realities about interests.
 So, I think too and we come to talk about business and corporations and their interests, we need to be much more specific and much clearer about what we're talking about and how those change over time.
 The third point I want to make which is self evident, but sometimes seems to be ignored in discussions on business, is that at the end of the day and at the beginning companies are set out to make money.  That's what they're about;  first and foremost and these are not moral institutions.  These are money making machines.
 Like it or not, but sometimes it is uncomfortable.  This turns out to be the best possible way human kind has found to create economic growth and all the things that go with it.
 Certainly not perfect, but the best that we have.  So, we have to bear that in mind that these institutions are there to make profit and that's their essence.  Anything else is very much - comes after that.
 The next point I want to raise is really an analogy.  I want to throw another country into our discussions and perhaps into your thoughts.  If you think about China;  here is a country the South African Government, the democratic South African Government has very recently changes its recognition of Taiwan and it now recognises the people's republic of China, primarily because we want to increase South African business access and South Africa as country's access to that enormous market.
 South African businesses and businesses from all over the world are rushing into the Chinese and they're trying to make money.  They're putting big investments there and they're trying to make money.
 Now, from this fact, it seems to me to be absurd to say that Nelson Mandela's Government does not care about the human rights abberations that are taking place in a totalitarian society;  that is China today.
 Similarly it seems to me ridiculous to say that all the companies that are moving into China and investing there have suddenly been converted to the anti-human rights regime that prevails in what is after all a totalitarian state.
 So I throw that as an example, because it raises some of the complexities, I think, of what we're talking about in a wider perspective and perhaps has been on the table up till now.
 Companies, after all, are very adaptable and they will find the ways and the means to make money under almost any political regime.  Now, this might be morally uncomfortable at times, but it is also one of the greatest strengths of this form of social activity.
 This adaptability, flexibility and thus the durability of economic enterprise has actually resulted in one of democratic South Africa's greatest strengths today, because business was able to survive and proper under an authoritarian regime that continually interfered in market relations, South African today has a large energetic reasonably competitive business sector and there's absolutely no doubt that this puts South Africa at a considerable advantage compared to many other newly democratic societies.
 So we might not like all sorts of things about  ... (intervention). (not into mike)

<UNKNOWN>: ... not at all.  It is quite easily understood why those things were embraced and I'm very pleased to say that we have now moved out ...(tape ends)

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Dr Ally.  Mr Kloeloe, I too have many questions to ask you, but I'll be very - I'm going to be