Business has unanimously joined the welcoming chorus and went further to offer to assist wherever required to ensure that the culprits of State Capture are brought to book. While this must be a welcome commitment to partner with society to ensure that the Zondo Commission’s findings are implemented, we must ask whether we (business) shouldn’t be doing more. 

After all, we should be hanging our heads in shame for the culpability of some in our ranks (cited or not in the Zondo reports) in engendering a culture of corruption and unethical conduct that has not only cost the democratic project, but also betrayed the poor and marginalised. 

No doubt, law enforcement agencies must be supported to do their work to ensure that those fingered are held to account. 

Whilst a focus on accountability is undoubtedly critical, we would be remiss if we didn’t engage with the revelations of the systemic enablement that make our country vulnerable to this phenomenon. No doubt, the public discourse is likely to focus on the failures or shortcomings of our public institutions that are supposed to be the bulwark of our democracy. We must nevertheless admit that that would be an inadequate response.

It is trite that the other party to the tango of State Capture is business. I venture to add that arguably some powerful business interests are often the “corruptors” who wield greater power in relation to the “corruptees” who are in the state. Judge Zondo exposes this with the former president, working with some in his Cabinet and in other powerful positions in the state falling over each other to be at the service of the “corruptor”, often for a comparatively measly reward. 

We could take the easy option – that the report fingers some and not others – and bury our heads in the sand and leave it all up to the law enforcement agencies. We could continue dishing out occasional platitudes following random arrests and odd convictions or exposure of certain rogue players and a few blue chip firms. 

In doing so, we would be buying into a falsehood that this conduct is isolated, when we very well know that it is as endemic as it is entrenched in our corporate culture too, and we would much rather turn a blind eye to it all. 

I believe that our (business) duty to society and our nation is much greater. After all, we know only too well that the roots of this culture in business can be traced to both the colonial and apartheid era of grand corruption. It is not a peculiarity of a free South Africa.

It cannot suffice to only blame BBBEE – as some are often quick to suggest – an appropriate policy that has indeed been corrupted; nor only the ANC’s cadre deployment policy, which has been similarly abused. 

It’s now common cause that some in business have expropriated and repurposed these policies in order to divert resources and influence decisions for the benefit of their enterprises. 

We must now confront the reality that some in business may continue to be able to deploy their cronies in the state in order to sustain their corrupt frenzy long after the Zondo Commission and the courts would have pronounced the ANC’s cadre deployment policy unconstitutional.

Business must use the commission’s findings to introspect, focusing on the systemic dimensions of business conduct that should be alien to our constitutional order. 

When the finger points at the role of some audit firms who should be trusted to vouch for the credibility of our conduct of business – banks that are at the heart of our every economic undertaking, boards that fail to ensure executive accountability and ethical conduct, and strategic advisory firms that make money by enabling business to beat the system – we can only conclude that the rot runs much deeper than may have been revealed. 

These and more (one only imagines that some of the corporate law firms should have made it to the Zondo list) point to a systemic conduct that warrants scrutiny. 

We must assume that this corrupt conduct is neither confined to those that the commission exposed, nor those exposed through commissions established by President Ramaphosa, nor the usual suspects that are often bandied about; but that it is a cancer that business plays no small part in spreading. 

One must wonder how the Zondo Commission reports would read if the terms of reference had been couched thus: “An investigation into the role of business in corrupting the state for the benefit of its enterprise.” No doubt the terms of reference of the commission headed by Judge Zondo limited its scope, and it is no measure of how pervasive the culture of corruption is in business. 

We must therefore accept that the Zondo reports afford us an incomplete, if not a one-sided, picture of what we really have to contend with, if we are to successfully wage war on corruption.

If business is to be a meaningful partner in the fight against corruption and State Capture, it must emulate the example set by the state and open its closet and allow our ugly skeletons out. 

Should we fail to do this, we do not deserve a place as a trustworthy partner in the fight for ethical leadership in society. Even more importantly, others may cause the business closet to be opened wide. DM