Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-11

MR MIDDLEMAN: Chairperson, may I answer this in a different sort of way in the first place.  Your commissioner, your fellow commissioner, asked about, did we do anything about the doing away with the restrictions which were on coloured people to work.  And I heard this morning you asked, Mr Roshalt, did they have any black managers and he had to say he couldn't remember.  (unclear) as well to go back to reality and the commissioner asked about the reality of the situation.  The reality of the situation comes out on page 36, in 1981, bottom half, when Africom urges the government to repeal existing legislation which prohibits the use of black, coloured and Asian managers in white owned business in white urban areas.  So that was the reality.  Now, by pure chance, when I was in the SACCOB offices a while ago, I found on the walls, this cartoon.  This is 1977.  There sits MC Botha with whom I negotiated, I was at this interview.  MC Botha and Piet Koornhof.  They were gazetting them a new registration, a new thing, where they said,
"Sales personnel and office personnel must be white"
and we argued with this dreadful man MC Botha.  And I had Hymie Wolf (?) of Woolworths with me, and the minister said, you must take a colour, he said to the minister
"Minister, your wife can't buy at our store, Woolworths in Pretoria, because we haven't got any salespersons.  There aren't any white ones available".
So then he said,
"Then you must take coloureds"
Whereafter Wolf said,
"Well , I've done that, there aren't enough coloureds either"
And as a result of that interview, that thing had never become legislation and you will see hear on this cartoon, I was quite surprised to see this now; there sits MC Botha,his got a (unclear) 
"No black managers in white areas"
and here is ASACOM, powerful; well , we weren't powerful unfortunately, saying,
" Think again"
Chairman this is just an example of the reality of the situation at the time.  A political totalitarian government that with which we had to cope and keep our employees busy.

MR PARSONS: : Chairperson, if I could perhaps add something to, I think quite an important question which Dr Boraine has asked.  I think in all interaction between business and a government you have to decide on the mix between public and private pressure.  This mix changes over time, and the skill lies in knowing what the right mix is.  The price you pay for too much private pressure, is precisely the point he makes.  Doing good by stealth, has its cost, you can't actually reveal it.  It gets lost in the system, and only the inner circle know that that work was done and it might or might not have had some results.  So I think the point is taken that if you are also using private pressure, there is a downside.  The downside is that you're not ever in a position to say,
"You see, I got that headline, I really attacked the government in the Rand Daily Mail"
as it then was or in the Cape Argus.  I think that's a perception hopefully, some of the discussions at this commission will help to correct or to create a perspective about that balance between the public pressure and the private pressure you had to use in order to get change.

SACCOB SPEAKER 2: I think overlying that, if I can also add a comment to Dr Boraine's question, which follows on from which Mr Parsons' has said,  is that clearly business operates within an environment and the forces of the market are as great on big companies as they are on small companies, but it is the small companies, generally, who are struggling for survival; and many small companies, many more small companies fail than succeed, so the pressures in establishing business' and therefor establishing job opportunities are enormous and one is forced virtually to operate within the market conditions at a point in time.
 Clearly one's strategy to some extent is dictated in a reactionary kind of way as conditions change and as the environment changes, very often the political environment of course as well.

CHAIRPERSON: Your last question.

DR BORAINE: Mr chairperson, could I ask you publicly, are we going to finish at lunch time or are we going to continue this particular discussion afterwards.

CHAIRPERSON: I have a concern, now I don't whether we're going to be able to pursuade, you see we are now two submissions in arrears, if we don't complete SACCOB now and ask that Old Mutual and Eskom and the others please, (unclear) indulgence as they say.  You're unhappy?

DR BORAINE: No, I'm not unhappy, this is a very important delegation representing a large measure of business, but I don't want anybody to feel that we're cutting anybody short.  I also know that the new president wants to make a statement of intent for the future, but I have two, I've just thought of another

CHAIRPERSON: You are a nuisance man,

DR BORAINE: (unclear) questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Can I find out from Old Mutual, Eskom, Armscor, Fabcos, whether you will be willing to, for us to be fairly African and instead of say half past four, if we went on to say five o' clock.

<UNKNOWN>: (Unclear)

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, that  is the democratically arrived at.  Maybe then, because Humphrey

DR BORAINE: I have one question, only one more question.

CHAIRPERSON: You have one more, no you said two.

DR BORAINE: Two, but they are very quick, I'll do them now if you like.
 Two questions, please, the one is and is not meant to be a loaded question, but it is a pretty tough question, but we are here to ask those questions and that is that certainly some business people, I'm not saying directly through organisations at every point, colluded, and I use that word (unclearly) with the national management security systems; and some actually served on joint management centres in different parts of the country.  Now that's a fact.  Now, it is alleged, in submissions, that there was at times a link between business and the State Security Council and second, that through the joint management centres, in co-operating against terrorism, which is the way it was phrased, that some business leaders, gave information to joint management centres, flowing from sometimes so called illegal strikes by giving the names of the leaders of those which led to detention, arrests and inevitably human rights violations.  Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that you or your previous organisations were involved in any way in this, unless you tell me you were, but that were you aware at any stage of any business people co-operating to that extent with the state?

SACCOB SPEAKER: Chairperson, I think that Dr Boraine again is, it is a very important question, but I think that he is using business again in the monolithic sense  which Dr Roshalt and others have referred to is not the case.  Business, the concept of business is individual firms competing with each other and competing very vigorously and viciously.  Certainly so far as my personal exposure into the chamber, being a member of the Johannesburg chamber for some twenty five years and as an office bearer of SACCOB more recently, and this decade, I can say that I was certainly not aware; obviously not in the chamber, which you have acknowledged and definitely not in the chamber.  I was personally not aware of any business organisation feeding information to the bureau of security.  I cannot say obviously, that it wasn't done.

MR KOZA: Chairperson, whilst obviously I was not a part of the organisation at the time, just listening to what Dr Boraine has said, I think it is quite possible, but probably must have been kept as a secret.  But just listening to what Dr Boraine has said, I think it is quite possible.