Happy Freedom Day to you too, Mr President, but please address the plight of South Africa’s lesser animals: black people. You spoke in Bloemfontein of the “localisation of goods and services” as well as procurement to deracialise our economy. Hear, hear!
Mr President, allow me to highlight some ominous coincidences. Even as we watched the broadcast of your message to the nation on eNCA, a breaking news story flashed: “Train smashes into bakkie leaving 7 people dead.”
The deceased were mainly men in their thirties on their way to work, killed at the same spot in the same way as 10 children in a taxi in 2010.
Your speech, Mr President, also followed the consecration of the memory of Michael Komape, the toddler who drowned in his school’s pit latrine. A court ruled, on our 24th freedom anniversary, that the family of this lesser being deserved no more compensation than R12000.
Uniting this racially divided economy is your unenviable inheritance. Talk of exclusion, not from the economy only, but life itself, prematurely!
However, your promise to deracialise the South African economy knew no worse antithesis this week than the deplorable threat to the very personification of black economic empowerment: Nkonki Inc.
This is a firm founded, and for more than two decades led, by black professionals of note, especially Sindi Zilwa and Mzi Nkonki.
It now faces ruin because the Auditor General of SA (Agsa) turned off its life support. This executed the firm. KPMG will survive, but Nkonki, which generated around 70% of its business from the government, is in liquidation.
The businessman in you, Mr President, knows that Nkonki’s public sector/private sector revenue split was too risky. Still, let me recount how this came about.
Most black businesses, Mr President, rely too much on the government due to the confluence of an unsupportive white-dominated private sector and those courageous political leaders like the late Stella Sigcau. May your government muster similar courage before it is too late, Mr President!
As Minister of Public Enterprises, Mma-Sigcau’s solemn mission was to affirm black firms like Ngubane, then Sizwe Ntsaluba, Gobodo and Nkonki.
She used her political muscle to force state-owned enterprises to buy from them. They delivered quality service and grew phenomenally during her tenure.
When she moved on, this gain was reversed, until, curiously, Malusi Gigaba - one of her successors - partly restored it. Nkonki sealed its undeserved fate when Mitesh Patel, according to a report by the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, financed his buyout with R107million from Salim Essa, a Gupta man. Subsequent to the buyout, Nkonki reportedly secured massive work from Eskom.
Why not include Nkonki in your extended state capture investigation, Mr President, and recover any money unduly earned? Instead, the move by the Agsa probably destroyed the whole firm and, with it, 180 livelihoods.
The entire auditing profession, the industry agrees, needs a thorough revamp.
Auditing firms worldwide have been implicated in governance lapses since the 1929 stock market crash and beyond. Going after one black firm, directly or indirectly, while the powerful politicians and white businessmen who virtually invented state capture roam free, is regressive.
Multinationals and several big auditing firms have been implicated in governance lapses, Mr President, including those fingered in apartheid sanctions-busting arms deals.
Punishing one professional services firm without any grace period is neither fair nor effective in effecting change. Anyone who has experienced the imperfect Sindi Zilwa in professional action, her passion for training black accountants and supporting SMEs, will agree her legacy deserves better treatment.
AG Kimi Makwetu admitted the termination of business with Nkonki and KPMG was “not a judgment on the capabilities or integrity of the professionals that work in the firms but recognition of the significant reputational risks associated with matters that affect them at present”.
Unless Nkonki single-handedly created these “significant reputational risks” (read state capture), it is scandalous to sacrifice only its hard-working professionals. In the spirit of your “Thuma Mina” pledge, Nkonki must be saved, Mr President.
* Kgomoeswana is author of Africa is Open for Business, a media commentator and public speaker on African business affairs and a columnist for Destiny Man.
@VictorAfrica