If you want to check whether our institutional shareholders are asleep at the corporate governance wheel, the place to look is voting on remuneration policies at annual general meetings (AGMs). And so at the recent Telkom AGM an impressive 39% of the shareholders woke up and voted against the company's remuneration policy. A policy that allowed the board to send the former chief financial officer (CFO) packing with an R18.8-million payout for a year in which he didn't do a day's work deserves to be voted against. One wonders why 61% thought the remuneration policy deserved a supporting vote.We'll never know what, if any, substance there was behind the suspension and then termination of former CFO Jacques Schindehutte. More's the pity. The lack of information creates the impression this was a government-type botched attempt to get rid of an inconvenience.What a shame that in South Africa, unlike most leading jurisdictions, nothing hangs on the remuneration vote.story_article_left2And it also looks as though a chunk of the shareholders were not happy about the special resolution dealing with the provision of financial assistance to subsidiaries and other related entities even though changes had been made ahead of the meeting.Despite Telkom excluding from the resolution the authority to provide financial assistance to directors so they can buy Telkom shares, almost 19% of the shareholders voted against the resolution.Presumably they thought Telkom's executive directors were getting paid enough and should be paying for their own shares.Small-scale miners coming to the rescueIt's encouraging to see the government considering everything possible to save jobs that could be lost as a result of the closure of distressed mines.This week, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said the department would seek to persuade small-scale miners to take up mines that had become unprofitable for big mining houses. It's a great idea; miners struggle with the concept of the end of a mine's life, arguing mines never die, they just become difficult to mine.But if the plan is to work at least two problems will need to be addressed. One is up-skilling small-scale miners so they can deal with significant mining and management challenges. The other is how to ensure the required environmental rehabilitation is done once the mine is declared dead.Rehabilitation is hugely expensive if done properly. South Africa's recent mining history is littered with cases where it hasn't been done properly and community members suffer terribly as a result.Woolworths, Italtile and MassmartThings are certainly tough out there. But it's hard to work out what determines how much punishment a company does or does not take. Is it the choice of the market sector it happens to serve or is it down to management?story_article_right1This week, three consumer-facing companies posted results that told very different stories. On the smaller side was Italtile's excellent results for the 12 months to June. As analyst Anthony Clark says, Italtile's results defy the notion that the economy is in recession.The much larger Massmart wasn't so lucky. It seemed to get hit from all sides and the knock in diluted headline earnings must be causing serious buyer remorse among the Walmart guys back in Bentonville.And then there was Woolworths; a solid performance on home territory was given added sparkle by the strong improvement at recently purchased Australian outfit David Jones.The management team, led by the irrepressible Ian Moir, tells an exciting story about the potential for African clothing exports to Australia. Particularly exciting is the speed with which it has been able to organise shipments of stock from South Africa to Australia. It is apparently far easier to ship to Sydney than to Lagos.Woolworths's management still suffers a few nightmares about its Nigerian escapade. This is the sort of situation that needs to be addressed urgently if all the talk of African renaissance is to mean more than booming commodity prices.Steel quandaryGood luck to the Trade and Industry and Economic Development departments in their new role as regulator of the steel price. As the International Trade Administration Commission and the two departments release the details of the tariff increases and the attached conditions, no doubt ArcelorMittal's lawyers are poring over them to identify loopholes. "No price increases as a result of the tariff adjustments" looks like a potentially huge loophole.But one senses the government has had its fill of ArcelorMittal's sharp practices and so it has contingency plans...