Where Is Your Industry Going: Very Important Event
21st June 2017
#WhereIsYourIndustryGoing?
5th July 2017

First WHERE IS YOUR INDUSTRY GOING: How It Unfolded

On the 26th of June, we hosted the first WHERE IS YOUR INDUSTRY GOING? panel discussion in Durban. We would like to thank everyone who attended and helped make it a success. Here are a few of the many key points that emerged:

1.) Tasked with “poking the bear”, Moderator Melanie Veness asked, “How do we get around the perception amongst direct foreign investors that BEE is an obstacle?”

Our panelists took great pleasure exploring this question in its political, social and commercial dimensions. As someone who spends a lot of time representing business, Melanie has a strong awareness of concerns and misperceptions around policy certainty, and it was fantastic to know what those sound like from investors’ side, and the variety of responses to those concerns that is available to us.

2.) Zak Mbhele took us through a few news headlines to show if there’s one thing office-bearers across the political spectrum fear, it’s being removed from their positions. His contribution to the panel can be summarised in  these quotes:

  • “When people lack jobs, opportunity and ownership of property, they have little or no stake in their communities.”
  • “Economic inclusion is the foundation for social inclusion.”
  • “A key intervention for creating sustainable livelihoods is to facilitate work opportunities for young people to gain workplace experience and on-the-job training.”

3.) Zibu MaSotobe demonstrated the need to see one another’s problems as our own before they become our own. From a business management perspective, there are questions about (in)equality that our business and political leaders need to ask themselves or that we need to confront them with. More than this, we need to translate those questions into our personal-life settings.

4.) Grant Davis knows every business improvement technique in the book from around the world. This is important because transformation is, at heart, about transforming the heart in order to improve the functioning of businesses and economies. The strenuousness of the new codes, the recession and all the other problems we face in our industries make BEE not just a tick-box exercise but a tool in a greater business- and culture- improvement undertaking that we all must be participants in.

5.) Siya Khumalo explained that unless they feel their fates are “tied into” the economy’s, most people won’t understand state capture, #GuptaLeaks and all the other dangers our economy faces. Transformation gets everyone in the same boat and forces broader clarity on issues that concern the economy.

We encourage you and your colleagues to attend any of the next panel discussions that will be happening near you.

Siya Khumalo
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Siya Khumalo
Siya Khumalo
After being reprimanded at a genteel dinner party for “talking about religion, politics and sex in polite company,” Siya Khumalo decided to do nothing else with his life. He charts out the socio-economic ramifications of how we move through these three areas by writing political commentary and making vlogs (“video blogs”). Some of his posts get half a million global reads in less than a week; other pieces get featured on Daily Maverick, Rand Daily Mail and other publications, attracting interviews on eNCA, PowerFM and similar media channels. He seemed an experimental fit for BEE Novation, and he has a book about to hit a shelf near you. His views on how day-to-day business and political events affect the transformation and BEE landscapes will be available on the BEE Novation website.