THE MARGINALISATION OF BLACK ACADEMICS, BLACK INTELLECTUALS AND BLACK ENTREPRENEURS IN SOUTH AFRICA

I was recently asked by Xolani Dube of the Xubera Institute to participate in a public debate where the topic was "Ambiguities of ANC-led KwaZulu-Natal: The Continuing Marginalisation of Black Academics and Exodus of Independent Intellectuals and Entrepreneurs".

The panel of presenters included, inter alia, myself Prof Bonke Dumisa, Senzo Mchunu who is the Provincial Chairperson of the ANC and an Acting Premier in KwaZulu-Natal, and Professor Paulus Zulu who is a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Among those in attendance were Nomvuzo Shabalala and Logie Naidoo, the Deputy Mayor and Speaker of Ethekwini Municipality (Durban) respectively, Bheki Cele who is an ANC NEC Member and a former National Commissioner of Police, a retired judge, academics, lawyers, medical practitioners, accountants, and many other black intellectuals, professionals, and entrepreneurs from different walks of life. I was surprised by the unexpected arrival and full-time attendance of the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

At the risk of sounding snobbish, the average intelligence quotient (IQ) level of people in attendance at that political debate was significantly higher than what you would normally find at your ordinary political debates in South Africa. It was encouraging to notice how the ANC leadership and their members were ready to actively engage, without being too defensive, with people from the Black Consciousness background, the IFP, and probably some closet DA sympathisers in the same room.

I had reluctantly agreed to participate in that debate because of the reality that in South Africa, in general, and in KwaZulu-Natal, in particular, it is career-limiting to confront members of the ANC ruling party and "its ruling party elite" about the truths of what is going wrong in our country.  

My presentation was on "Factors leading to the exodus of academics, intellectuals and entrepreneurs from KwaZulu-Natal". In my presentation, I highlighted the following points:

Internal migration is healthy

It is a universal phenomenon for professionals and entrepreneurs to migrate from one place to another. Most people move a lot because of economic / financial reasons. People have a tendency to move to areas where they can optimize their professional or business effectiveness.

I can say without any fear of contradiction that most of our KwaZulu-Natal black professionals have moved to Gauteng because of economic reasons. The casual statistical estimate is that about 80 percent of our KwaZulu-Natal black professionals moved to Gauteng because of the following economic / financial reasons:

(a) KwaZulu-Natal comprises 20 percent of South Africa's population; but only accounts for less than 17 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

(b) On the other hand, Gauteng accounts for about 40 percent of South Africa's GDP, despite the fact that they have roughly the same population figures as KwaZulu-Natal. This means there is more money in Gauteng than anywhere else in South Africa.

(c) Because of this, most corporate activity takes place in Gauteng.

(d) People who work in Gauteng, therefore, get higher salaries than people who work in KwaZulu-Natal. This salary premium may be as high as 40 - 100 percent or more in certain cases.

(e) There are many KZN-born black professionals who, therefore, moved to Gauteng as "economic migrants" or "economic exiles", as many Durbanites in Gauteng sometimes call themselves. These include some of the top corporate leaders, top government bureaucrats, top lawyers, top artists, top entrepreneurs, top sportspeople, and many general highly skilled, semi-skilled, and many unskilled people.

HOWEVER

(f) About 20 percent of our black professionals leave KwaZulu-Natal because they do not get the necessary recognition or support in their home province. It is this 20 percent we must be worried about.

(g) The unattractiveness of the public service. If one looks at the rate at which professionals exit the public sector to set up outlets in the private sector or join big consulting business, one will realize that there needs to be serious interventions to revitalize image of the public service.

The risks associated with being a professional in government are high. Political intervention in the discharge of administrative and technical functions is highly unreasonable. Lack of political support to ensure a administrative soundness is lacking and, as pointed out by the office of the auditor-general, lack of consequences where fundamental administrative breaches have been identified and reported. A serious professional would be discouraged from operating in that environment.

