Africa must listen to whispers of tomorrow not ghosts of the past

Africa must listen to whispers of tomorrow not ghosts of the past

• The link between identity and economic prosperity

• Zimbabwe: So much to do with so little resources

• How different is new order from the old?

• The challenges and prospects for levelling the economic playing field

• The 'separation of powers' doctrine revisited

• Last conversation with Nathaniel Manheru

• Roy Bennett and the new Zimbabwe we seek

• The promise and challenge of a new Zimbabwe

• Your country needs you!

• The Obama Factor in African politics

• Zimbabwe: banana republic or casino economy?

• My Zimbabwe and my Africa

• Who really controls post-colonial Africa?

• My lessons in post-colonial injustice

• Zimbabwe on road to nowhere

• The moral vacuity of Mugabe's Obama embrace

(www.mmawere.com)
Posted to the web: 05/04/2009 19:02:53
LAST Wednesday, I was privileged to be a guest speaker at a business-networking meeting in Johannesburg hosted by Rehoboth Ministries.
This was my second presentation to the business forum and I chose my theme to be Identity and Economic Power in Africa.

Although my presentation covered a wide spectrum of issues, I am convinced ever more of the need for us to pause to think and reflect on the critical issues that ought to inform conversations among and between Africans on what time it is.
More importantly, the Christian platform and infrastructure provides a unique window to articulate different points of view and hopefully galvanise our generation onto a new mindset and worldview that can steer Africa into a new democratic and constitutional developmental trajectory.
The role of race and economic and social progress has been widely acknowledged in Africa. However, in order to respond effectively to the development challenges that Africa faces, it is critical that social progress at the individual and collective level be properly contextualised and conceptualised.
The need to develop an alternative vision of African development that conceptually emphasises the complementarities between democracy and economic progress cannot be understated.
Equally, evidence-informed dialogues are critical in bridging the capital, knowledge and capital gaps that confronts the majority of Africans.
I chose the “Pick n Pay” concept that informed establishment of one of Africa’s largest and most successful retailers of food, clothing and general merchandise in South Africa some 42 years ago in 1967.

This group of companies was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1968 as Pick n Pay Stores Limited.

As the founder, Raymond Ackerman says, all it took was “ten percent capital and ninety percent guts” to start the company.

Ackerman lost his job at Checkers and returned to Cape Town. Like many entrepreneurs who have done amazing things in the business arena, Ackerman was at low ebb in his career at the time.

He commenced negotiations to acquire four small shops owned by businessman, Jack Goldin, for a consideration of R620,000 of which he only managed to raise R100,000.

Ackerman refused to see the world as it is but saw in the four stores the beginning of a new chapter in not only his personal but also the country’s development and transformation.

On the advice of his brother-in-law and a long time friend, Mr. Ackerman mobilised the balance of the financing from 50 colleagues of which 50% were based in Cape Town and the balance in Johannesburg.

In its first trading year, Pick n Pay, achieved a profit of R310,000 on a turnover of R5 million. Group turnover for the financial year ended 29 February 2008 or 41 years since formation, was R23.7 billion with operations in the rest of the continent and Australia.

The company grew through acquisitions and organically. When Pick n Pay celebrated its 25th jubilee in 1992, Ackerman emphasised the importance of “People Power” in the company’s culture. This principle is a fundamental one that places consumer sovereignty at the centre of business success.

Ackerman, over a period shorter than my own existence on this earth, has managed to demonstrate what is possible in Africa. Yes some may say he succeeded because he was white, while some would say that were it not for apartheid, he would not have scaled the heights.

Yet some would see Pick n Pay as no different from Ackerman the natural person, while others would see capitalism at play and its toxic effect to the poor ignoring the fact that if you pick you must pay and if you pay you have access to goods.

As Ackerman has famously remarked in relation to the opportunities offered by a democratic South Africa: “We are on the threshold of a golden age, but to realise that dream we will have to listen to the ‘whispers of tomorrow’ if we don’t we will lose faith – and lose out”.

We all have been challenged by the future and yet the answers are not so obvious. The concept underpinning pick and pay is so fundamental to understanding the principles and values that informed the setting up of Africa Heritage Society (AHS) in 2003.

Ultimately, the success or failure of any business organisation like any nation state depends on the consumers and citizens, respectively.

The majority of Pick n Pay’s customers are black and yet when they choose to buy food, for instance, from the shop their minds are less preoccupied with the racial identity of the founder than by the quality and price of the food they want.

A civilisation that would compel customers to pick and pay for products that are only produced by a certain racial group would be counterproductive to the very interests of the citizens that it may purport to advance.

Economic power, to the extent that it is communicated through a market system underpinned by an exchange of value between willing contracting parties, should be encouraged and promoted.

However, the ideology that informs black economic empowerment and any economic nationalism can be counterproductive if at its root it is blind to the human factor in informing economic and social changes.

So in my address to the business group, I could not help but use the concepts that are pregnant in the Pick n Pay story, mutuality and the fact that the past should never be the basis of measuring what is possible.

Had Ackerman chosen to be selfish at inception, he would not have been able to attract the capital from 50 of his colleagues. He also understood that the proper construction of the Companies Act is that shareholders do not and more importantly can never own companies they hold shares in.

Rather, a company is a juristic person capable of owning its own assets and a shareholder represents no more than a holder of a piece of paper called a share certificate evidencing the relationship between the holder and the company, as a separate and distinct person, no different to a relationship between children and their parents.

For instance, notwithstanding the pain and suffering endured in educating children and supporting them, the human civilisation that we have accepted does not allow for parents to invoice their children or allow the consolidation of the assets of children into the parents’ balance sheets.

The profit generated from economic activities, therefore, belongs to the company and not to the shareholders. This being the case, shareholders like parents have no legal claim on the profits generated by companies other than being beneficiaries of dividends declared by the company’s directors.

I made the point that it is important to improve financial literacy among the majority of Africans so that conversations about economic power are better informed.

Yes, apartheid did exist and it adversely affected the majority in political, economic and psychological terms.

Yet if we adopt Ackerman’s positive attitude against adversity, we can and must listen to the whispers of tomorrow and not the ghosts of the past.

Many nation states have failed to accomplish what Ackerman and his team have managed to do over the last four decades.

The leadership of Neverl Kambasha, head of the Christian Team that invited me, impressed me and it confirmed my deeply-held view that Africa’s better days will only come through working together.

Faith and hope underpins the religious business model. However, although the churches are organised with defined leaders, on the business front we seem to be challenged.

There are simply no black economic generals precisely because the African stomachs and appetites are indifferent to the architecture of economic power.

Economic power lies in effective organisation and institution building.

I made the remark that, for example, there is no such person called a South African. The identity of a citizen is nothing more than a legal construction arising from an agreed social contract.

Identity is a choice and ultimately there is nothing to stop black Africans from deciding to establish their own institutions and yet over the last 53 years of independence, the focus has been to look at the rear view mirror rather than listening to the whispers of change.

There is nothing to stop, for example, Kambasha and his team from taking the Christian business association to another level of power. This requires leadership and approaching transformation from a mutuality standpoint.

As a member of AHS, I have dedicated my life to challenging the people I am privileged to touch to be the change they want to see and look at economic identity in a broader perspective that can transcend the limitations imposed by race, ethnicity, religion, economic class and political ideology.

Mutumwa Mawere's weekly column is published on New Zimbabwe.com every Monday. You can contact him at: mmawere@global.co.za
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