CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Crucial for business to back civil society

• Published date: 26 April 2024
• Publication title: Business Day (Johannesburg, South Africa)

That’s both laudable and warranted. We live, after all, in the world’s most unequal society, and apart from addressing the scourges of poverty, inequality and unemployment, civil society also protects our hard-won civil liberties

So it’s odd that the work of civil society is sometimes seen — perhaps unconsciously — by those in business as somehow "softer" than the daily cut-and-thrust of for-profit enterprise.

Some hard-nosed business people surmise that those serving in the nonprofits somehow "lack what it takes" to work in the corporate sector. But that sentiment is off the mark. Civil society has been, and continues to be, the conscience of the broader society in which it operates.

That has at times come at a price. Just one example: in 2016, staff at the Helen Suzman Foundation were held up by masked men with army-issue automatic weapons and handcuffed to the railings of their offices while their captors made off with their computers, phones and files. The foundation was at that time gathering evidence of political corruption during the state-capture era. Nobody has ever been held to account for the brazen heist, nor has the stolen equipment been recovered.

Similarly, investigative journalists, some funded by philanthropists, continue to hold those in high office — government and business — to account. Their recompense is often to be targeted with frivolous lawsuits or worse. One cabinet minister accuses the media and environmental NPOs of working with the CIA to topple SA’s democratically elected government. The publisher of a major media house recently ran a piece in which one of his hacks compared a leading journalist from a competing media house with Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler’s propagandist.

It is hard to imagine more churlish and hateful allegations against people who dedicate their lives towards upholding freedoms that came with great sacrifice. These jibes are generally seen for what they are: tawdry and puerile. Happily, they generally do little to deter those working for a better society, but such mudslinging is dangerous nevertheless and warrants condemnation.

From a distance, much of the work of civil society appears mundane and doesn’t make headlines but is nonetheless crucial: a soup kitchen for the homeless can seem like a humble undertaking but may spell the difference between misery and a degree of comfort.

With the cost-of-living spiralling and economic growth likely to remain in the doldrums for the next few years, support for...