Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-12

ANN BERNSTEIN: ... we might want to change those, but I think we have t acknowledge that its existence, its contribution to employment, taxation and many other areas of public life is one of South Africa's greatest strengths and this would not have been the case if business were not adaptable and able to survive under all sorts of political regimes.
 Let me move on now to illustrate one of the most important findings that came out of our international study.  Businesses often asked as I think has been the question on many people's lips over the last one and a half days;  what are you doing as a business person so contribute to changing society?
 I think this is a fair question, however, the context in which the question is asked, needs to be broader.  What we have found is in doing business, in doing the normal activity of trying to make money in whatever way, companies have unexpected effects on the wider society.
 It's not the effects they intend, they want to make money, but through doing that, in our view, they have three wider effects, unintended, consequences on society.
 The three areas of unintended consequence of business activity, I would just list them, are what we have called the thickening of civil society through businesses' need for independent institutions, the promotion of modernisation and access to opportunities for millions of individuals that accompanies the process of industrialisation and modernisation.
 Thirdly, the unleashing of democratic and democratising pressures.  So, in our view, business rather than being a pillar of the status quo which is often argued, is in fact a powerful and constant agent of social change.
 Having said that and I think one can see from the last two day that business people are not, let's call it expert politicians.  This is not what they're good at.  They're good at making money, a different kind of skill.
 One of our conclusions is that in many societies business has often failed to understand its changing relationship to the forces unleashed by and within democratising social order.  Business has been slow to define their social and political interests and frequently defensive, reactive and (indistinct) in promoting them;  that in many respects business is a corporate citizen is often less than effective.
 The last conclusion coming out of out international work is one that seems to me very apt for South Africa, is that we need to also not forget business people might run big companies but they're also citizens of the country of which they're a part and so they operate with the fears the prejudices the stereotypes, racial, gender and whatever of that society.
 So if most business people are White in South Africa they will believe what most White South Africans believed at that time and that's the reality of the country, otherwise we wouldn't have had Apartheid.
 So, I think that's the reality in which I certainly see business and would like to ask people to think about it in this broader context.
 Now, within this wider context I would nonetheless argue, as I and others did in the 1980's, that business in South Africa could certainly do much more at that time, could have gone much further and could have much more impact in their opposition to Apartheid.
 The role of business during the Apartheid era is complex and mixed one.  In general I would say that like businesses elsewhere they accommodated themselves to the prevailing politics of racial discrimination for most of the period.  It was only in the 1980's when the direct and immediate interest of many companies were affected that many business leaders started loudly and fairly systematically to speak out against the Government and in ways that directly countered the essence of Apartheid.
 Throughout the earlier period business organisations would by and large indicate their opposition to Government policies as these effected the work place and economic issues and then get back to business.
 Yet, I think it's important that this political reality is only part of the story.  From the late 1970's business in South Africa funded and supported the remarkably large and diverse number of institutions and NGO's.
 Small community groups, large educational projects, health, welfare and service organisations, research institutes and many others.  The strength and diversity of South Africa's civil society, largely operating we might say in direct opposition to Apartheid in its ideas, is a product of three important forces.
 The individuality and spirit of thousands of individual South Africans, international resources and South African business support.  Not just money, but support in lots of other ways as well.
 It's important to note that at the time, the 1980's certainly and before, arguments were made within the business sector that corporations were going beyond their accountability in working for social trains and policy reform.
 You will all remember there were many people who argued that the business of business is business.  So the response of some major corporations in establishing the urban foundation and supporting it through a number of very tough battles with the Apartheid Government and funding many other less prominent initiatives, were I would argue as significant steps beyond traditional business activity and subject to criticism within the business sector.
 I think it's worth noting that in our international and certainly in conversations with business people in America, Europe and the UK and Hongkong, people are amazed at what business in South Africa has actually done.  So, for those of us who thought it was too little, too late, whatever, nonetheless they've gone far further, done far more beyond the factory gate than business in almost any other society that we know of.
