5 minute read
Bonang Mohale: ON THE POSITIVE SIDE OF CHANGE
from Top500 10th Edition
by Topco Media
IN CONVERSATION WITH BONANG MOHALE, EX-CEO OF BUSINESS LEADERSHIP SOUTH AFRICA
BY RYLAND FISHER
Bonang Francis Mohale was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) in July 2017 after serving in senior positions in several corporates including Shell, the South African Petroleum Refineries (SAPREF), Drake and Scull, Sanlam, South African Airways, and Otis.
Mohale studied at Wits Medical School for four years before spending the early part of his career in the pharmaceutical industry. He has served many organisations, including the Black Management Forum, where he was president from 2012 to 2015. He has won several awards for his nation-building work and business skills, and still serves as a director on several boards.
“When we took over the organisation in July 2017, we realised that we had to make sure that it would serve 57-million South Africans; that is why we embarked on the strategy based on three pillars.
“The first pillar we derived directly out of the National Development Plan (NDP) Vision 2030. It talks about inclusive socio-economic growth and transformation. The second pillar is about the protection of key state institutions – and the third is about positioning business as a national asset.”
Mohale says that the last decade has been extremely hard for South Africans.
“A lot of it was precipitated by the industrial-scale looting called state capture, where about R100-billion per annum was siphoned off to benefit only two families.
“Can you imagine how many Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses we could have built, how many hospitals, how many schools, how many pit latrines could have been eliminated, and how much could have been done in improving the quality of life of the majority of South Africans?
“The challenge is to take the bottom half into the middle class. If we did only that, all of us would sleep better at night.”
He does, however, feel that we are over the worst in dealing with corruption, but that we still have to deal with its remnants.
“When we heard that we had a new president of the ANC and it was the person who has chosen to root out and defeat state capture, all of us celebrated. However, it will take us five years to get rid of the thieves and another five years to be in the same position we were in in 2007. I think all of us need to put our shoulders to the wheel in rebuilding South Africa and in realising the ‘new dawn’. It cannot be a job for the government alone.”
Mohale believes we are taking steps in the right direction as far as addressing state capture and corruption are concerned.
“I really believe that we are on the right trajectory. The New Dawn has arisen. The Thuma Mina call has been heeded. The Independent Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, called the Zondo Commission, is in place. We also have the Nugent Commission into the malfeasance at the South African Revenue Service (SARS).
“Today we speak honestly and openly without any fear of retribution or reprisal about state capture. Every single one of the 57-million South Africans is clear that state capture is here with us – its tentacles are deep and wide and it needs to be uprooted.”
CALL OF THUMA MINA IN FEBRUARY 2018. BUT WE WERE EVEN MORE EMBOLDENED BY HIS APRIL CALL TO SAY IT’S GOING TO BE A PRO-BUSINESS AND PRO-INVESTMENT ADMINISTRATION”
Mohale says that an organisation like BLSA is crucial to the realisation of a thriving and stable South Africa.
“Business Leadership South Africa is absolutely key in terms of doing two things. Firstly, it has to ensure that we embark on the important task of state-building – not just nation-building – because state-building is about public administration.
The sad fact is that President Cyril Ramaphosa inherited a public administration that was in dire straits. The people that were effective and efficient, the majority of whom were African, had been fired and hounded out. The institutions of democracy had been hollowed out. Many of the state-owned enterprises had employees whose only job was to aid and abet state capture. It will take a bit of time to be able to get rid of all those people, together with corruption’s legacies, as we rebuild.
“Secondly, it is critical that organisations like BLSA join hands with the rest of South Africa’s social partners – government, labour, business and civil society – to ensure that we not only hold the public administrators accountable, but also insist on being involved in policy formulation: in co-crafting a new vision, a new hope and a new future.”
BLSA has been working together with President Ramaphosa’s special envoys to help attract $100-billion in foreign direct investment and $100-billion from domestic investment.
“We were very energised by the President’s call of Thuma Mina in February 2018. However, we were even more emboldened by his April call to say it’s going to be a pro-business and pro-investment administration. To that effect, he set a target of a US$100-billion in five years; on average US$20-billion a year. How is he doing? From April until the end of August 2018, instead of having banked only half of US$20-billion, he had already banked US$34-billion. We know that his quest is going to be successful. We emerged from the October Jobs Summit with five commitments signed by all the social partners.
“Then came the Investment Summit, which saw companies prepared to make massive commitments. Indeed, for the next four years, we know President Ramaphosa is going to announce some incredible commitments and, like we always do as resilient South Africans, we will pull ourselves out of this technical recession.”
Mohale says that business supports expropriation without compensation “because the bigger agenda is land reform, not expropriation”. Land reform consists of land restitution, redistribution and development.
“On the issue of land restitution, we say that where people were forcefully removed from their farms, they need to be restored to their original positions.
“On land redistribution, the Mining and Petroleum Resources Development Act states that when mineral rights are awarded to a mining company, the surface rights are lost to the community and they are relocated without notice; in other words, expropriated without compensation.
“Redistribution is necessary so that we can all live in peace and harmony. Our Constitution guarantees us three rights, namely freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom from hunger.
