Programme Director
ABASA President, Mr Andile Khumalo
ABASA Past Presidents
Convention Chairperson, Mr Mmuso Selaledi
Ladies and Gentlemen
Thank you for the opportunity to address you here today. If Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants of Southern Africa (ABASA) does give awards, then I would like to promote a new award for Dogged Determination, for which there would only be one nominee, Mr Ignatius Sehoole.
At a national conference of professionals, such as this, the expectations of a speech by an outsider, such as I am, is that we will speak to you about how great your profession is and how you can make it greater still. With your permission, I would like to accept that as ground already canvassed.
Instead, I want to raise questions that we have to engage with, especially as we approach the twentieth anniversary of our democracy. The first of these questions is, “what kind of society do we want to live in, and improve upon for our offspring?”
Does the kind of society described in the Preamble to our Constitution, its founding provisions and its Bill of Rights adequately capture what we want? We tend to become forgetful, so let me remind you of the strength and beauty of its framing
We, the people of South Africa,
Recognise the injustices of our past;
Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;
Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country, and;
Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.
Premised on this foundation, we adopted a Constitution that would:
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;
Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place a sovereign state in the family of nations.
Now if this is the kind of society we dream of, how do we create it? It would be patently incorrect if history would reflect that this was but the high-water mark of our progress and shared commitment; that we were able to build the pressure in society to get to this point, and that beyond it the level of shared commitment rapidly receded.
In fact, we need to remember that that point was reached when all of us were outsiders – neither in government, nor quite at the centre of the professions, and most of us still lived in the same townships where we were raised. It may sound odd now – but it bears recalling that our Interim Constitution was adopted just twenty years ago, and our final Constitution is just 17 years old. This is surely too short a period in life to forget where we came from.
So let me provoke you. ABASA has undergone its own fundamental transformation in the 28 years of its existence. ABASA has to be one of the most successful professional organisations – if we look at performance against objectives set. It has grown from a mere handful to a large organisation of many thousand members – founders such as Prof Wiseman Nkuhlu can look back on the growth of ABASA with immense pride. Moreover, you are all insiders now, and I will provoke you further by suggesting that the grouping that benefits most from the democracy, in the material sense, is the distinct grouping of black professionals. Separate out people who hang around and hope that they will secure the next tender, frequently without an iota of commitment to add any value, or those whose only interest is equity participation as blacks in the right place, and you will agree with me that the biggest beneficiaries of Clause 9(2) of our Constitution are black professionals.
There is an analogy that finds resonance in debates on global development. It goes something like this – in order to industrialise, countries in the North used a variety of means, including high walls of protectionism. Once their development had momentum, they saw that countries of the South were advancing, frequently using the same methods that they had applied. They then kicked away the ladder that they had used to scale the walls of development. Now that we are inside the upper echelons of this society, what do we do? Do we kick away the ladder?
On the contrary, you are members of ABASA because you want you want to extend the ladder and encourage others who are not aware of it, of its presence and the opportunities that present. I want to applaud your efforts, yet remind you of that challenge of the perception that our Constitution was the high-water mark.
The National Development Plan (NDP) speaks to what can and must be done. Just before dealing with the NDP, I offer a quick reminder that the National Planning Commission released a Diagnostic Document in June 2011. The premise of that diagnostic was a commitment to ensure that by 2030, no South African should remain trapped in poverty and that we must make significant progress to reduce inequality. We said then, that this is a progressive commitment that we must work at diligently to get there, rather than thinking it is something we can defer until 2029. In the diagnostic we raised 9 challenges and lifted two of these as pre-eminent – the fact that too few South Africans are able to find employment and the reality that educational outcomes for the majority of black learners remains poor.
I would like to spare you from having to listen to all of the detail of the NDP again this morning, and focus on just a few of the opportunities for transformation that present.
I want to plead that each ABASA member, as an individual and as part of this collective, becomes actively engaged in the process of empowerment. Of course, we have to rescue the concept from the narrow use that we have come to accept in South Africa.
I have gone to check (and yes, we must return to the source from time to time) what the actual definition is. And so, as a reminder, “Empowerment is the process of enhancing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Central to this process are actions which both build individual and collective assets, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the organisational and institutional context which govern the use of these assets.”
