Governance and leadership are "the yin and the yang of successful organisations. If you have leadership without governance, you risk tyranny, fraud and personal fiefdoms. If you have governance without leadership you risk atrophy, bureaucracy and indifference," says Mark Goyder, a British author and governance expert. For years, the boards of SA’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) acted as though they were part of a social experiment or the cast of a reality show, gobbling taxpayers’ money while testing their bounds of loyalty. No wonder newly elected ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa said at the party’s recent anniversary celebration: "We need also to act with urgency and purpose to restore SOEs as drivers of economic growth and development. Several key SOEs are in financial distress, threatening not only their own operations, but the national fiscus. "Many of these enterprises have experienced serious governance lapses and poor delivery of their mandate," he said. "These challenges have ...
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