79th Just isn’t good enough, Premier Zille

Posted by Kevin Lester
Monday, 25 May 2009  |  2 comments
Kevin Lester is a BEE Specialist at Transcend Corporate Advisors
Read all of Kevin Lester's Posts

Politics is not my game, at least not in the public domain! The nature of my work requires that I steer clear of politics. So, as I write this blog, I am conscious of the fact that my clients are people of almost every political stripe and their preferences deserve our respect. Yet, what happened a few weeks back in the Western Cape Provincial Government is in fact not merely party politics, it’s also BEE.

The appointment of a new executive management team that appears 60% white and 40% black, 90% male and 0% black female in any major listed corporate in South Africa would be met with outrage. If you don’t believe me, go and ask Barloworld and Alexander Forbes! So why should a political executive of a provincial government be any different?

Premier Zille and her party have responded with anger to complaints about their failure to appoint a single black woman to their cabinet or a majority of black MEC’s. I have no political response to offer, my comment is about empowerment and transformation. Based on the Financial Mail Empowerdex Top Empowerment Companies for 2008, if the Western Cape Provincial Government were a JSE listed company, it would rank 79th of 188 companies for management control. Companies with a better score for management control would include Absa, FirstRand, Massmart Holdings, Metropolitan Holdings, MTN Group, Mutual & Federal, Nedbank, New Clicks Holdings, SABMiller Plc, Sanlam, Santam, Sasol, Tongaat Hulett and Woolworths Holdings. These are not useless companies – indeed, they are amongst our finest and most sustainable companies. I would challenge anyone to prove that the strong management control performances of these companies are a matter of window-dressing!

It might be argued that corporates have a harder time scoring well in management control than a political party that can boast in excess of 50% of its electorate as black. Shareholders in JSE listed South African companies are still overwhelmingly not black! When all is said and done, there are only two possible excuses available to Premier Zille. The first is the fact that corporate executives don’t come cheaply and that MEC’s earn comparatively little. That said, even that argument is not without its challenges, given that the argument essentially infers that black people are not public spirited enough to do the right thing for less money. In any event, if money were the problem, it would not explain the failure to appoint a single non-black woman other than Premier Zille. Her second possible argument, which she has already articulated, is that she gets to pick her executive from a closed set of individuals elected to the Provincial Legislature unlike corporates who can get the executive search consultants in on the act – but perhaps she and her party might have thought of this when she settled their party list.

It’s not about slavishly applying quotas – as all of the aforementioned companies have demonstrated, leadership transformation and empowerment is about mindset and commitment. If you lack the commitment, there are no excuses on earth that will save you from yourself. In the interests of sending the right message about diversity and inclusivity to our children, I do hope Mrs Zille changes that cabinet soon.

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