Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-11

DR RANDERA: : Mr Kongwane, can I please emphasise that time is of the essence here, so, can you please,

MR KONGWANE: Let me just do a summary, I was taken

DR RANDERA: Please, we all have your documents, we have read your documents, I hope people in the audience also have the documents, so if you can summarise,

MR KONGWANE: I was trying to take advantage of my predecessor, and I do have an executive summary sir, but I thought people could take a little bit of time because there are some very important issues we wanted to elaborate on.  But in order to look at the role of the past government, the stifling of black business development and its total onslaught strategy, we look at the Group Areas Act, the Job Reservation Act, the Land Act, the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, the Separate Amenities Act.
 The Job Reservation Act, helped the government of the time and big business to keep black people away from apprenticeship and from acquiring skills. Coupled to various other enactments such as stringent licensing laws, were put into place to control and regulate the level to which the black business community could rise.  These enactments, were enforced with an iron fist and briber, corruption, intimidation, imprisonment, evictions, expropriations, harrassments and persecutions were the order of the day.  
 By virtue of its history, black business was representative of all small, medium and micro enterprises.  It was therefore of no surprise that many of the laws enacted were intended to create (unclear) for black business.  It was estimated that as many as 150 such laws existed and  Nafcoc addressed some of these in its submissions, encompassed in its study on various to entry and to have a document to submit.  Of particular mention in the submission was the persecution of the black business community in many forms. These ranged from arson attacks, detention without trial, imprisonment on (unclear) charges to murder and race.  All in all communities were under siege and business people often plain leadership rose.  We were spared no mercy.  Most of these were thrown into jail.  
 A key feature of government policy was to enforce its policy, its policies, of separate development when Nafcoc formally established itself after many years of operating as loosely, defiant traders associations.  Pressure was brought to bare to organise itself along ethnic lines, something which I have already mentioned and of course for seven years Nafcoc was banned from communication with the government.
 Second, I want to focus on the role of the white business sector, colluding with the past government in this respect and furthering their own interests.  The role of the white business sector, especially the corporate sector, in colluding with government as well now.  Examples of these were:  One, serving on governments' economic advisory committee to determine the countries economic policies, often with total disregard for the concerns of the black community.  Two, utilising the relaxation of laws to trade in the CBD, to invade the townships because of their greating buying power.  Three, sitting on various marketing and pulsator boards to further their own interest.  And four, creating state monopolies that further alienated the black community.
   The third aspect of this is the role of organised business.  It is difficult to accept the statement that some sectors of organised business do not accept the responsibility of their role in ensuring the alienation and stifling of development of the black business community.  One could give the following as clear examples:  One, input into various acts, for instance the Companies Act, apprenticeship laws and rules and regulations of professional bodies, application for membership into their own structures, abuse of fronting and 49/51 partnership by their own members, high-handed attacks and distancing themselves from organisations that supported sanctions for good reasons.  Highly critical and vehemently opposed to progressive policies enunciated by the Nafcoc, such as its '3 4 5 6 policy'., that is now being pursued through current initiative of government and unbundling process.  In conclusion Mr Chairman, our organisation has a number of views on taking this process forward.  Some of these are being put into place, currently through affirmative action.  Government procurement policies and new (unclear) institutions to cater for the interest of the historically disadvantaged community.  Reparation could take many forms, but surely, there could be some role that big business and organised business representing the main white business sector, in instituting initiatives that would correct the imbalances from the past.  
 We would like to take the opportunity, Mr Chairman, to thank the TRC for inviting us to participate in this hearing and we believe that it has and will continue to play a significant and uplifting role in helping all sectors of our communities to reconcile and to come to terms with our past.  Thank you very much.

DR RANDERA: That the white chambers that you mentioned,  SACCOB, the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, did not allow membership by any other race group.    Do you still stand by that position?

MR KONGWANE: Well, we stand by the history position of it.  Anyway, after 1994, many of them had been trying to you know to ask Nafcoc to merge or to work out some co-operation with them and this was followed by the HI , Nafcoc, co-operation kind of accord.

SPEAKER: Mr Chairman, if I can respond, there was a particular chamber and I'm not sure if this was widespread, that perhaps did not allow membership of the organisation.  But they form what they call a BCA affairs committee, a Black, Coloured and Asian affairs committee and people were invited as time permitted if issues affected the other race group and to participate in such committees.  So those were incidents of perhaps maybe not membership but addressing some of those issues.

DR RANDERA: Mr Kongwane and your colleagues, you have quite clearly told us  about the way black business people were undermined during this period we're looking at.  There is also a school of thought that, Nafcoc as an organisation has a basic principle believed in black capitalism as a form of liberation and that's how black people would gain their liberation.  I have two questions on that.  One is, what structures were you involved in yourselves as a group with other democratic structures in the time that we are looking at, the union movement, specific organisations, liberation movement outside, in order to bring about the changes that we have today.  Let me stop at that and perhaps I'll go onto my next question.

MR KONGWANE: Yes, I will respond in part and one of my colleagues will respond in part.  We thought the best way to deal with this and as I have already mentioned, the '3 4 5 6' plan.  The '3 4 5 6' plan was aiming at increasing equity for black people, to bring into a business, black managers to promote business for black people.  But this was one side of the story, but the other side of the story was that we wanted to have people supporting small business, procurement you know, between blacks, big business and small business.  Unfortunately this did not work out but one of the issues which we were working through.  The main thrust was the '3 4 5 6' plan which was formulated in 1990.