Big business must play a more courageous role in delivering the promises of the Constitution

• Published date: 06 May 2024
• Publication title: Mail & Guardian: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Big business should be planning now for a renewed, more constructive role in bringing stability to the socio-political landscape and ensuring the country's future

On 30 May, South Africans will wake up to a different political landscape. New parties and coalitions, the inclusion of independent candidates in National Assembly and provincial legislature contests, and shifts in support for legacy parties underline the continued vibrancy of our electoral democracy. At the same time, these dynamics of political contestation create a tumultuous environment for the development of social and economic policy and the delivery of public services.

The elections take place at the end of a year in which South Africa experienced four confrontations that were so violent that they registered as "battles" in the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project dataset, together with 658 riots. These were overwhelmingly tied to frustration and despair over the bread-and-butter issues of human dignity and human security defined as fundamental in the Constitution. In addition, 181 incidents of state violence against civilians were recorded.

Despite our electoral robustness, our social contract is straining to the breaking point.

So, we do know one thing with great certainty. The new governments at local, provincial and national levels — no matter how willing they are — will not be able to, on their own, formulate and implement solutions to our pressing problems such as energy, water, food security, education, housing and criminal violence with anything like the speed or scale required to manage our social tension. As South Africans, and part of its future, business leaders can and must act to reduce social strife.

Commitment to an inclusive economy

Often enough where business has greatly prospered in the new South Africa — for example, in the platinum belt, industrial development zones such as in Richards Bay and in export agriculture — workers and communities continue to suffer the most.

The platinum belt is increasingly violent and lacking in access to public services; Richards Bay has a youth unemployment rate above the national average and commercial agriculture is riddled with wage, health and safety violations.

This is not only a failure by businesses and the government to manage the risks and costs of large-scale investments. It is also a failure of the, perhaps naive, notions that emerged in the early 1990s under the aegis of the Consultative Business Movement that one...