Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-12

DR BORAINE: Thank you.  I won't develop it, because I don't want us to be debate and the Chairperson wouldn't allow it.
 Let me challenge you on a second issue.  You say that business is not a unified grouping.  Surely that is a somewhat of an exaggeration.  I mean most business people in this country form themselves into if you like, collectives.  You've got the Chamber of Mines.  You've got Asecom.  I mean people deliberately go out of their way to find some unified course of action and employ lots of people to do just that.
 So they're not just separate organisations.  Secondly, they are not like ordinary South Africans with their fears and prejudices and hopes and beliefs.  They have all those, but by virtue of their own power they have a greater responsibility.  This is my view on this and I ask you for your comment.
 So I think it's an oversimplification and it gets a lot of people off the hook by saying, well, you know after all said and done.  I mean, how many times have we not heard people say we really wanted our chamber to do A or B or C, but we had to take people with us.
 So you get a kind of lowest common denominator.  So business very often in protecting itself in taking a stand or not taking a stand, unifies itself around people who think alike.  The greater the power, if you take one or more of the great conglomerates, some of the mining houses, I would dare to suggest that people who have that kind of power, and they do, even though they may not admit it, I think that how they use that power should be a valid evaluation or criticism and I don't think they could simply be by virtue of their responsibility and power and wealth they have a greater responsibility over against policies which could bring harm to the very people that they employ.

ANN BERNSTEIN: Mr Chairman, if you read my submission, I deal with both those issues.  In my definition of business I do indicate that I'm talking about the firm and I'm talking about business organisations and I'm also talking about what we might call tycoons;  the heads of very large conglomerates and that's those three components that you need to think about when looking at business and I think there are different questions to be asked about each one of them.
 Yes, I do think business does have some collective interest.  There's no doubt that all business has an interest in stability.  That's what you were hearing the last two days.  They were interested in stability.  We won't break the law.
 So business definitely has an interest in that and they kind of want an environment in which their investments are sort of as risk free as you can get them.  So they kind of -let's put it this way;  they want a referee that will ensure their stability.  Then they want to go out and kick each other around on the field.
 So that would be the understanding of competitiveness within an umbrella that we've put forward - that I've put forward in my submission.  That would be the first point.
 The second point is that, yes, different sectors of business definitely have interest and often you'll see they're in competition with each other and that was the point I was making in opposition to what Prof Terblanche's paper - one of the points of opposition, yesterday.
 I think that the manufacturing sector, you cannot sustain an argument that manufacturing in South Africa and the sector had an interest the limited and restricted market that Apartheid created for them.  They have an interest in the expanded market.
 Their interest would be different say from people who have to deal with hundreds and thousands of labourers as employees.  So, their interest differ and sectile organisations get together to promote those interests, sometimes in opposition to each other.
 The basic point I'm making is that when you say let's look at business it's not like we can say give us your leader and let's get him to account for what happened over the last century, because it's not possible.  
 Tell us your manifesto.  It's not possible.  It doesn't exist.  So you put the sort of leading, the senior executives of South Africa's largest corporations in a room;  they will have different views on very many topics and that's precisely why it's so hard to think creatively about collective action that business can take where you can get everybody where the lowest common denominator is not so low as to be irrelevant, which is often the case.
 So, I agree with what - all that you say about the complexity of business as a sector and I think that has to be - the point I'm making is that that makes it very hard to ask some of the questions that have been asked.  What does business think of this that.  You can say, what does company X think and what have you done and if it were possible for this Commission to if you like, look at the record of individual companies, I think you would be surprised at what their card would look like at the end of the day, because it's all very well to come here and say;  we confess, we were bad.  Now we're going to be good boys.  That's one approach.  Another is to look at how people wrestled with the choices and the complexity  ... (intervention).

CHAIRPERSON: Ann, sorry, I'm going to need to stop you.  That's okay.  Alex, your last comment.

DR BORAINE: Yes, Chair, I have been told I have one sentence left.  That is;  I think the very fact that we have called for as many submissions as possible, is that we do understand and appreciate that it's not a uniformity about business.
 I think what we're trying to argue is that business like any other institution was influence for good or ill by the system under which they lived and we'd like to know how they coped - what was their role in it?  What did they do?  What they didn't do?
 So that's what we're trying to get at, but to - I would hope that business has a limit and to put it quite harshly and rather unfairly, because you're being muddled now by the Chair, I would think that some businessmen in Nazi Germany would have had to ask some very tough questions about the building of the - of the use of buildings to kill millions of people.
 I don't want to compare the two, but I would have thought that business, however keen it was and committed it was to make money, would have had to ask some extraordinary tough questions.  I think some did.  I think some didn't.  Some acted.  Some didn't.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Ally?

UNKNOWN: Anne, just a couple of issues of clarification.  You describe Apartheid as a system of racial discrimination.  Now, don't you think that that is only part of it;  that what one - what was the essence of Apartheid was not racial discrimination, but racial domination;  that that's what made discrimination possible.
 Now, what was the source of that?  Where did this racial domination have its origins?  Why was it possible for White people to lord over Black people?  What was the source of that domination?

ANN BERNSTEIN: I don't think we have time to go into that issue;  the source of racial domination, why Apartheid was able to prevail for so long?
 Let me just say that I obviously am using shorthand here and I think that we've had a system of domination, exploitation and economic and racial discrimination, but I'm certainly not going to go into the causes of that.