Business leaders on Thursday called revelations at the Madlanga commission “deeply disappointing,” cautioning that the inquiry could trigger significant disruption in the criminal justice system.
They stressed, however, that the partnership between business and government to build skills and strengthen capacity against crime and corruption has continued to make encouraging progress.
In an update on the partnership, Business for SA said it had agreed with President Cyril Ramaphosa to look at whether there was scope to introduce the crisis in Joburg as a fifth focal area for the partnership, adding to the current workstreams on energy, logistics, crime and corruption and employment.
Business would assess existing private sector initiatives to fix the city and see whether it could assist over and above these to address Joburg’s particular challenges, B4SA chair Martin Kingston said, but made it clear that it would not become involved in politics at any level.
Recently retired Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman, who co-chairs the B4SA crime and corruption workstream, said its focus was on providing government with the skills and capacity that it didn’t have, in a way that created institutional capacity so that business didn’t have to do this “forever”.
It had focused on digital forensics, providing prosecutors and people within the Hawks with digital forensic capability, and establishing the Digital Evidence Unit for the National Prosecuting Authority, which was now up and running.
The unit is primarily focused on state capture cases. More than 500 officials have been trained.
“The initiatives have been important in terms of ensuring that we can confidently say greylisting should be lifted as we’ve covered just about all of the aspects that were listed,” he said.
Good progress had also been made with protecting economic infrastructure, with a joint committee established.
“I must compliment government also for the very good work they’ve done in this area, and certainly it’s our experience that it’s bad to generalise about government, because when we work with people below the political level we find a lot of good people who are committed, hard-working and honest,” Froneman said.
He expressed deep disappointment with revelations to the Madlanga commission, which could also impact law enforcement agencies.
“Everyone is going into lockdown mode and that features in a lack of succession planning, with vacancies developing within the criminal justice system. So I do expect some significant disruptions going forward,” Froneman said.
B4SA has provided more than 750 private sector subject experts to assist government in turning around SA’s electricity, logistics and crime crises, and has put R350m into the partnership with government via the Resource Mobilisation Fund. About 20-30 CEOs are actively involved in B4SA’s four workstreams.
The new employment workstream is working with the departments of tourism & home affairs on an initiative to grow SA’s tourism sector that could bring 1-million additional tourists to the county and create 70,000 new jobs for young people, as well as on initiatives to create new jobs in digital, said Business Unity SA CEO Khulekani Mathe.
“We are aware of the difficulties but we are clear about the potential of the country and the need to change the narrative,” said Discovery CEO and B4SA chair Adrian Gore.
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