(h) The Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Fallacy. Many independent black professionals who ran their own practices found that they had to close down their own businesses to the benefit of "white consulting businesses". Pivotal to this are the contradictions by government in its public declaration of its support for black professionals in business, on the one hand; and operate ineffective procurement systems that render it increasingly difficult for black professionals to survive in their own independent practices, on the other hand.

This trend is prevalent mostly in the accounting, legal, and engineering fields. In the legal field, most of the government legal briefs go to the historically advantaged big white legal practitioners. Most black attorneys abandon their practises in order to join big white legal practices in order to get business; most black advocates have to contend with being the perpetual "junior counsel" to well-established white senior counsel in order for them to make it to the top.

(i) Constant disregard of a black professional voice. Black professionals have observed and accepted that their technical voices do not mean much in the dynamics of government thinking. Many black professionals find themselves currently sitting with propositions for effective and efficient government administration that can solve the problems constantly encountered by the national Auditor-General; unfortunately, the provincial and other government departments sit with these proposals, without putting them into any effective use.

Hence, most of these black professionals have a well-founded perception that a business proposal is as good as where it comes from, in a situation where, unfortunately, a black source is not deemed credible. The assertion of most black professionals is that most of the local government structures, provincial government structures, national government structures, parastatals, and state owned enterprises are being professionally serviced exclusively by big historically advantaged white firms.

(j) The problematic definition of "Black". At the risk of being called a racist or xenophobic; in South Africa, in general, and in KwaZulu-Natal, in particular, in meaningful government and public sector spheres, the general practice and tendency is to deliberately fill all the employment equity positions with our Indian compatriots and / or with our African brothers or sisters "from the north of the Limpopo", that is, blacks from elsewhere in the African continent.

This is systematically done to deliberately inflate transformation figures and thereby "massage them without bringing any serious redress to past racial imbalances". A case in point here is the University of KwaZulu-Natal where, today, in the year 2013, there are much fewer South African born Black South African academics in the College of Law and Management than there were in the year of the universities' merger in 2004.

A widely-held perception by most South African born Black South African academic staff members and even administrative staff members is that there is a deliberate systematic plan to marginalize South African-born Black South African academics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN); and no one seems to care. As a person who spent 395 days, 13 months, of my precious teenage days in detention I know that I sacrificed those precious days in order to increase the opportunities for the previously oppressed; UNFORTUNATELY that is not what is happening at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and other public structures fully financed by the South African taxpayers, including you and I; and NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE....

You would have expected the national Minister of Higher Education and other politicians to be monitoring such significant deviations from the transformation agenda, but they just don't care; instead they seem preoccupied with loading university councils with their friends who do not know what is happening at the universities where they are council members.

(k) In my research, I also read the painful comments by one KZN-born professional who wrote about "The causes of economic exiles out of KZN". His comments were that economic transformation in KwaZulu-Natal is lagging behind other provinces. Some of the people I interviewed feel the complex political setup post 1994 is partly to blame for the problem. With the provincially based Inkatha (IFP) ruling the province for the very first ten years of the post-apartheid era, 1994 - 2004, many young black people found themselves marginalised for their political beliefs.

They opted to go to the provinces where their skills and talents were welcome. When the ANC eventually won the KwaZulu-Natal province, IFP cronyism was simply replaced by ANC cronyism. Hence, almost 20 years since the first democratic elections in 1994, black professionals still have to get out of KwaZulu-Natal in order to be recognized. Even big business does not employ local talent. The big companies rather import blacks even from outside the country, not just the province, to meet the employment equity targets. Relying on the Indian community is also one of the easiest ways out.  

(l) One of my young interviewees asserts the ANC makes it uncomfortable for young professionals to effectively participate in nation-building processes, as the culture of toyi-toying and being the loudest seems to get you into leadership, and not the quality of your contribution in building the political organization and the political environment.

