Page 43 - IRMSA Risk Report 2020

EXPERT OPINION

PROF. JONATHAN JANSEN
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR I N EDUC ATION
First of all, you need political will to stare down the unions (e.g. the South African Airways’
labour strike and South African Democratic Teachers Union in public schools) and put
the interests of the country first. If, for example, State owned enterprise debt continues
to escalate, but there is no drastic cost-cutting on the expenditure side, then SA is staring
down the barrel of a gun.

An International Monetary Fund intervention then becomes inevitable and all the

“politically correct” talk of national sovereignty flies out the window. You need political
courage to take on the holy cows of narrow black nationalism and begin to privatise
some of our assets. There is simply no way Eskom is sustainable in Government hands
and its level of indebtedness alone can sink the economy.
You also need political determination to put the most senior people in this country in
prison: until accountability is enforced, corruption will continue. Politics is about power
and positive politics is about wielding power in the interest of the people.

JONATHAN FOSTER-PEDLEY
DEAN AND DIREC TOR, HENLEY BUSINESS SCHOOL
There is a cognitive dissonance, an “us vs them” scenario, that State Capture was limited to one president and one family. This ignores the full scope of
corruption and its underpinning by corporate collusion, when, in fact, the first malignant growths of this cancer can be traced back to apartheid and
before. It is only now that it has been weaponised into a full blown kleptocracy. The inherent danger is to make-believe that this is contained, when,
actually, the insidious effects of corruption and collusion impact on almost every aspect of South African life, irrespective of how big or small it is.

President Ramaphosa’s wafer-thin party majority at NASREC in 2017 plays out on a daily basis with the “New Dawn” and “Radical Economic Transformation”
lobbies involved in an extended existential version of chess, each trying to outwit and outflank the other, with very few real arrests being made, despite
the mounting prima facie evidence of grand corruption and theft. This is matched only by the glacial pace of prosecutions in the Steinhoff case,
where the alleged master mind, Markus Jooste, is still a free man and is yet to be indicted, despite reports of overwhelming evidence of his culpability.
Companies seen as enablers, such as Bain, McKinsey and KPMG, have faced extended shocks and some changes in their business approaches, although
it is still mostly business as usual. Whether all this is due to the catastrophic emasculation of the National Prosecuting Authority or a more granular lack
of political will must still be seen. There is a lack of action to unequivocally link consequences to wrongdoing, which is exacerbated by the return to
parliament of some of the alleged key actors in State Capture. This will likely cause a growing societal malaise and indifference to the sheer scope of
wrongdoing, which if left unchecked, could normalise and entrench corruption as the only available aspiration for an entire generation growing up
without hope. The result is a future where politics becomes a viable career option: not to serve, but to subvert tender processes for personal enrichment
and where corporate leaders to see corruption as a legitimate business tactic to replace innovation and actual value creation in our economy.
We must recalibrate the entire national psyche by evangelising that white-collar crime is as devastating as violent crime and recognising that its victims
are visible, immediate, and multi-generational. The message that crime does not pay and that it has deeply unpleasant and unavoidable repercussions,
irrespective of who you are, who you know, or who your father might be, must be ingrained. There have been glimpses of supportive action: Pravin
Gordhan as Minister of Public Enterprises, Tito Mboweni as Minister of Finance, Shamilla Batohi as the National Director of Public Prosecutions – but it
may be too little and too slow. President Ramaphosa is an incredibly thoughtful man, committed to due process and re-energising the constitutionally
mandated organs that were systematically defanged or destroyed by the previous administration.

This is laudable and noble on a mid- to long-term basis, but, in the short term, our house is
burning, and we are discussing which fire engine to use, rather than getting the hoses into
operation and dousing the inferno. Having said that, Government’s leadership and commitment
to its principles in the showdowns with unions over the recent South African Airways’ labour
strike show a steely resolve and courage, of which we need more. need to start teaching ethical
leadership even before primary school, but until we get that right, it should be an obligatory
undergraduate module in every university in the country. At business schools, we must develop
uncompromising leaders who understand causality and that appointing friends and cadres
rather than qualified people; overlooking wrongdoing; or chasing profit year after year just to
reward shareholders will be the death of us as well of generations to come. It simply is not
sustainable. We must think about the legacy we are bequeathing generations to come. We
must do the right thing, which begins with the creation of prosperous societies that benefit
all who live in them. We must create leaders who will build the businesses that will build Africa
through the creation of sustainable jobs; the development of local and women-owned supply
chains; the empowerment of the communities in which they operate; and conservation of
the environment. If we do that, we will start to narrow the yawning chasm of inequality in
our country, which does not only shame us but also threatens our existence. Corruption kills
countries. It is simple, none of our children have a future unless all of our children have futures.