Appoint 100 of SA’s best people to fix the country – Mark Barnes

He joins me now.

Mark, thanks a lot for becoming a member of us. What was the context of this tweet? Was it a tweet in anger, or have you ever been contemplating making this proposal for some time?

MARK BARNES: Well, I had simply completed watching the information and, in actual fact, studying the papers on Sunday and I couldn’t discover any excellent news in any way. Every factor of our assemble appears to be in danger, starting from training to electrical energy, to water, to social order, to financial order – and also you simply get the sense that all the things we have a look at extra carefully seems to be worse than we count on it to be. And so that you go, ‘What is the root cause of this, because we have so many things in our favour in South Africa?’ We are gifted with pure assets, we’ve got fantastic climate, we’ve got all of these good issues.

Now we’ve got to go to the root trigger, which is management. We haven’t but managed to intersect political and financial energy in South Africa, in the new South Africa, in the post-1994 South Africa. That is the place the hole is. So we sit on reverse sides of a desk with an inferiority complicated about enterprise on the one hand, and a superiority complicated about enterprise on the different, with levers of energy that aren’t wishing to intersect with expertise.

We should recover from it, man, as a result of what we actually want is to maintain fingers and we want to recover from our luggage and our persevering with divides, together with racism which continues, together with poverty and inequality and all these issues which we want to depart at the door. We want to sit down and face the realities of this stunning country and fix them collectively.

So I assumed, how do you try this? Let’s infiltrate the present ecosystem with experience. There’s a well-known saying in flying, which is ‘airmanship’. We want airmanship to take care of a disaster. The know-how can all be there, the climate may be for or towards you, however in a disaster the pilot has to have expertise. So why don’t we acknowledge that have and experience, irrespective of from whence it comes, and do a three-year deal which says, ‘We’re going to switch not shares however experience’.

We’re going to sit round a desk, pay attention to what the new South Africa desires, and provides again what the previous South Africa had learnt, and by some means discover a mixture as a result of, in the actual world, Ryk, once you stroll round and also you greet people and also you go and watch rugby collectively or no matter it’s that we do, we’re mates already. We are over it. If you pay attention to our kids, they converse equally, some of them. Of course we haven’t addressed all of the points however we who stay right here and who intend to stay right here eternally need it to work, and we want to cross our divides now. It’s sufficient already of the polarisation between political energy and financial urgency.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: Do you have got a relationship with the president? Do you realize him properly?

MARK BARNES: No, I wouldn’t say that. There was a time I feel when many of us had a relationship with him, and I’d argue that that has light – that may be the most well mannered means of describing it.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: There are many perceptions relating to the non-public sector and authorities. It appears nearly as if there are two silos not working collectively as they need to be. But do you assume there are leaders inside the non-public sector who can be prepared to serve in senior authorities positions in the context of fixing South Africa?

MARK BARNES: It’s worse than silos, Ryk. We’re in opposition, virtually. Whenever there’s a private-sector concept, it’s regarded with suspicion: ‘They’re attempting to destroy Eskom in order that they will privatise it,’ or they accuse me of destroying the Post Office in the curiosity of shopping for it. By the means, I solely supplied to purchase it after I left; and that’s not why I left.

So we’ve obtained this division, we’ve obtained this suspicion. We want to look one another in the eye and go, let’s overlook about our particular person agendas.

If you need to fund a developmental country with transformation imperatives, inequality and all of these issues, you have got to have a thriving financial system to assist [closing] that backlog.

You have to have enterprise that’s useful and sustainable and paying tax in order that that income to the state may be ploughed again into the financial system the place it’s required.

You can not create tax with out revenue. You can not create a sustainable- and observe a developmental mandate with out a business substance to assist it. And so who is aware of how to do business substance? Not politicians, not freedom fighters, [but] enterprise people who’ve been doing it to perceive the very clear equations of financial development and profitability. We’ll get them in the staff. Let’s not have a Springbok flyhalf who can’t kick a purpose.

