‘We need to Talk’

“These four words can strike anxiety and fear in your heart, especially when said within the context of a relationship. It does not matter whether the relationship is romantic, friendly or professional – all you know is that the other person is indirectly telling you ‘We are in trouble’. Immediately, your mind races through various questions and scenarios: how big is the trouble? Who is to blame? Will it lead to a breakup, dismissal or even someone dying? That is how deeply those four words strike me.

In my view, we, the people of South Africa, urgently need to talk. Yes, that talk. After 25 years of democracy we must sit down and speak honestly about where we are on our transformation journey towards racial and gender equality. Looking back on my own path, from my childhood in Cenyu’s general dealer store across South Africa’s private sector to where I sit today, it is undeniable that as a country we have made massive strides.  However, my story is far from the norm, and so much more could and should have been accomplished by now, especially in the private sector.  

Taken on the whole, the private sector’s transformation has had checkered results. On the positive, the numbers have in most instances improved. When you talk about targets, the demographics reflected in different sectors and industries continue to look better, with more black people and women acting in meaningful leadership roles at the hearts of businesses across our industries (though these numbers still need to grow). On the negative, there has been muting of the meaningful qualitative conversations that must take place across the spectrum of society for real and deeper transformation to continue to take root and grow. 

In the period from 1994 into the early 2000s, the level of discourse across boardrooms was vigorous and honest, and it felt like people were truly invested in understanding how to make workplaces embracing places for black people, women and those living with disabilities. Of course, the discrimination and prejudice then were more overt: you knew what you were dealing with and could name it clearly. Since that time, the pendulum has swung from a majority of private sector actors committed to achieving both the targets and the desired culture change to the majority going through the motions to get better BEE scores. Seen merely as another competitiveness tool, transformation compliance has become a tick-box habit, with few businesses using he BEE scorecard as a framework to help them drive and achieve genuine and sustainable culture change. 

While such target chasing may continue to improve the numbers, it fails to address the cultural and value-driven problems that still underlie and drive the racism and sexism that are both symptoms and causes of a bigger system of inequality. Meanwhile, discrimination tends to be expressed in more sophisticated and covert ways, making it sometimes difficult even for the person who is on the receiving end to articulate what happened and show she knows it was prejudicial. This ‘muting’ of authentic dialogue around values and culture, and how we are doing things as a country, is preventing us from figuring out how to make the cake bigger so that all South Africans can have a meaningful slice. 

For all these reasons it is time to consolidate our thinking as a country. A quarter of a century into democracy, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves: who are we as South Africans, and who do we want to be? I believe we can arrive at an answer by engaging on a sincere and wide-reaching national dialogue. For us to achieve our full potential as a country, ‘we need to talk’.  It is my belief that sparking a national conversation could cause the pendulum to swing again, not back to where it was in 1994 but to a better and more evolved place than our forefathers and -mothers could have even imagined.”