DURBAN’S Chamber of Commerce and Industry is facing one of the toughest challenges of its 160-year history.
Relations between members of the chamber’s board and its president Zeph Ndlovu have broken down irretrievably.
Ndlovu is the president of the Durban Chamber as well as the president of the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI).
Earlier this year, Mike Jackson resigned his position as the deputy president of the Durban Chamber. On Friday another board member, Akash Singh, also called it quits.
Singh was a highly respected former president of the Chamber. In his letter of resignation, he cited dissatisfaction with the way the organisation was run.
The board is currently left with three other members; Mohammed Seedat, Claudette Sigamoney and Vani Moodley.
While the Daily News has seen several e-mails from members of the board who have been critical of Ndlovu’s leadership, none of them was prepared to comment on the matter on the record.
One confirmed Ndlovu had not been responsive to their concerns.
“He’s a dictator. It’s been like this since last year. I’m contemplating filing my resignation too because I can’t be associated with this. It’s about credibility and impartiality,” said the member.
Singh confirmed his resignation. He told the Daily News his resignation was informed by governance and leadership differences.
In his resignation letter, which the Daily News has seen, Singh stated that over the past year, he had “tried very hard” to raise issues and challenges facing the Chamber and had followed the appropriate channels and protocols in terms of the Charter of Rules, but with no results.
He said he realised that his efforts had been in vain as they had not been adequately addressed after extended periods. (See sidebar for reasons for resignation.)
Matters are likely to come to a head tomorrow when a meeting will be held to discuss the issues.
However, some of the board members are not happy that the meeting is going ahead. They had asked that it be postponed because it breached certain rules. This included some members being excluded from attending the meeting. An agenda was also not sent out timeously.
There are also allegations of irregularities that board members wanted investigated as a matter of urgency.
These included allegations of financial irregularities and poor governance in that Ndlovu allegedly did not follow proper processes when he identified potential new board members.
The term of office of DCCI’s current council (which is made up of board members, chairpersons of various forums and elected members) should have ended in April this year. However, no new elections have been called.
In the e-mails board members expressed their frustration that while they had articulated their concerns in writing to Ndlovu, he had allegedly failed to adequately address them.
Three weeks ago, it was reported that three local and regional chambers of commerce have resigned from the national chamber.
The chambers were the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business (PCB), Ekurhuleni Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Northern Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The three cited governance and financial mismanagement for their disaffiliation from the SACCI.
Melanie Veness, PCB chief executive, said it was “very sobering” to hear that such a highly regarded past president (Singh) of the Durban Chamber felt it necessary to resign from the chamber.
“He has always been such a strong advocate for the organisation which boasts a long and proud history.
“With respect to his comments regarding SACCI, you will be aware that we took the difficult decision to disaffiliate from the national body, along with three other chambers, citing concerns that were not dissimilar,” Veness said.
Ndlovu did not respond directly to the concerns raised by Singh in his resignation.
He said: “I can acknowledge that Akash has sent a resignation email to me and council. So, resignation is really a formality acknowledging the fact that a new crop of DCCI members have to take the baton from old council.
“The internal issues cited are handled by DCCI council and a mapped out programme has been laid out as part of a handover to the new council.”