The battle lines have been drawn between South Africa’s most powerful business organisation, Business Unity South Africa (Busa), and the largely public sector-represented Black Management Forum (BMF), which accuses Busa of refusing to transform from being an overwhelmingly white-led business lobby.
The BMF, led by cabinet spokesman Jimmy Manyi, announced its withdrawal from the structures of Busa last week, and it was quickly followed by National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc) – but the latter had not paid its subscriptions to Busa for some time.
It is understood that the Black Business Executive Circle, another of the black affiliates represented at Busa, will withdraw shortly. It is led by Hlengani Mathebula, an acolyte of Manyi.
However, Busa has come out fighting, lashing out at those playing an anti-white business racecard. The Busa leadership team will be assessing the damage to the organisation tomorrow, led by Banking Council chief executive Cas Coovadia, Andre Lamprecht, the Busa chairman, Brenda Madumise, the vice-president for professional services and acting Busa chief executive Raymond Parsons.
Busa president Futhi Mtoba and Busa vice-president corporate Michael Spicer would have been at the meeting but they are abroad. Spicer, who will be in France this week, put the blame on the BMF stance at Manyi’s door. He said there was a belief that BMF “can deploy” leaders in Busa and ignore the democratic will.
The BMF objected to the election of Mtoba and subsequently objected to Mthunzi Mdwaba, the vice-president of unisectoral organisations, being a candidate for the vacant chief executive position, recently vacated by Jerry Vilakazi, whom BMF said it had deployed some years ago.
Busa delayed the appointment – after BMF objected to Mdwaba playing a part in drawing up the specs for the chief executive job and then also applying for it – to September. The door is now open to Mdwaba getting the job.
Busa’s leadership has played down the withdrawal, noting that it still has a large membership of 61 members, at least 20 of whom were black. One insider said that the membership had risen by 10 members in the past year.
“We have been growing strongly for some time… I can’t see why the withdrawal of an organisation which actually represents public sector managers rather than business managers will have a serious impact on the organisation.”
Manyi declined to comment on developments, indicating that he was busy with government business. “I am away on government business,” he said.
Spicer said there were some – like Manyi – who racialised everything. The BMF had objected to the election of Mtoba as Busa president last year, even though she was black and a woman.
Speaking from London, Spicer said: “They’re getting kicks into Futhi Mtoba.” They seemed to believe they had “a peculiar and special right” to determine Busa’s leadership.
On BMF’s objections to Mdwaba being both a referee and a candidate for chief executive, Spicer said there was nothing in the Busa constitution “which says it is wrong for an official to apply for this job… there are no constitutional rounds at all for that”.
Playing down the impact of the BMF withdrawal – and the possibility of some others following on from it – another Busa insider said: “We have a conflict of interest actually when dealing with entities like Eskom, which is represented in Busa through Business Leadership SA.”
The source noted that it put Busa in a difficult situation when dealing with electricity supply security, for example, when public sector organisations were involved “in the private sector voice”.
But Spicer put it even more bluntly: “It seems to me completely absurd for a government official (Manyi), the spokesman for government, to be having a fundamental influence on the positions that business takes, it is a conflict of interest of the first order. I think the BMF is in a very conflicted position.”
The chasm between the BMF and Busa has long been festering and in March came out into the open at the summit between business and government on the creation of 5 million jobs in 10 years.
Representing Busa at the summit, Mtoba told the open session that the proposed labour laws amendments were an antithesis of job creation.
She told delegates in President Jacob Zuma’s presence: “The proposed labour law changes are making these employers think double as hard… these changes will not promote employment and constitute a full frontal assault on competitiveness.”
Busa and BMF thus also find themselves completely at odds over the labour bills – often dubbed “the Manyi bills”.
Business, in particular, has opposed the scrapping of labour brokers, which one of the bills seeks, while the BMF supports the notion of “decent work” and is bitterly opposed to labour brokering. Mtoba told the summit: “Employers forced into lay-offs by the 2009 crisis bore the brunt of the inflexibility of our labour market.
“This inflexibility was manifested by protracted and costly negotiations with the labour unions. Now, with recovery in sight, these employers think much more carefully before expanding their workforce again.”
It put her squarely on the collision course with the BMF – and Manyi in particular, who was the Labour Department director-general when the bills were drawn up.
Tembakazi Mnyaka, the acting BMF president to whom Manyi referred queries, said she was forced to stand up in the closed session and tell Zuma that the BMF disassociated itself from Mtoba’s statement because her organisation did not share that sentiment.
The selection process of the Busa chief executive heightened the tensions further between the two organisations.
Spicer said BMF representatives had sat on a committee on the labour laws and said very little about them.
Policy positions were documented in draft form and circulated to everyone as well, but it was only at the summit that they suddenly chirped up about their opposition.
Meanwhile, the BMF, which first called on black businesses to attend a summit in August to “map out a future” for a “truly united business voice”, has now urged “like-minded business organisations” to attend the summit. Mnyaka said black and white business were now welcome. “It is not that you are transformed if you are black, and it does not mean you are not if you are white.”
Mnyaka said the BMF’s position had growing resonance with other black groups in Busa. Mxolisi Zwane, the Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services president – which is also a member of Busa, said the BMF’s withdrawal from Busa would be discussed by his council. “The points raised by the BMF are valid,” he said.
While Busa argued that there would be little impact felt by the exodus of black business organisations from its ambit, it would signal an erosion of former president Thabo Mbeki’s footprint. With the assistance of mining magnate and billionaire Patrice Motsepe, Mbeki played a critical role in Busa’s formation. Motsepe was also its first president.
Spicer acknowledged that the formation of Busa in 2003 was “a bit of a messy compromise putting together unlike with like”.
Business SA, which represented established sectoral organisations including the Banking Association, the Chamber of Mines and others – which were mainly white led – with a grouping in the Black Business Council “which were almost overwhelming black professional associations” – was “a bit of a messy compromise”. - Donwald Pressly and Wiseman Khuzwayo