South Africa will tell Davos that ‘we are open for business’

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Kingsley Makhubela is the CEO of Brand SA.
BUSINESS DAY TV: Local political and economic heavyweights descend on the Swiss ski resort of Davos this week, for the annual meeting the World Economic Forum (WEF). Heading the South African delegation Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, after President Jacob Zuma’s last-minute withdrawal from the forum.


So what can Team SA be expected to get out of this year’s WEF and will the event be overshadowed by Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President on Friday? For more we are joined on the line from Davos by Kingsley Makhubela who is CEO of Brand SA.
Kingsley ... so amongst the messages that Brand SA is going to be delivering on that end is that SA has a sound economy and is open for business. How much harder a sell do you see that being this year given the ructions within our political economy last year?

KINGSLEY MAKHUBELA: I don’t think there is any concern about our domestic issues by and large. People want to understand our policy issues, they want to understand how predictable are we and our policies on the nation, do they expect major changes and the message that we convey is no. Beside the fact that sometimes you see change in the political make-up of the ruling party, do we really expect major changes that would affect the economy’s development? No, instead we may see more investment for our policies that are really enabling for investment in SA. And this is the message that we’re carrying here that we are open for doing business.
BDTV: Our message is consistent but at what point do investors want to see delivery? We had the IMF coming out today with its global economic outlook and it expects SA to grow by just 0.8% this year. We also have an economy which has a number of regulatory uncertainties, laws waiting to be passed, laws sitting on the back burner, when do investors need to see delivery on this?

KM: If we speak about regulatory uncertainties, a lot of people here in Davos would be concerned about what’s going on in the biggest economy in the world. Now that the new administration is coming it signals so many changes that I don’t think there’s so much concern about us. They want us to be predictable and we tried. Last year the president set up the interministerial committee to try to streamline the bureaucracy to ensure that the bureaucracy is not stifling people who want to do business with the country. So there is an endeavour on our part to really try to streamline issues.
BDTV: While all that’s going on in the US, in the EU even it steals some of the spotlight off our own domestic issues, you highlight this co-ordinated effort being made by business, government and labour, it’s no doubt going to be one of the selling points on that end, what concrete evidence are we seeing of that relationship working?

KM: It is working. What we are conveying here is that the government also will be conveying the same message that we are willing to listen, willing to listen to other partners in the development of our economy. Remember business is the one that creates wealth for the country. If we don’t listen to business, if there’s no desire to bring business on board and this tripartite alliance that we have is a very good model. A lot of people are talking about how practical it is, how is it working? How do we manage to do that and it will have some challenges of course because there’s an inherent contradiction between business and labour. But insomuch as we are able to manage those contradictions and that’s the message that we’re going to convey.
We don’t want to say to people now that you have the tri-lateral arrangement there won’t be any dynamics. There will be dynamics but there’s a platform to address these dynamics. And one of the things that we’re seeing of course is the reduction in the level of labour disputes in the country and strikes that we used to have previously.
BDTV: Kingsley what sort of message are we sending to those global players when the president pulls out at the last minute, are the questions being raised, why the president pulled out of the forum at the last minute?

KM: I also don’t know why the president pulled out but I do know the programme of the head of state is usually very tight, there may have been other priorities that have emerged because if you recall the president has been attending Davos throughout. There’s no way that he would just stay away from Davos for no apparent reason. There may be concrete reasons, I don’t know so far.
BDTV: Okay, so we’re not going to speculate there. Let’s take a look at some of what you’ve highlighted in terms of trend that’s at play globally, a shift to the right politically. How concerned are you and having said that who is SA going to be courting or opening relations with in Davos?
KM: The shift to the right globally is an issue that we need to manage, it’s going to be with that and this shift is caused by a host of related issues including the migration problem in the Middle East where people have become very much intolerant of outsiders and that’s what is changing the political shift, particularly within Europe. But we are not here to try to change that shift, we are here to say, "How are we going to interface with this?" The reality of what we really need to deal with, the shifts to the right, that comes with some level of authoritarian, and that really comes with some level of not caring for global issues like the environment, not caring for things that are really crucial for creating a better world. So we have to interface with that.

BDTV: Is there anything tangible that you can measure that Team SA brought back from the World Economic Forum last year and what would your expectations be this year? Is it purely about relationships, anything that you can actually measure?
KM: Our selling point will be the programme that we’ve launched that’s the ocean economy, building a shipyard in Durban and really setting up an infrastructure to say there’s a sea route we can remedy a factor in our situation and we realise that we’ve invested a lot of money, projected to create more jobs and I think that would be very exciting for a lot of people. And that’s a selling point, we’re starting to see good dividends in terms of that strategy to utilise our ocean for our economy’s benefit and sustainable economy’s benefit, it is going to be our selling point.