Let us just go over that definition again – in order to complicate our understanding, I found a different reference that reads, “Empowerment is a process that challenges our assumptions about the way things are and can be. It challenges our basic assumptions about power, helping, achieving and succeeding.”
Both definitions level out at the same point. It requires a set of actions to enhance the capacity of others, in order to change the institutions, it has to present and inform choices, and it has to challenge the assumptions that are held.
So let us test this. I want to start with the observation that the educational outcomes, for the majority of black learners, is poor. You can choose any measure – let me share my toolbox with you –
- In spite of a significant improvement in the Grade 12 pass rates, a disaggregation of these reveals trends that are worrying. When one abstracts the black learners who attend private and ‘former Model C’ schools, it becomes clear that the absolute performance is declining, and the subset of those who pass mathematics and science is diminishing.
- The same trends are in evidence when we use the Grades 3, 6 and 9 Annual National Assessment (ANA) tests for language and mathematical proficiency. In fact, we can see clearly what is coming down the track towards Grade 12.
- When we compare our results in global tests such as STTEP and TIMMS, we have reason for deep concern.
Now, we can wring our hands, and bemoan the fact that problem vests squarely with teacher unions, or we can commit to change. I want to applaud one of the ABASA past Presidents, Mr Sizwe Nxasana, for his role in constructing a new collaborative partnership for transformation. I want to plead that this not be a mere pat on the back for a past President, but should become the core of what ABASA members can and should do, and be willing to be accountable for in society.
What are the great dividers?:
- School Governing Bodies – in schools attended by the majority of young South Africans, these exist in name only.
- School infrastructure is frequently in a state of neglect.
- Mathematics and Science are either not taught at all, or is done poorly.
- Few schools have access to broadband or, even where computer labs exist, these remain underutilised because teachers see this as a distraction.
Yes, I am making a case for every ABASA member to become an agent for empowerment, using education as the means. Let me share a few practical steps:
- Firstly, many principals may have been good teachers who became principals only because it was a means to secure a slightly higher income. You know that that managing a school that employs up to 40 people and needs to organise 1 500 learners, a number of whom may have social problems, cannot be easy. Managerial jobs, such as being a principal, require a skills et that is very different to that of being good at the chalkboard. There is no training as people move from one job category to the other – the only constant is that the same employer is retained. Many principals need assistance, many do not know where to turn, some think that it may be an admission of failure if they do not know how to manage a complex institution. I know of projects that link principals with successful professionals or businesspeople. I want to plead that the membership of ABASA apply their skills for the good of education in a similar way.
- Secondly, that great divide between schools that have well-functioning SGBs and those that do not is evidenced by the results. Frequently, no blame can be apportioned – schools that have better human capital can manage this as part of on-going tasks. Where the principal is battling and the school does not have an administrator, things fall apart. Similarly, where parents fear the fact that teachers are so highly educated and they are not, they resist talking to the staff. They believe that they do not have the right to question, even on matters such as the performance of their own children. If teachers are not at school, or in class, or teaching, or even where teachers abuse their daughters, they do not feel competent to intervene. This is a great divide – it is the absence of power by parents who feel ill-equipped. I can think of no better opportunity for empowerment than this. It will require hard work, continuous engagement and then some more of the same. There may even be resistance, but we actually do not have a choice. I have actually checked with the Secretary General of the National Association of School Governing Bodies, and he is quite excited by the prospect that ABASA assistance may arise.
- Thirdly, it must be an accepted fact that each member of ABASA excelled at mathematics and science at school, and through university. It is quite impossible to be both innumerate and an accountant. So why not brush up on school mathematics and take the time to assist where there is a need for the skills – there are actually amazing websites that have unpacked the entire South African mathematics syllabus, week by week, replete with examples; and similarly there are teachers’ guides for physical science. How difficult can this be?
- Similarly each of us understands the value and empowerment that we get from ICT, but we need to understand that we are in a minority in South Africa. Getting schools linked to the web, and getting a core of people in a school to understand utilisation is actually not difficult at all. There is so much goodwill from people who would like to help, and so much need in many parts of our country, in fact in the same communities that spawned us. Sometimes all we have to do is to be sufficiently interested to match-make.
- Similarly, there is so much more that we can do as volunteers to improve on the infrastructure. We do not need personal deep pockets – we can identify need and mobilise support from businesses who want to be relevant.
