TALKING POINTS
Corporate Social Review will continue to promote
Bertie Lubner’s call and report back on comments
received from readers in every edition in Talking Points
Bertie Lubner calls
for action
“We’re at war with poverty in this country. We have to put our
country right and the only way we can do that is by acting
together.”
This is the real point of the government’s National Development
Plan (NDP) and why we so desperately need this plan in South
Africa right now. Faced with incredible need and a shrinking
pool of available money and donors, it is essential that we all
work together to decide how we can best work together to
address our problems and actually solve them, because that’s
the only way we are going to win this war.
The NDP is the first government document that represents a
global document and what I believe we need to do is nominate
people to sit on a President’s Council for Poverty Relief. This
key group of people will set the strategy, decide who deals with
what, who does things and who takes responsibility and then
ensure that those things actually get done.
In order to get the NDP programme to deliver to full effect each
key sector needs to appoint their representatives and then
be part of the combined and collective action. Government
departments need to be encouraged to work with the private
sector and the private sector has to partner with government,
civil society, labour and academia.
We need to take government funds and skills, add them to the
funds generated by the private sector, and then apply private
sector skills and business principles to the creation of real
solutions. We need to sit down, map out a programme and then
actually deliver rather than just endlessly discussing delivery.
I believe we need a national board of high status individuals
to operate the board of a dedicated company tasked with
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Fighting talk
the responsibility for tackling these issues. We need the best
possible people working on this problem. We are in a war and
we need our passionate people giving their best efforts together
so that we can ensure that we win.
When delivery becomes the driver then you make your choices
and you act. What you don’t do is sit around endlessly discussing
strategies but never actually turning those strategies into action.
This is a simple business principle. Businesses don’t exist just to
support the weight and the infrastructure of the business, they
exist to do things - they exist to supply goods and services, to
deliver. So my proposal is quite simple: we need to sit down,
agree an action plan and then we simply must do the job.
Ultimately everyone has to know that we don’t do this for
ourselves, we do it with everyone, for everyone. What is at stake
here is the future of our country which is why I believe we need
to apply a business attitude to the problem we need to apply
the principles that have helped to build global, multi-billion rand
companies. We need a strategy and a structure that delivers for
the millions and millions of people that need our help across our
country and across our continent.
For more details about what Bertie is proposing contact,
ICSD (SA) 0110226611 or [email protected]
“Eliminating systemic poverty presents the biggest sustainable
business opportunity of our time; to bring millions of poor South
Africans into the mainline economy as consumers and participants.
This is contrary to treating systemic poverty as a disease, or as a
disaster, or as our destiny, through grants, welfare, philanthropy or
corporate social responsibility projects. The new Social Contract
with Business is a robust business case aimed at eliminating
systemic poverty and to increase our broad human security. This is
the essence of ‘business as an organ of society’; building a healthy
society for doing healthy business. What the South African business
community needs at this point in our history is the joint vision of
entrepreneurial stewardship; and the application tool thereto is
the Social Contract with Business in support of the Government’s
National Development Plan. I salute Bertie Lubner for voicing his
wisdom and energy.”
Dr. Jopie Coetzee, International Business Academic/ International
Business Executive & Author of ‘The Social Contract with Business –
Beyond the Quest for Global Sustainability’
http://www.jopiecoetzee.co.za/
[email protected]
Poverty is like a deep dark abyss that keeps swallowing and
never has enough. Assmang Chrome has identified key points of
departure for itself as a contribution to dealing with the various
forms in which poverty manifests itself: education, health, skills
development and infrastrcuture development. Laudable as these
actions are, corporates still need to find each other as players in
these areas. There are a number of NGOs doing the same thing
that Assmang and other Corporates are doing. Apartheid took away
from the poorest of the poor, in the same breath, as South Africans
we need to find something that is as strong, structured and effective
as apartheid was. That is what government calls for, that is what
Bertie ha