So I feel we want to say, okay, properly you do that. Then we’ve got to strike a deal which says there’s a handover interval. This is sort of a construct, function switch mannequin which says, ‘Can you guys with all of your expertise come here and sit with us and let’s work this factor out collectively in the context of the new dynamics’. And once you depart in three years’ time, Mr Barnes, will you allow behind you a totally remodeled administration staff that you just’ve transferred competence with, and also you’ve discovered collectively and formulated a brand new assemble for the new future world of South Africa? That has to be half of the deal.

We are usually not saying as enterprise people that we would like to take over. We are saying as enterprise people that we would like to keep right here, we would like to invite capital right here, we would like our kids to keep right here and our capital to keep right here.

In order for that to stay a beautiful proposition, we’ve got to subscribe to the ideas of enterprise – that are well-known.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: Why don’t you assume authorities can appeal to high expertise? While I’m listening to you it’s clear you don’t consider the abilities are in authorities to fix this. I feel that’s most likely a given, however why don’t you assume authorities can appeal to the best expertise?

MARK BARNES: Well, as a result of we’re all at fault, not simply authorities that’s at fault. We assume we all know all the things, and so we go there and dictate. Yes, I went to the Post Office to educate and I ended up studying. That’s the fact of it. I went there pondering I knew what to do and I ended up studying what had to be accomplished. We’ll depart that there.

I feel that we are able to precisely appeal to. I supplied at one cut-off date to create what I known as ‘a centre of excellence’ – just about like the company finance division I headed in the non-public sector – which might then farm out consultants into the SOEs at junior kind of younger, enthusiastic ranges. We’d appeal to people from the service provider banks to come and work at the centre of excellence for presidency.

We nonetheless aren’t over it.

There’s a belief deficit, there may be an absence of frequent trigger. It’s all about who takes what from whom, moderately than what we are able to create collectively.

So I feel there’s a rare willingness by enterprise people in the non-public sector to be companions with authorities, however there isn’t a rare tolerance for strolling into a spot and being instructed precisely what to do, regardless of your expertise which may be counter to that recommendation. I’ll offer you an instance. If you’re a heart specialist working in a theatre doing a coronary heart transplant, simply since you personal the hospital doesn’t imply you possibly can go and inform that [cardiologist] what to do. They’re an professional, you’re a staff, you’re a partnership. The working assist methods are all there and so forth. Like moving into too many analogies.

We have to rejoice the variations amongst us and add them collectively to create this glorious rainbow nation that all of us stood in lengthy queues to create – and we haven’t managed to try this. (*100*) of the causes is as a result of there’ve been shortcuts to financial privilege, which haven’t been based on long-term funding positive aspects and so forth. And these have created what I would name a sub-sect center class which arguably is happy with the established order. That’s the worst menace we may be beneath.

So I truly assume we want to go like ‘It’s not sufficient to have this group of people whose children will go to non-public faculties and who’ve the identical hospitals and identical safety companies and so forth defending [them]. It’s not sufficient, regardless of whether or not that already cuts throughout racial divides. It’s not sufficient. What we want to do is begin at the backside and we want to perceive how we are able to get a fundamental training in any respect ranges, how we are able to get fundamental healthcare, how we are able to get all of these issues which, for the huge proportion of the inhabitants, the price per unit of consumption is much more than it’s for the properly off. The price of an apple or a cigarette – or no matter you’d like – at the lowest sections of society is excessive. We haven’t dispersed the wealth and we definitely haven’t created it.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: I feel it’s a logical answer to a posh downside to get the best people in the most necessary positions. And I feel there’s not a single non-politician who [wouldn’t?] agree with you, however there have been additionally some detrimental feedback on social media that this proposal coming from the non-public sector signifies perhaps a problem in direction of transformation. How do you reply to that?

