By Sanjeev Gupta
There was a time when transformation of management positions in billion rand organisations appeared to be gaining traction – or companies successfully made it to be so – until it has now been ruthlessly exposed to be nothing but a window dressing exercise it really has always been. This can be deduced from sentiments expressed by a number of black empowerment lobby bodies, Black Management Forum, being the most vocal of them all. As a matter of fact, for all intents and purposes, we are back where we started, in say, around 1998 – if we did start at all.
Where did it all go wrong? Unmistakably, an inquest is due. Probably, we might have been intoxicated by the ‘miracle’ of 1994, and, in our inebriated state, convinced ourselves that private sector multinational were taking giant leaps towards our goals. We wanted to believe that three optical illusions of transformation of the upper echelons of corporate South Africa were the real thing.
- The token black appointment
The creation of a non-essential position in a company to tick the right transformation boxes was all the rage in the early noughties. Common positions were Head of Stakeholder Facilitation or Director of Sustainable Community engagement. What did they do? What value did it add to the company’s bottomline?
- A figure head
Once upon a time there was a black executive with essential powers stripped off at the behest of the board. He was a grinning taciturn personality who graced the covers of the now-defunct as the “first black CEO of a local branch of a multinational.
- Joint CEOs
Now there is the practice for appointing two chief executive officers to head a listed institution – one black and another white. It was going to be good if the two were complementing each other. However, the decisions lack sincerity. The black one is merely an appointment the organisation made under duress from the door. There is no prize for guessing who the Real McCoy is who pulls the strings.
Sanjeev Gupta is a freelance writer based in Chatsworth, Kwazulu Natal. He is fiercelessly candid.
