SOCIAL COMPACTING, THE NEW BUZZ: SO WHATS NEXT?

    Monopoly Capital and colluding select cognitive elite's deceptive narratives have succeeded in framing the question of radical economic transformation as one of corruption and state capture promoting endeavors by its otherwise compromised advocates. This has prevented  the general public from understanding that economic transformation and fracturing of templates of economic domination is a structural problem largely driven by monopoly capital's denial, misinformation, lobbying, and disablement of economic transformation policy and legislation. 

This narrative has grown in strength that the politics of South Africa are now more about fighting corruption that removing structural challenges in the economy making it an option if not a vocation by some. The political economy of the underworld has in South Africa decisively moved into capturing the state procurement process. Gangsters have mastered the art of including themselves in service delivery projects to levels where a new cost of delivery has been factored in to manage these dynamics as core aspects of stakeholder environment management. These are all inequality and economic exclusion manifestations. 

South African companies have for a while made three false arguments when advocating for a gradual reformation of the economic landscape, instead of rapid economic transformation: They claim that activities related to the status quo have benefited society; they have succeeded to say citizens and government, not companies, are responsible for the slow pace of economic transformation; and they insist they act in accordance with the law and aren’t in the wrong. 

But what these companies have not come to realize is that they cannot want to posit that the status quo has benefited society while ignoring its costs to society. Otherwise, we might have to continue championing the pre-1994 mining industry, that was factually an engine of South Africa's economic growth and prowess, while ignoring that this industry depended on the inhumane migrant labour system, which was arguably tantamount to human enslavement. Society and government alone cannot bear the moral weight of the inequality-induced stagnation of South Africa's economy and its attendant socio-economic catastrophe, because they have far less sophistication to influence the global economic establishment to embrace non-racial equity in an emerging global economic order. There is therefore a moral obligation for a patriotic Capital, monopoly or otherwise, to approach economic transformation as a business imperative than a legislative compliance tick box matter. 

Common sense on transformation ethics justifies the demand for reparations from monopoly capital using three different arguments derived out of literature in contexts where big business has been found responsible for one catastrophe or another such as pollution and environmental degradation. These are,

1. The “beneficiary pays principle (BPP)” holds that those who benefit most from harmful activity, such as deliberate economic exclusion throughout the value chain, have a moral imperative to make (financial or otherwise) reparations to those harmed most, 
2. The “excluder pays principle” holds that those responsible for (economic or otherwise) exclusion should take actions to rectify it, and, 
3. The “ability to pay principle (APP)” holds that the proportion agents should pay to solve a collective problem should derive from their wealth and capacity to pay. 

From a purely pragmatic perspective, monopoly capital's wealth and power mean they might actually be able to rectify, at least, a substantial and morally relevant part of the harm done. This might necessitate a need to rank monopoly capital's culpability by assessing factors such as the extent to which they funded, shaped, and orchestrated economic exclusion denial campaigns and programs.

One lesson is that policy approaches must be adapted to specific contexts. There is no single model policy that is most appropriate for all settings. To this effect finance policies and other business environment enhancing policies could be handy in forcing monopoly capital to address economic transformation imperatives. This should be calibrated in a way that investors are increasingly made aware of the risk inequality and economic exclusion pose, and how their shifting of investments into economic inclusion and inequality gap reducing ventures could mitigate the growing political instability and low-key civil strife. 

Economic exclusion and inequality jeopardizes the stability of not only the economic system, but the political economy dynamics of a society. Left unattended, unchecked, and unregulated, economic exclusion and inequality could trigger civil strife and crises. Capital, in general, must take both these scenarios into account and embrace transformation. The combined procurement spend of monopoly capital, which is by far the most influential in dictating the pulse and cadence of the economy, should be seen to be making efforts to align with the reality of economic transformation and inequality. For example, the model of the solidarity fund could be considered to supplement the competence gaps and challenges bedeviling the country's finance development institutions such as the IDC. The funded research prowess of Capital to generate status quo defending narratives and information could be repurposed to build a national interest driven narrative that targets inequality and economic exclusion as internal enemies of the state. Through data collected by these boutique and efficient data collection institutions and lifestyle hegemonizing institutions, the battle against inequality and economic exclusion could be made the right thing to do by all South Africans.

The magic question is how do we deal with these matters? 

The growing calls for a social compact by South Africa's political elites present an opportunity to put these matters on the agenda. Compacting in an unequal society such as ours should be managed away from the natural dominance of those with economic muscle and power, without vitiating their strategic role in the aftermath of whatever agreements that might be struck. The compacting parties should create a context within which the process can engender confidence in participants. Government should not be assumed to be representative of society, but rather of the public power it has at its disposal to effect policy changes with which the compact can be made to work.

1. The should be a governance framework whose legality is derived from voluntary ascension and peer pressure. Lessons from how the King Code of Good Governance is enforced as a company governance imperative could be imported. Promotion of equality and economic inclusion should form part of the economic indices that the Private Sector is chasing as its intangible capital, and balance sheet imperative.
2. There should be enforcement mechanisms that carry brand devaluation, stock price compromise, and unlawfulness where appropriate. Consequence management should have company CEOs as the apex domino to fall first. It would be prudent for inequality and economic inclusion to also find prominent expression in international instruments that regulate global trade.
3. There should be a change enabling framework that goes into curriculum change and review of how inequality and economic exclusion are taught in schools. Enforcement standards that impact on training and development should be engineered into principles with which mastery of learning is tested. For, instance accounting and auditing principles could be calibrated to audit how inclusive an economy is. Innovation and research on these matters should be a priority.
4. The knowledge translation industry should be galvanized to spread the necessity of economic inclusion and equality promotion 

CUT!!!

🤷🏿‍♂️A ndzo hetisela leswi Tatana Mbeki na Ramaphosa va nga swi sungula. Amen.