Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-12

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Anne and sorry I had to look at you, but you understand.  Hindoe?

MR HINDOE: Thank you.  Ann, what you have just highlights is very much true and these are visible efforts by the business sector, but my only concern is a point I might have personally misunderstood you;  that now and again you kept on emphasising about the morality.
 I'm getting the impression that the business is a world where there are no morals and as long as I can still make profit that's okay.  Is that what you're saying?

ANN BERNSTEIN: Mr Chairman, I think - let me unpack the question.  I'm saying that enterprises, companies, corporations are in business to make money and if they don't make money they go out of business and people lose their jobs and the Governments don't get taxes and so on.
 So, that's the bottom line.  Now, how you behave as business person will differ from company to company and what morals and what ethics and values you bring into your business dealings will differ from company to company.  
 I'm not absolving anybody from, if you like, individual moral responsibility for how they behave.  The point I'm making is that business as a sector, as an activity is a money making activity and you might be a person who gives money to charity in your personal capacity, but as a business person you're ruthless and tough towards your competitors.
 I think that's the distinction I'm trying to make.

MR HINDOE: One of our concerns as the TRC is to promote and sustain a culture of human rights and we believe that the business sector is one of the major role players.
 But I'm getting again a sense that the business will only, outside the profit motive arena, the business will only act either if they are threatened or there is an opportunity to make more money.  
 I'm just concerned, because what it says to me is that we cannot rely to the business community to be the custodians of the human rights as far as in their field is concerned.

ANN BERNSTEIN: Mr Chairman, business will adapt to the prevailing culture of the society in which they're operating.  If I may give the TRC some advice;  if you want to look for who the custodians are for human rights in a future South Africa, that has to be in the constitution and the new Government and ultimately it's in the voters of our society, because if the Government does things that they don't like it, the electorate has to kick them out.
 So, I think you have to look at a culture of human rights as a broader environment and a long term education process we need for South Africa and I support that entirely.
 Within that frame work, everybody will adapt and that's the way I think it's going to work.  So, oddly enough business in China is going to be to the left of the Government as it was here in some respects, business desegregated more quickly than the rest of the society.
 It doesn't mean they did it quickly enough or whatever, but so I don't think you look to business as a place to protect human rights.  You look to business to make money and to get the country's economy going.  That's their job.  We have to look at the constitution and the Government and a broader system of civic education and ultimately elections to ensure human rights.

MR HINDOE: This is the last comment I promise.  Thank you, Anne, for the - yes, for your recommendation about the enriching the constitution to make sure that it does make provision for the cause of human rights.  I think it is a valid point.
 Anne, if I were to be nasty and refer to your last comment, concluding remark where you were saying about all those beautiful things that the business sector did in spite of operating within the Apartheid system etcetera, etcetera.
 As you were saying - at what cost and I got the impression that you didn't think about the cost and the casualties on the way.  Yes, they did provide a lot of jobs, but definitely there were costs and there were casualties.
 They did all these things that you're saying and I just wanted to make that final comment.

ANN BERNSTEIN: Mr Chair, if I can respond to that?  Business operated in Apartheid and I think Apartheid was a terrible system that did terrible things to millions of South Africans.  I personally think that business should have seen its interests, its long term interests much sooner and done much more.
 If you say to me and you ask the thousands of people who line up for jobs on the East Rand or anywhere else in South Africa, what would they have wanted business to do at the time, I don't think they wanted business to go out of business.  That's the dilemma.  That's the dilemma we had to wrestle with throughout the '80's.
 How can you get business to do more to change Apartheid to get rid of it in its fundamental sense, but at the same time recognise that companies are in a tough market place and they have to survive and their reason for being is to make money.
 That seems to me to be part of the hard choices that are involved in thinking about these issues and that's what I mean when I say this isn't a morality play.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Boraine?  One question, I think only from you today.  This afternoon, I'm - sorry.

DR BORAINE: You're not serious, obviously.  Thank you, Chairperson.  Thank you, Anne.  I'm not sure that all the business people that I know of would agree with your remarkably cynical approach to business, but be that as may I don't think you also meant to say, but I think I ought to at least ask you for the record;  that in the pursuit of making money you don't do that at all costs, you - I think quite a few business people that I know would object to child labour, would object to playing fast and loose with the safety and security of its workers.
 Even though it means that they would make less profits if they abandoned all morality.  No longer now as an individual giving to a charity, which I think the example you gave, but I'm talking about business principles.  I cannot believe that there are that number of people in the business community who would go to the lengths that you have.

ANN BERNSTEIN: Let me clarify my position and the two parts to it.  As I said in response to an earlier question, I'm making the point that the bottom line is very important and that needs to be understood in thinking about what business can do and what it should have done.
 I'm not saying that that means individual business therefore are free, or we should condone business to operate in any way whatsoever and I think you can make judgements about individual businesses and business corporations and the different ways in which they behaved.
  That would follow on from the point I'm making that business is not a collectivity.  We're talking about hundreds and thousands of individual business who're all very different and the few chief executives that have come up in the last day and a half show you that.
 You can see very different people and values and ideas that work.  I'll leave it there.