MARK BARNES: We can’t survive with out transformation. It’s a matter of numbers and statistics, and it’s apparent that the demographic profile of management and financial energy should mirror the demographic profile of the inhabitants. It isn’t sustainable for us not to rework and to take part and to have broad-based … and to create a center class. A democracy by definition requires, to be sustainable, the bulk of the people to be in the center class. We want a traditional distribution of wealth, a traditional distribution of all of these sort of issues.

It is borderline suicidal to ponder a society which doesn’t embrace the prospect of common financial dignity.

I’m not saying that we are able to get it tomorrow. What I’m saying is that people are shedding hope, and those that have the freedom of alternative are selecting to go, [and taking] their capital with them. The people who don’t are caught right here. That’s not the reply. The reply is we’ve got to have people consider that those that are taking care of them or who’re given the activity of serving them – let me put it that means – are competent and are creating worth.

Until such time as all of us begin believing that, the requirements will proceed to drop. If you begin wanting round you – the public sector, non-public sector, nobody’s excluded – requirements are dropping. If you drop a chunk of paper, nobody else is selecting up their piece of paper, [so] why would you like to choose up yours? Is everybody nonetheless making their mattress in the morning? Is everybody nonetheless respecting each other and parking in their very own parking bays?

The requirements are universally dropping in my expertise, as a result of we’ve began accepting much less and fewer and fewer.

We’re dropping our requirements. All of us are dropping our requirements. I’m not saying there’s a gold normal or colonial normal, I’m saying there’s a South African normal beneath which we’re beginning to play.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: I feel you possibly can add the obedience of visitors guidelines to that, as a result of so much of people simply don’t adhere to visitors guidelines as a result of there is no such thing as a consequence. I hate asking main questions, however how far do you assume South Africa is from all-time low?

MARK BARNES: I don’t know the way to outline all-time low as a result of we’ve obtained so much going for us that’ll maintain us up. No matter how stormy it’ll get in Cape Town, it’ll nonetheless be one of the most stunning cities in the world. But I’d say this: the price of reversing our spiral turns into more and more prohibitive. It’s like something that you just permit to decay. We will get to some extent when the measures of our failure will turn out to be primal – and we’re already seeing that. We are already seeing violence, we’re seeing behaviour that’s typical of an entire loss of mutual respect and really an instinctive want to seize issues and to survive towards all odds, so to converse.

And so we’re beginning to see – if you happen to learn the information, if you happen to have a look at the rape and the violence and the pillage and the behaviour that we’re beginning to see more and more seem in entrance of us – that that may be a manifestation of determined people.

Not dangerous people, determined people who’re wanting to discover some strands of this dream that all of us got here collectively to agree to vote on and to manifest. And it’s absent.

And so now we get cross – and if you need somebody to be actually cross, allow them to be hungry as properly.

We have people who actually are at the brink of hunger. When you begin seeing that, when vitality or electrical energy turn out to be the forex of survival, then people will behave fully in a different way between themselves, as they are going to when these main comforts are addressed; and we’re that shut to that taking place, I sense.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: Yes, that’s not a reasonably image.

MARK BARNES: I’m most likely being a bit dramatic right here, Ryk, as a result of go searching you. Things are nonetheless working. We drive to work and again. But I’m saying that it’ll price a fraction of the effort and capital to fix it now than it should in three years’ time – a fraction!

RYK VAN NIEKERK: I would like to take you again to your comment about management in South Africa, as a result of I feel many people had been very excited that Cyril Ramaphosa took over the presidency and he was seen as ‘an honest leader who will turn things around’. But it looks like he’s very conspicuous by his absence at the second. What position do you assume that performs?

MARK BARNES: It’s a big level. Yes. I don’t know what’s in his thoughts or on his agenda, however I do know that we want energy and compass, full of integrity and good objective and all of these good issues. I’m not starting to query that. I by no means have.

