On July 30 Redge Nkosi, a distinguished economics expert and founder of Firstsource Money; Modise Motloba, founder of Tysys Capital Group; Kevin Odendaal, head of supply chain at PPC Africa; and I were invited to the launch of Maysene Logistics. It is the two-year-old business venture of Reneiloe Semenya, its chair, and Phuti Semenya, the company’s co-founder.
The gathering provided a platform to engage on where to go for SA and what we can contribute. It was attended by schoolchildren and community and business people. Unlike government, which launches an idea before testing whether it works, Maysene Logistics launched when it was 24 months old and there was a good story to tell. Unlike Neal Froneman, the CEO of miner Sibanye-Stillwater, who defended his R300m salary in the middle of a wage dispute with workers by deploying the usual managerialism mask typical of people in leadership positions, the young Maysene Logistics demonstrates the opposite leadership ethos to our tragicomic existence that is abetted by those in leadership positions.
By way of background, in case we forget our precipice, the Indlulamithi Scenarios South Africa 2030, in its fifth state of the nation report, affirms we are in gwara gwara — trapped in restlessness, immobility and enclaves of survival. Indlulamithi pointed to protests coming to be reported like the weather or traffic as they intensify to become the norm. Thanks to global positioning and navigation systems, traffic reports are now associated not with accidents, but robots that don’t work because of cable theft and load-shedding, all wrapped up in a litany of public protests and popular reaction.
And so it was last week with Krugersdorp and Thembisa representing the most horrific, yet normalised, loss of life in the wake of such protests. On the eve of Women’s Month we were visited by the brutal gang rapes of poor women from Alexandra by men believed to be illegal foreigners who came through our porous borders. These men are themselves victims of a brutal labour migration system that acquainted and trained them in inhumane labour that is now neglected and traps Kagiso residents. They are illegally working in mines neglected by bosses of capital. These bosses have not been brought to book by a government whose responsibility is to tax capital and enforce rehabilitation of the environment. But that government failed to do so. The organisers of the music video shoot in which the women were taking part in the mine dump are said to be Nigerian men who fled without clothes from the scene which mutated into the most debilitating sex orgy impugned on the innocent lasses. The police should have had intelligence of these illegal activities, not only in Krugersdorp, but wherever they occur in SA. Mine dumps are geographically specific, non-mobile geographies visible to satellite imagery and Google street views. They need no further intelligence than being freely able to determine the risks the inept department of minerals and energy should have long produced — risk estimates and the spillover that would flow into the Kagiso community. These effects are not only from the brutal activities of zama zama, but from the tuberculosis-forming fine dust that is blown into the pulmonary systems of residents 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So, the Kagiso residents got gatvol and marched. This followed the Thembisa electricity and service protest a day before. The Kagiso community meted out punishment I witnessed in Accra four decades ago when a thief was caught. Pray the pointed finger that is followed by “cromfo cromfo or “tief tief” (thief) is not pointing at you. Because if it is, you are going to be a “stiff man” soon (dead). All this comedy of neglect has government as the accused number one clown for appalling failure in this chain of command. Yet government is dressed with so much legitimate power, including monopoly of violence, which legitimises prudent application of lethal force should the integrity of the constitutional democracy be attacked. This attack is increasingly evident as groups and gangs brandish guns on social media without refrain and the gains of the dumps are lavishly displayed. The markets of this trade are surely not difficult to track, trace and nip in the bud.
In a constitutional democracy we have to seek a solution to this circle of victimhood circus that dehumanises women in particular, the South African population more generally. This is critically important as we seek pathways towards social cohesion and inclusivity as a fundamental norm for SA to return to a democratic, nonracial and non-sexist country with credible territorial integrity.
In a constitutional democracy we have to seek a solution to this circle of victimhood circus that dehumanises women in particular, the SA population more generally. This is critically important as we seek pathways towards social cohesion and inclusivity as a fundamental norm for SA to return to a democratic, nonracial and non-sexist country with credible territorial integrity. This is the context in which the Maysene leaders invited people to seek solutions and not be armchair critiques. They did so by sharing where they are heading, not as a small business but a young one. Their refrain from accepting the definition of small is that as a definition it means forever stunted, whereas young means ready and able to grow. The premise of small vs young is a hallmark of its business ethos. In two years the company has more than doubled its fleet, with an accident-free record over an immense number of kilometres. The founders revealed the secret of their success.