 Let me turn now to the Urban Foundation which in my view is a most unusual business funded organisation;  the most important, certainly the largest NGO in the country throughout the 1980's.
 In its 18 years of existence, the foundation which was a broad church of interests, individuals and ideas expanded its interpretations of its original mission well beyond the more conservative intentions of some of its business supporters.
 I would argue that the foundation was to perform a remarkable and unique role in the 18 years of its existence.  By the end of the 1980's this organisation were the country's leading development agency, demonstrating through practical projects innovative new ways of tackling the massive development challenges that would face a Government committed to really housing, educating and serving all the country's citizens.
 In housing, for example, the foundation played a remarkable role.  I won't go into the detail.  All I will say is that there is absolutely no doubt that one of the reason Joe Slovo was able to commit the new Government, community organisations, bring in the private sector too, the kind of housing policy we have, which I think is the only road South Africa can following;  was because of the work done by the Urban Foundation in the 1980's and I think that can be easily proven.
 The campaign I want to talk about, most importantly, is the Urban Foundation's campaign and it was a campaign for the abolition of influx control in the early and then mid 1980's.  Now, influx control is not just an incidental part of Apartheid.  I would argue it is one of the central components of that system of racial discrimination.
 So why did the Urban Foundation choose to put its resources and efforts into that issue in the early 1980's, I would say it was for three reasons.  
 The first was real politics.  You weren't going to get business support for a campaign for one person one vote at that time.
 The second was that Apartheid had always been an anti-urbanisation strategy and so to turn that around would be very significant.
 The third was that if you've got influx control, if you got that abolished all sorts of things would have to follow.  We didn't say that, but that was the reasoning.
 So, using business funds and business support a major campaign was launched to first put influx control into an international perspective, to take the Government's arguments and the people who supported influx control very seriously and then to disprove every single one of them.
 To involve as wide a coalition as possible of South African across the colour divider at that time, across the very tense situations at that time and within the business sector to make sure that all of them were committed to abolition of influx control and not its reform.
 Finally, taking that to the Urban Foundation's Board in 1985 and getting endorsement for what was to be in effect a co-ordinated campaign to take on one of they key components of Apartheid and to take the Government on in that area.
 I'm sure we'll come back to that.  The victor in terms of influx control which was many millions of people's victories, not the Urban Foundation's alone, then led to a larger campaign to take on the Group Areas Act, the Land Act and segregated local Government amongst others.
 I can see the Chairman is looking at me and that time is marching.  I'm sure we'll come back to the Urban Foundation and I'll be happy to answer questions.  Let me just say that it was an organisation that did something very different in South Africa.  It didn't try and talk to the converted.  It didn't talk to the people who were suffering from Apartheid's laws.  It said if you're going to try and change something, we have to talk to the unconverted.
 So we spent all our time and effort talking to the business community and the top leadership in business and then through them to the cabinet to actually get the law changed.
 Let me conclude, Mr Chairman.  I would argue, but it might seem otherwise sometimes;  life is not a morality play.  We don't have the goodies and the baddies easily identified and in fact there are very few people who give out everything for their beliefs and ideas.
 Business in South Africa accommodated itself to the Apartheid system.  In doing so it provided jobs for millions of people.  It created infrastructure in the society.  It unleashed democratising pressures, unintentionally, and sustained a base of economic activity that now provides a platform for economic growth in a democracy.
 Like the vast majority of South Africans, business people could in my view, have done more.  More to oppose the philosophy, assumptions, policies and ideas that sustained Apartheid.  Nonetheless, they did make a significant contribution directly through their support of thousands of NGO's opposing Apartheid or providing services in poor communities and the support of important business people for the work of the Urban Foundation was a significant contribution to the fight against Apartheid laws and important work was done in pioneering new policy and project approaches to meet the country's enormous development need that the new democratic Government face today.