Western Cape Business 2017 edition

INTERVIEW
senior professionals from other parts of South
Africa, they are struggling to settle into the city and
they have similar issues except they have families. It
has become quite challenging for many corporates,
so we’ve launched what we call the “Welcome
to Cape Town” initiative. This is less serious than
our usual networking engagements because it’s
geared more towards showcasing the food, wine
and entertainment of the region, but ultimately
it’s about helping them meet their peers and the
feedback so far has been massively encouraging.
It’s fine focusing on talent, but if we’re serious
about transformation we also have to look
at the HR practitioners. We have started the HR
Practitioner Forum which brings together all the
senior HR leadership from across these corporates
to engage around specific issues. These include
the unintended consequences of the new BEE
codes and what that means, how they practically
implement transformation in their organisation
and best practices. There is an opportunity for
sharing, so that adds value. We’ve tried to create
linkages between our focus areas, so when we
talk about the Atlantis SEZ, for example, there’s a
tie-in with talent with respect to artisanal training
and so on.
WE DON’T ACCEPT ANY
MONEY FROM GOVERNMENT
AS THAT ALLOWS US TO BE
AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR
THE PRIVATE SECTOR.
Business leadership
The second focus area is business leadership, which
has two components. The first is the activities we do
with the leaders of these corporates which includes
intimate engagements with people such as Christo
Wiese, Simon Susman, etc, who act as mentors. We
engage around specific topics, junk status and Brexit
and the implications thereof. We invite people from
the National Treasury or the major banks to participate
and engage with the local CEOs.
We also host dinners with the Premier and the
Mayor, private events around one table so that CEOs
can engage with them on issues that are impacting
business in the region. This helps drive real working
relationships between business and government
not just talk shops and “protocol-observed”
type events.
In the second aspect of our business leadership
focus, we started reaching out to the diplomatic
corps by launching the Foreign Office Programme.
We been quite selective and have focused on the
Dutch, the Germans, the French and the English
because they are all actively involved in assisting
their corporates in this region. From the Asia
Pacific region it’s Japan, China, India and the USA,
and those eight represented our Foreign Office
Programme for 2016.
Connectedness
Our third area of focus is connectedness and again
there are two components. There’s physical connectedness
and we are doing a series of engagements
with Wesgro where we’re looking at issues
of traffic congestion. For example, quite a number
of members moving into the Waterfront are concerned
about the level of traffic congestion and the
way it is negatively impacting productivity. We are
exploring different options but also looking at rail
and freight logistics and the direct flights out of
Cape Town to key economic destinations.
Then there is virtual connectedness – the fibre
optic broadband infrastructure, the wifi zones, etc.
From a social development perspective, you want
that infrastructure in the townships. Research
has shown that a 10% increase in broadband
connectivity results in a 1.3% increase in GDP
growth. So the City decided to use its budget
and grow the infrastructure and then they came
to us and asked what the corporates could do
with open access networks.
Our corporates are very excited about it
because with these wifi zone and fibre optic
networks you have an opportunity to access
communities that they had difficulty in reaching.
41 WESTERN CAPE BUSINESS 2017