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All of South Africa’s problems – low growth, high unemployment, energy instability and poor leadership – can be fixed if business, labour and government find a way to work together, says Ralph Mupita, the CEO of Old Mutual Emerging Markets.
“We must all confront the trust deficit that keeps us apart. We are all in the same boat and that is South Africa,” Mupita said this past week.
He said the trust divide among the three key economic and political groupings had developed over the past 10 years, leaving the parties to snipe destructively at each other without engaging positively.
He said Old Mutual’s overtures to government had received a mixed response.
Citing the positive example of rapidly developing private sector projects to bring a range of renewable sources into the energy mix to help power utility Eskom meet the country’s energy demands, Mupita said there was an urgent need to engage the private sector in assisting with the restoration of the country base load supply.
He said Old Mutual was a fervent supporter of the National Development Plan as the country’s best chance to tackle unemployment, poverty and inequality.
“It is not a perfect plan but it is the best plan we have,” he noted.
Mupita said Old Mutual’s 10-year broad-based BEE transaction, which matured this month, had been a triumph.
It had created a net value of more than R7.9 billion from shares valued at R4.1 billion, representing 13% of the equity value of Old Mutual’s local operations at the time
