Fani Titi knows how to solve problems. With a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of California Berkeley, and two decades of creating companies such as Kagiso Trust Investments, Titi — who was born to farm labourers in the 1960s — knows a thing or two about altering your trajectory.
And yet, as the country was burning last week, with thieves ripping off a blood bank live on TV at the precise moment that President Cyril Ramaphosa was "condemning" the looting, the government barely lifted the phone to speak to the business sector. Instead, the day after Ramaphosa’s speech, we saw thieves in cars, gridlocked outside a Massmart distribution centre, waiting their turn to plunder.
Titi, who has been CEO of the country’s fifth-largest bank, Investec, since 2018, is one of thousands of business leaders whose faith in the country has been entirely shaken. The bank’s clients, he tells the FM, are equally alarmed.
"Among the clients I spoke to, there was an air of disbelief that this could even happen, and that the response was as slow and as feeble as it was," he says. "There was also a sense of anxiety about their personal safety, and fear about the prospects of the country: can they be sure the country will be stable in future? I believe it can be, but people need to feel that way. People need to feel the country is investable."
That confidence — that the state could be relied upon to maintain order and protect property rights — was perhaps the biggest casualty of the blow-out. Instead of acting rapidly, Ramaphosa’s government squandered precious time "debating" the unrest in a two-day ANC meeting.
Titi is part of an establishment notorious for pulling its punches. Until now. The response of Ramaphosa’s government, he says, was "absolutely shocking".
"It is incomprehensible that the government did not foresee that there would be these fires, and that it was so unprepared for it. With any fire, you have to attack it early, with speed and force — but if you allow it to run instead, you’re going to need 10 times the resources to contain it," he says.
It’s a common sentiment. Last week, Toyota Motor Corp wrote to the eThekwini municipality, saying the chaos had left it "feeling very uncertain about the future of our business in KwaZulu-Natal". And Mpume Langa, vice-president of the Durban Chamber of Commerce & Industry, warned that investors are "talking disinvestment already".
Says Titi: "The government needs better information, a better level of readiness in terms of deploying resources, and better communication with the public — the fact that people were panic-buying in places like Gauteng, when in fact the supply of goods was largely intact, shows the levels of communication from our leader wasn’t sufficient."
If last week was a watershed, it was also the moment when the scales fell from the eyes of many who had hoped Ramaphosa could plug the holes created by the constitutional delinquent Jacob Zuma. Nobody expected better of Zuma — before he was elected, the FM warned on its cover "Be Afraid" — but more was expected of Ramaphosa.
Titi says foreign investors will wait, wary of how rapidly SA’s stability can crater
Ramaphosa may, in fact, still be the best person in the indelibly compromised ANC to fix the economy, but if he is straitjacketed by an ethically depleted party, the party can have no future. Who would replace him anyway? Sputnik Mabuza? Booze-ban Dlamini Zuma? Asbestos Magashule?
Titi was one of those palpably excited when Ramaphosa was sworn in 3½ years ago, believing it to be the best chance of economic reform. Instead, the schisms in the party led to inertia — and, he says, Ramaphosa didn’t show enough courage to pull SA free of the quicksand.
"Hopefully, given the scale of this crisis, there’ll be greater courage and boldness to implement reforms now. Of course, he’s operating under trying circumstances within the ANC, but at moments like this, leaders have to take a lot more risk. I think he’s still the man for the moment — he has the credibility — but he really has to step up," he says.
For a start, says Titi, Ramaphosa should be speaking to the nation every second day, until people begin to believe the government has the measure of the crisis.
"There are four aspects to leading in a crisis: providing a swift response; providing a response of scale; communicating clearly; and having visible leadership," he says.
When the postmortem of the unrest — fuelled by the Trumps of Nkandla — is written, it’ll record that on all four of those levels, Ramaphosa’s government scored an "F".
It doesn’t help that there are many in the ANC who harbour a deep mistrust of the business sector. This group of fiscal "illiterati" believes that companies have bottomless pockets, and can just write out a cheque to restock shelves. They’ll pick up Makro, like they picked up the rand.
Titi says this "radical economic transformation" faction of the ANC has pushed the narrative that business is inherently predisposed to exploit the population. "This faction views business and capital as the enemy. Yet no country — in South America, South Asia or anywhere — has ever made progress without business being an integral part of the solution. And business will assist again now, despite the government’s inept response to the crisis," he says.
This hostility needs to vanish quickly, since the unrest has ensured there’ll be no foreign investors riding in with buckets of cash any time soon.
Titi says foreign investors will wait, wary of how rapidly SA’s stability can crater. So, the rebuilding will have to be led by domestic investors — such as Investec.
"We have to rebuild the sense of stability, and create the belief that this kind of thing won’t happen again any time soon, otherwise you won’t have anyone putting money into 10-year projects. Right now, it is this sense of confidence that must be rebuilt first," Titi says.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.