South Africa State firms fail as training ground for black professionals

Young, ambitious black South Africans have become alienated by the toxic politics of patronage that have ensnared state institutions, writes by Trudi Makhaya/ BDlive.

In the private sector, there are companies that are known as great training grounds for managerial and professional talent. Often, these places have rigorous recruitment processes and well thought-out development programmes, and embrace a culture of learning. McKinsey, SABMiller and, back in the day, Anglo American, have that reputation. In some Asian countries, such as Singapore and Japan, the public sector holds this reputation.

In South Africa, the apartheid state achieved some effectiveness in using state-owned institutions, especially those we now know as state-owned enterprises (SOEs), to nurture the aspirations of its constituency. Organisations such as Eskom and Transnet not only pursued that regime’s developmental goals, they provided an avenue for ordinary men and women, notably Afrikaners, to gain skills and build careers.

I am no fan of what I call neovolkskapitalisme, which manifests in "Broederbond envy" by certain sections of the black elite. As Sol Plaatje wrote about the passage of the Natives Land Act of 1913, "concession after concession was wrung from the government by fanatically Dutch postulants for office, for government doles and other favours, who, like the daughters of the horse-leech in the Proverbs of Solomon, continually cried: ‘Give, give’."

This mobilisation of state resources culminated in a vicious, extractive, racially exclusive apartheid economy. Postapartheid South Africa, by definition, had to do better than this.