Creating new businesses such as pioneers of black business Dr Sam Motsuenyane and Richard Maponya of Maponya Mall did in the 1960s, requires black people to foremostly think about themselves first, according to Professor Bonang Mohale.
The chair of the Bidvest Group, in an interview with Sunday World, said that black business leaders should refrain from placing their future in the hands of others.
Mohale, who also chairs boards of the ArcelorMittal and SBV Service, and is also the chancellor of the University of Free State, said business success was all in “our hands to create our own new world”.
“[We need] to be cognisant of the fact that political freedom is meaningless if we are not going to fundamentally transform the economic system that excluded black people from the economic mainstream and main streets.”
Turning to education, Mohale bemoaned the fact that as a country, SA has missed opportunities by failing to be more focused on the project of fully liberating ourselves from the yoke of apartheid slavery.
“To address the fact that we are the only African country that became free from colonial colonialism and did not exponentially increase the education levels of our people and increase, by at least double digits, the ownership of the economy by our people [was regrettable].”
Mohale continued: “We must build our own businesses and hire our own children. It is madness to continue to make babies and then send them to a different neighbourhood for them to go down on their knees and ask someone else for a job.
“One of the key low-hanging fruits to address both youth unemployment and the township economy is tourism. [Tourism] is the biggest foreign currency earner for most countries.
“It has the potential to provide both oversized and outsized employment, especially for the youth. It has tangible benefits as most of both the labour and products can be provided by and sourced from the local community, often without the need for public transport.
“Treated well and engaged, the same community will protect the entire tourism and hospitality value chain.”
Mohale said Soweto has a population that is bigger than that of Southern African Customs Union economic bloc of Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini, and yet does not have any Original Equipment Manufacturer approved car body repair workshop.
“It is not sustainable that our understanding of the township economy is a bus full of tourists who come to have lunch at Wandie’s or Sakhumzi’s restaurants to spend less than R500 per plate, only to go back to Sandton and spend R5 000 per night for hotel accommodation for a month.”
On shopping malls and the failure by black authorities to capitalise and take advantage of their existence in the townships, Mohale said: “We knew when we granted large shopping malls licences to build in the townships that the casualties are going to be township shop
owners. And yet did not originally insist on these malls to be owned by the same shop owners that are going to be decimated. We still allow ordinary bread to be delivered at about 4am in the townships and thereby destroying the township entrepreneurs who used to supply this freshly baked bread,” said Mohale.
On the South African Reserve Bank as it considers disposing some of its equities, Mohale said: “Now as the South African Reserve Bank ponders the well-anticipated disposal of its equity, an opportunity exists to sell back the African Bank to its original black founders.”
He said that would allow the bank to refocus on its original mandate to empower blacks as owners in the banking sectors.
“It provides a unique opportunity to revisit a long-standing question of transformation in the financial services in general, and banking sector in particular. It
also provides opportunities for bringing the often-neglected groups such as stokvels, burial societies, rural and community based investment associations into the main stream economy, the target market of the bank.”
