Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-13

MR CAMPBELL: Thank you, Mr Chairperson.  I'd like to draw some conclusions from our submission.
 In our submission we've tried to point out the actions undertaken by Seefsa to oppose the system of Apartheid in our country during the years in question.
 In conclusion one must inevitably ask the question.  Did we do enough?  If not, what more should we have done?
 I think it's pretty clear that the answer to the first question must be no, we did not do enough.  Apartheid was a vicious and misguided experiment in social engineering, which was doomed to failure from the outset.
 The problem which we together with most other business organisations had, is that not all of our members saw it in that way at the time and as we've pointed out in our submission, even those who did, would not necessarily have seen Seefsa as the appropriate body through which to express direct and open opposition to the system as a whole.
 None of this, however, is really enough of an excuse.  Today we would acknowledge that those of us in leadership positions who did understand Apartheid for what it was, and what it would inevitably lead to, should have done more to try to convince our constituency to support a stronger, more active and more broad bases opposition.
 Whether or not we would have succeeded in convincing our constituency as a body to do this, is not really to the point.
 Furthermore, whether or not such broader or stronger opposition would have had any impact on the National Party Government, is also not really the point.
 The point is that we could and should have tried harder.  However, we did not do so.  We adopted a more conservative approach.  We confined our opposition in the main to those specific areas where we had both a direct involvement and we believed some particular expertise.
 This leads me to the final question which we would like to address upfront today and that is;  what more could we realistically have done in this perhaps more limited and more conservative sense?
 We believe today, with the wisdom of hind sight, that major area in which we failed to do enough, soon enough, was in the systematic enhancement of the skilled levels of our lower paid workers.
 While a great deal was done at industry level during the Apartheid years to ensure the proper training of skilled workers, the training of the unskilled and semi-skilled was left largely to the individual companies in our industry to deal with.
 Some of whom, did a lot, but many of whom, did very little in this regard.  Today, we are working very hard to rectify that error.  Together with the trade unions in our industry, we are in the process of developing a national qualifications framework for workers at all levels, the objectives of which are to broaden and enhance the over all skill level of workers across the entire industry and to provide meaningful career paths for workers in the various fields of technology in which we operate.
 It is an ambitious programme which is costing the industry many millions of rands, both in actual money spent and also in the time being put into the project by program which is experiencing - by management at industry level and workers in all major sectors of the industry.
 It is also a programme which is experiencing a level of co-operation, I'm pleased to say, between management and the trade unions, seldom if ever seen before in the industry, because it is one which clearly has enormous potential benefits to both sides.
 We are confident that it will provide us with the base on which to build a world class metal and engineering industries to the benefit of shareholders and employees alike.
 Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Dr Ally?