So, in accounting for the NDP, my first plea to the membership of ABASA, through you Mr President, is to be actively engaged in transforming our education landscape. I want to plead that this not be a haphazard exercise – there is the task of identifying schools that need support, there is the need to be properly equipped – with skills and humility, there’s the need to pursue the task relentlessly and then, there’s the need to account back to ABASA for what has been achieved. This is accounting for the NDP. This is empowerment. This is the plough-back that we need through the agency of active citizenry that the NDP calls for.
A second example I would like to pick up on is that of support systems for SMMEs. I know that the SMME sector has a formidable role to play in both accelerating growth and creating employment – a cursory glance at the architecture of most of our peer-group countries confirms this. I also know that SMMEs are but a starting point and the emphasis ought to be on assisting these to grow. This is not an easy set of transitions, from small to medium or from medium to a large business, but it is a necessary focus for it to work.
Much of this ought to be provided by sharp and responsive agencies created for support. Now, I also know that we did not give nearly enough attention to this area of work when we drafted the NDP – we did not draft it into the proposed plan of November 2011, and unfortunately, our attention was not drawn to this sharply in the consultations that followed. So, in truth, we have not provided either remedy or proposals in the NDP. This is, of course, not a reason to reject the plan – the NDP is, as President Zuma reminded us, an overarching framework. Much detail needs to be filled out, and the area of SMMEs is a prime contender.
When I observe the trends in rural areas and townships across the country, I see long-standing businesses that have been sold, and I see networks of people purchasing what is available, then establishing support systems from wholesalers, bakeries and financial services to support the new chains of township-based businesses. The question that always arises is why the families who had traded for so long, did not do the same, or better, through their networks and trade up?
How have we missed this opportunity for empowerment? Surely there is more that we can and must do than wring our hands, or even worse, to merely observe the ugly face of xenophobia take root in our communities. You can do something that is both different and positive – ABASA has the skill set to fill in the gaps and the networks to link with organisations such as NAFCOC to turn this support into reality. Actions such as this will account for the NDP quite differently from merely memorising the 484 pages.
The National Development Plan actually has a set of 119 proposed actions. I have lifted just two – in school education and in SMMEs, where we are actually deficient. I raise these because I believe that we can unlock the power of our people by these two sets of issues – we cannot realise the objectives defined in the Preamble to our Constitution unless there is determined action. And, there can be no multiplier quite as effective as healing the deficiencies in education, and creating the first links in the entrepreneurship chain. I do not present a finite set of options, but what I do present is perfectly within the reach of the distinguished ABASA membership. Yes, I am pleading for hard work, but in return I am offering the satisfaction of knowing what it will mean to empower those who may not even be aware of how desperately they need your hand-up.
On 12 September last year, the Nigerian author, Ben Okri, delivered the Steve Biko Memorial lecture. I want to recall some of what he said because it makes eminent sense in the context of the tasks that ABASA wants to undertake in “Accounting for the NDP”. He said
Nations too, like individuals, need to heal. And healing takes several forms. For some, healing is probing the wounds, seeking causes, pursuing redress. For others, healing is dreaming, it is an active vision during which time a future is dreamed of, shaped and put into place. For them healing is an opportunity to transform themselves out of all that suffering, all that trauma, and the heroic effort of all that overcoming. The unfortunate thing about history is that it gives us no rest, no holidays. There are no pauses; we go from struggle to struggle. The struggle to overcome and then the struggle to live, to grow, to realise the potential seeded in our bones. We go from tearing down the unacceptable to building the desirable without much of a break in the dance.
But how long does this magic period last, the period of raised consciousness when a people realise that the surging through them of all the best energies of the human spirit? When they have effected a profound change in their destiny and feel the euphoria of overcoming? How long does it last, this sense of having climbed a mountain-top against all the odds and gazing back down over the journey accomplished and feeling for a long historical moment the sense that with the will power and the vision clear, anything is possible?
What we need to understand is what is required of us – “no pauses, we go from struggle to struggle….from tearing down the unacceptable to building the desirable without much of a break in the dance.” We owe it to the history of heroism and sacrifice, we owe it to the skill of the crafters of our Constitution, who were overseen by Madiba, and we owe it to our children to fix what has to be fixed.
Thank you very much.