But it’s now [a matter of] attempting to arise towards no matter inner forces he wants to take care of, and lead the country, not the ANC, and make some very daring, if essentially unpopular, choices. Some of the best medicines I’ve had to take haven’t tasted good – however we want some drugs.

We want some arduous choices and we want to take threat in the title of doing what’s proper and what’s common….

I can inform you that in my expertise over many, a few years, if one thing is true everybody ultimately will get it. And if one thing is mistaken all people ultimately will get it, as a result of we’re knowledgeable, clever people, and we’ve got had to be taught to coexist by way of circumstances arduous to discover elsewhere in the world at the identical scale. And so we’ve obtained by way of all of that. Well, now can we face the details? Can we take care of the details? Can we overlook about reputation and begin speaking about objective? Those are some of the issues which we’ve got to [do], to put aside politeness and recognition in favour of objective and [pragmatism] and willpower and issues of that nature. And we’ve got to begin speaking about partnership each single day of our lives.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: Do you assume the non-public sector is doing sufficient or placing sufficient stress on authorities? You’ve despatched a tweet now, it’s on social media. We’ve seen Business Leadership South Africa and Business Unity South Africa ship a letter to the president stating pay attention, decontrol the electrical energy trade in any other case we are going to fail. But do you assume there’s vital or sufficient stress other than sending letters and sending tweets?

Read: We can not depend on Eskom any longer: Mavuso

MARK BARNES: No, I don’t assume there’s sufficient stress. I feel the non-public sector or non-public capital wants to collect and arrive with a proposal that’s funded – not ask permission once you say, ‘Listen, here’s our proposal for training or for hospitals or for no matter it may be, we’re ready to put this capital in’.

I used to be requested as soon as whether or not municipalities might elevate capital. I mentioned no, however the initiatives that want to be accomplished in municipalities can elevate capital. I imply, Eskom was began with out authorities funding it, as a result of it was such a self-evidently fundable financial equation. We can get capital to do all of this stuff.

Now enterprise desires to be properly behaved. Business pays tax and lives right here, and is topic to the legal guidelines of the land and the rules and insurance policies of commerce and commerce and all of these good issues. By the means, wealth isn’t represented by the CEOs of the companies that you just all know. Those are workers. It’s the shareholders and the actual homeowners of wealth that want to have interaction with the authorities and the powers that be, and that’s the place the offers want to be struck. All of us are properly behaved.

By the means, if the president known as me this afternoon and instructed me to do one thing, I’d do it, as a result of he’s the president – and if I agreed with it, clearly. We want to confront the president, we want to get rid of all of these worldwide advisors who’ve come right here to generate profits out of giving us perpetual recommendation. And we want to sit amongst ourselves, look one another in the eye and converse the fact loudly – and we’ll get it. I’m satisfied we’ll get it.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: I bear in mind remarks made by Bill Venter of Altron a few years in the past. I feel it was in the late nineties the place he mentioned someday his telephone rang and it was President Mandela, and he mentioned, ‘Listen, I need a school built in a rural town in the Eastern Cape’. He couldn’t say no, as a result of there was so much of feeling of goodwill at that stage, particularly in the non-public sector. Do you assume that goodwill nonetheless exists? If the president telephones the new CEO of Altron and says, ‘Listen, go build a school somewhere,’ do you assume that may occur?

MARK BARNES: Yes. On steadiness I feel it should. It’ll be a barely longer dialog: ‘Well, I will do this, but I want that, and we need to change this’. There will probably be some conditionality hooked up. But I can inform you this totally free – that if the president in his knowledge had been to discover the hundred people that he was ready to intersect with and sit all of them down in a room and say: ‘You have got to look after education. You five people go, come back with a solution. You go.’

And if there was an equality of reasoning and listening and a tolerance for variations of opinion that reverted finally to the factual foundations of what had been proposed, then we might completely get there, and all of us would serve.

RYK VAN NIEKERK: We’ll have to depart it there. Thank you, Mark. That was Mark Barnes, the founder of the Purple Group.