My contact with Reneiloe came in April with a request to take part in a television interview on Human Rights Day on how we are going to realise such rights in SA. I stupidly agreed. Then she asked me to provide a keynote address at the launch of her business. I went silent, Reneiloe sent a reminder and I remained silent. Then I called to try to understand what was required of me, as such a dwarf-like character cannot advise on anything regarding business. However, Reneiloe doesn't take no for an answer. She does her homework. As I perused our WhatsApp exchange I realised I had been invited to address the launch as a result of an article I shared titled “The proof is in the pudding SA, not an airy list of inputs” (Business Report, March) and was bound to attend. Tellingly, Reneiloe told me of a business person who was young, black and of a different breed to Froneman. Then I got this from distinguished businesswoman Chichi Maponya: business cannot coexist with dirt poverty. From both women I hear patriots in business who will pay their dues for dumps and rehabilitate them. They are the ones who will bring the community and its children together to create a new SA in which education is central and affordable, public services are not an option but a must.
Here is Reneiloe’s response to my article.
“Well articulated and hope someone can do just the bare minimum to provide service and execute some of the policies we have been hearing about. My country is experiencing service paralysis. There seems to be muscle cramps for those who ought to serve in major institutions. But also, some of those who occupy leadership roles think highly of themselves and are fixated with titles, entourage and talking to self without pragmatic solutions. You would notice that I deliberately don’t refer to leader, but ‘people occupying leadership positions’, mainly because we have a serious deficit when coming to authentic and ethics leadership with a will to make a difference.
Unfortunately, a lot of people in leadership positions are out of depth and sync regarding accountability. They resort to ‘the matter is being investigated syndrome’ while the country spirals downwards.
We are on the brink of a no-turning-back situation if nothing changes. We are in trouble. We need an emergency evacuation from government. We can save ourselves through deliberate and mindful actions. The system needs a serious cleanup, but who will do it when we fight among ourselves and unnecessarily defend each other?
Those who can afford to buy basic services privately do so (boreholes, solar and gas, security, health, education and so on) while the majority continues to experience poor quality of life. I don’t need measures to know whether there is service, I simply look at the litter in the streets and conclude on the state of government affairs. Where there is filth I detect no rule of law and therefore we are unable to achieve anything constructive. Communities are hopeless, which breeds despair, and anyone can rise to a position of power. Our systems are weak and will perpetuate the vicious cycle for the poor. We are in trouble. We need an emergency evacuation from government. We can save ourselves through deliberate and mindful actions. The system needs a serious cleanup, but who will do it when we fight among ourselves and unnecessarily defend each other?”
After her response I realised I could not run away from delivering that address. What drives Reneiloe and Phuti are their children, their families, and central to their mission is educating the communities in which they operate. When I insisted children participate in the business’s launch, it was no-brainer for Reneiloe. Her husband, Phuti, talked about access to finance and how out of touch banks and government are in this space. He qualified for a loan to buy a big German sedan instantly, but when he wanted the same amount for a big German tanker, the banker said he did not qualify because he had not been in business. This after being in corporate SA as a chartered accountant in logistics and employed for at least two decades. Stats SA, in its survey of the employed and self-employed, shows access to finance is a major constraint. Only family, friends and fools or mashonisas will finance you, not banks or government. Should government entertain financing you, the amount of paperwork will be equivalent to providing proof of lineage through a death certificate of a granny who perished before 1800. Motloba stepped in to offer interest-mitigated finance to enable expansion of the business and incentivised the PPC to provide a supplier enterprise development platform for Maysene’s tankers. So when Nkosi raised the issue of finance for young businesses as a macroeconomic constraint in our policy design, he was not pulling an academic stunt, but rather discussing the deep economics of interest rates, credit extension, industrialisation and industrial policy, and the Reserve Bank’s role. This is what Odendaal, Motloba, Reneiloe and Phuti understood and provided solutions for in terms of employment and resolving poverty and inequality outside our insulated government officials and bankers. South Africans have solutions and leaders such as those behind Maysene Logistics, not people in leadership positions. This was a refreshing scent in a country frozen in a stench of death.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of the Institute for Economic Justice at Johannesburg’s Wits university and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of SA.
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