TALKING TO THE BMF: TRANSFORMATION IS CONSTITUTIONAL REPOSITION WELL

In October 2021, on the occasion of the BMF's time to review its leadership and elect new or retain its leaders, I wrote; 

"The BMF remains one of the most vocal organisations that advocates the 'Black' cause in its area of influence. Naturally, it will become a 'node' of 'interests' and 'individuals' with interests. At its inception, it was a construct of Black Managers whose mobility as managers were limited by their 'blackness', thus robbing the advancement of 'Black' livelihoods in an otherwise hostile economy.

 

Individuals that led the BMF at all levels became loyal to the interests of the BMF to the extent it advanced the 'national interests' of 'Blacks' at the time. In that vortex of loyalty, some became 'puppets' of 'interests' that could not be reconciled with the establishment 'interests' of the BMF, safe to be an antidote to the 'blackness' concentrate that advocated 'Black Power' with a non-racial and multi-racial context. Such puppetry should never be assumed to have evaporated; it has diffused itself into the 'factory fault' dimensions of 'Black Economic Empowerment'. 

 

The power of those that empowered has always been construed as an investment into the social and political capital blackness would have, and arguably still, commanded in a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa. The Black people’s enfranchisement outcomes were a reality that needed a strategic foresight whose dividends needed to advance 'native control' and 'truncation' of Black Management discretion as a bulwark with which general socio-economic transformation could be driven. The attuning of each interest into a congeries of individual persons in the BMF, with varying degrees of fervour, and making such interests a common concern driving interests that may have leased influence space interior to the BMF, has always been a megafunds investment destination.

 

As individuals are profiled to have made it to the pinnacle of the objects that the BMF was established for, their other profile of changed 'interest' about the 'original' interest gets to be foregrounded into a 'normative space' that defines transformation as an antithesis of the 'base interest'. Shifts of 'interests' are generally induced by the 'new interests to be pursued.  A condition where chickens volunteer to keep the wolves den clean by promising to always come with other chickens to sacrifice as they clean. The continuity of sacrificing other chickens to the wolves defines the darling or otherwise status of the 'cleaner' chickens and determines the weight of the 'empowerment feed' they get. 

 

This 'cleaner' chicken reward system creates amongst the power disenfranchised to become a society where interests are free to rise and fall by the freed choice individuals. This condition renders all origin interests of the BMF perpetually unsafe. The market for 'cleaner' chickens creates a competitive space in Black institutions of leaders such as the BMF that assumes a horizontal focus of energies at the expense of higher causes and objectives set by the founding fathers of the BMF".

 

The BMF is again in the process of electing a new leadership. Whatever benefits or interests define the opportunity to lead the BMF will again be the ultimate prize of its politics. The cadence or otherwise of discourse, voter mobilisation, and better pathway definitions beyond its April 2023 elective national conference will determine who becomes South Africa's face and voice of Black Management as a distinct professional group and interests defending constituency".

 

Campaigns for office are a competitive enterprise, and our capacity to navigate the process will always reflect the type of leader those standing as candidates will be. It is, therefore, essential for those competing to have appropriate intelligence for the position of BMF President required at the historical epoch they are elected.

 

Since its inception, the BMF has had men and women who have somehow become appropriate to the demands of their epoch. From the inaugural Black Consciousness inspired first national leadership, the 'let us work the system from inside' coterie, the 'being black management without board representation is not enough movement', 'board membership without shareholding does not guarantee appropriate influence', '26% Black Economic Empowerment is a better entry to the ultimate influence of the corporate sector of Mzansi', to the later years’ economic freedom in our lifetime cohorts of leadership, their appropriateness made being both a member and an admirer of the BMF an exhilaration to our blackness. 

 

Competitive Intelligence, which literature describes as being about...analysis and processes for understanding the competitive environment, is arguably the base intelligence all candidates should possess, given the state of our nation. In leadership races, the competitive environment can take various forms. Depending on established decorum, how past successions were managed, what example past leaders set for the environment, and what are the exigencies of the moment, the competitive environment might procure different competitive approaches or convergence of human intelligence.

 

In contexts where the competitive environment assumes a character of "phuma or deda singene" instead of "here is the baton, take us forward", the moral intelligence of competing candidates might be what rescues the institutional future of the organisation. Moral intelligence means "the ability to differentiate right from wrong...or the ability to apply universal ethical principles to choosing and acting upon your beliefs, values and goals". 

 

It is, therefore, not unfair or an exaggeration for any cognitive college of individuals or leaders, such as those reading this blog, to demand from each other to apply the Golden Rule of life at all times. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Living this rule as a practical principle for living harmoniously and working for the common good should define our nature as a college of individuals and a critical substrate society can rely on for leadership.

 

It is now a fact that the BMF is in a either "phuma singene", "deda sphathe", "here is the baton continue the race", or "here I am, I have the plan to execute the mission" process of choosing its leadership. This process requires men and women who have distinguished themselves in either of the five matters above, depending on where the BMF is in relation to these or what the BMF has become. On the strength of what we know of those that held the position before, we have grown to understand that the BMF culture we have thus far experienced or observed was and is not random. 

 

Suppose molecules of practically anything about life and science move from a higher concentration to a lower concentration until a state of equilibrium is maintained. In that case, the concentrates, in the public space, of leadership contestations we have in recent memory don't inspire confidence that the BMF might escape tendencies that were on display. Arguably black organisations have very few dominant formations to learn the practice and experience of democracy unless they package themselves into a deliberate concentrate that refuses to go with the engulfing and strange breed of democracy. That is assuming democracy are the arrangements any society agrees upon to govern each other. 

 

Fortunately for South Africa, the BMF is an outcome of a set of actions and activities by a special breed of leaders that executed a vision they set by "motivating, guiding, inspiring, listening, persuading and, most crucially, creating resonance" with generations that followed them. Great leaders in the ilk of Lot Ndlovu, David Motlatla, Ruel Khoza,  Nolitha Fakude, and many others that followed them came into the BMF; they were led by it as an institution as they led it as individuals for the period they were given an opportunity. Whatever concentrate of goodwill or otherwise was within them diffused into what we today still know as the BMF. 

 

The upcoming conference of the BMF might be one of the most consequential. It happens at a time monolithic politics about the form, nature, and character of transforming South Africa's economy is in rapid decline. The post-liberation context of economic transformation can no longer be assumed to be the context of all contexts; transformation is now a national constitutional imperative. Any genuine demands for change in society should, and for their legality's sake, find expression and resonance with and within the supreme law of South Africa, its Constitution. 

 

As new nodes of ideation, primarily as offshoots of the now, and arguably, fluid or chocked liberation ideological trajectory, are defining transformation differently, the BMF should rather know that it is unconstitutional not to recognise the injustices of the past, heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law; and improve the quality of life of all citizens and free each person’s potential.

 

Without pronouncing what the new BMF should be about, our endorsement or otherwise of what type of BMF South Africa should demand from its members should be a guide for candidates to understand the tasks ahead. Far from maintaining a detached neutrality on fundamental policy issues, the BMF can not afford to emerge as any organisation except that which continues to be frequent and aggressive advocates for ideas and programs that target templates of economic domination. The BMF, which the new "coalition politics context" requires, should, and as its sixth sense, become brokers of new and better political compromises about the political economy of South Africa.

 

It should be a BMF that understands its historical mission in the context of South Africa, which is one sovereign, democratic state founded on the values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms; non-racialism and non-sexism; the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law; and universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness. The Thinc Foundation wishes the BMF, its membership, and its candidates a fruitful conference. CUT!!!

www.justthinc.co.za