The education sector is a good example here, where the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) needs to be singled out for its significant role in destroying the education system both in the province and nationally. SADTU runs the education in the province; thy dictate who gets appointed where, when, and by whom. Many highly qualified effective efficient educators who refuse to dance to SADTU's tune get marginalized and never get promoted or appointed to important positions, all to the detriment of our education.

(m) These political challenges are even worse at a local government level. Here is typical example of how this manifests itself; there are two highly qualified black electricians who did a sterling job as contractors to Ethekwini Municipality. One of those electricians is a comrade who spent years in Robben Island for his role in fighting for our political freedom.

Unfortunately, jealousy and greed came into the picture, these two effective black professionals did not have their contracts renewed by Ethekwini Municipality, presumably because they did not want to grease the hands of some of their own corrupt ANC comrades. The work was subsequently given to some less effective unqualified electricians who, it is suspected, were quite willing to grease the hands of some corrupt comrades. As a result, we are witnessing some serious deterioration of the electrical maintenance services in some Ethekwini municipal areas.

(n) I was a regular newspaper columnist for The Mercury for five years, from 2005 to 2010; it was not a good experience because some of the ANC leaders were very intolerant of me when I wrote some articles that were perceived to be critical of government actions. They would sometimes call some people I work with to prevail on me.

One former municipal manager once called me very early in the morning one Saturday, and called me all names for daring to challenge the wisdom of a proposal of charging a development levy on people / businesses that wanted to develop new buildings or structures in the municipality. The more columns I wrote, where I highlighted some shortcomings of government processes or political weaknesses, the more I began seeing many business consulting doors being closed on me during that 2005 - 2010 period.

Interestingly, the doors started opening again for me when I stopped writing my regular column in The Mercury. The lesson is clear here: There are good financial rewards and incentives for those people who keep their mouths shut and never challenge the political establishment when things go politically wrong.

Conclusion

In all fairness to KwaZulu-Natal, I personally do some business with the province, and I have good personal relationships with many of KZN's top politicians. This is an indication that KZN politicians are, now, willing to also engage with those who do not necessarily always agree with them, and those who occasionally constructively criticize them.

Secondly, the challenges we discussed here with regards to challenges to black intellectuals, black professionals, and black entrepreneurs are definitely not confined to KwaZulu-Natal; this is a national phenomenon. Nelson Mandela, the world political icon and first President of the post-apartheid Republic of South Africa, was sometimes justifiably criticised of being very intolerant of any criticism by anyone black, despite the fact that he would always go out of his way to "embrace the rainbow nation" in addressing the sensitivities of most racial minorities.

Interestingly, the world-renowned play-write and novelist Zakes Mda comments, in his book "Sometimes there is a Void", that he was regularly asked by non-South Africans why he chose to live in the USA now in the post-apartheid era. His response to such questions is along these lines "I have skills for which I am highly trained. I can't practice them in South Africa because all doors are closed by the vast patronage system and crony capitalism that emerged in my beloved country. Doors were banged in my face, that's why when the opportunity availed itself I left, though it was a difficult decision. We go to where our skills are appreciated first and foremost, and then of course rewarded."

Mda says Nelson Mandela often accused him of being "too outspoken"; and, because of this, he found himself and members of his family marginalized in South Africa. Consequently, he had to always tell his family, especially his adult children, never to mention that they are related to him (Zakes Mda) whenever they applied for jobs in South Africa. He writes that he told his son, who kept on honestly admitting that he was his son and never got appointed to any job where he made such disclosure, that "As long as you continue to tell them that we are related you will never get any contracts from the government, from parastatals, and from the corporate world in general. The people who are unhappy with me have long tentacles."

My prayer is that one day South Africa will become the ideal country I spent 395 days of my precious teenage days in political detention for; a country where there is truly a better life for all. This is the ideal which is worth standing for, and telling the truth about, even if it costs one business contracts and /or career prospects.

Prof Bonke Dumisa is Professor of Management at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and an Advocate of the High Courts of South Africa and Lesotho.

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