DAVID BUCKHAM: The Springboks vs the great vampire squid monster

If only a week or so ago you had sat me down and told me that on the issue of SA’s greatest export brand of all time — the Springboks — Julius Malema and the EFF would find common ground with the crème de la crème of SA’s business elite, I would have politely exited the conversation.

When on Monday October 14 several provincial unions controlled by business magnates Patrice Motsepe, Johann Rupert and Stephen Saad, among other unions, urged the SA Rugby Union (Saru) in an open letter to postpone voting on an imminent deal that would see the Springboks’ commercial rights being given away for next to nothing to an unknown, one-year-old Seattle-based minnow of a private equity firm, they were almost certainly not knowingly in concert with the EFF.

More likely, the EFF simply jumped at the opportunity to niggle the ANC, having crowed that it would rake sports, arts & culture minister Gayton McKenzie over the coals in forthcoming parliamentary sessions. Disappointingly for the EFF, it was only though McKenzie's intervention that Saru eventually reluctantly agreed to postpone the special general meeting it had scheduled for last Thursday. Nevertheless, whatever their true motive, watching some of the wealthiest billionaires in SA become inadvertent bedfellows with the EFF has been uniquely incongruous.  

What we can agree on is that an unknown US firm, with absolutely no broad-based benefit to SA, could have reached with its spiny tentacles so far into the heart of SA rugby, is risible. It was (is?) a deal that is so obviously contrived for individual benefit, having been engineered by Irish former F1 driver and team boss Eddie Jordan, and orchestrated by a disgraced former Saru CEO, who previously unlawfully transferred R35m from a university sports fund.  

Putting aside some of SA’s more colourful personality exports, most notably Charlize Theron, Elon Musk, Trevor Noah and Caster Semenya, we have had a dearth of commercial brand success stories offshore. Nando’s and Discovery are examples of moderate successes, and SA Breweries, until it sold out to Anheuser-Busch, was a global winner. Richemont is without question a titan of SA ingenuity, but the list from there on is limited.

However, if one thinks of the Springboks as a commercial brand, as opposed to a national sports team, there is absolutely no doubt that Rassie Erasmus’s Springboks, captained in the past few years by Siya Kolisi, is by far the most positive nation-building force for good that has emerged out of our fledgling democracy in these most disrupted times.

In 2010, following the economic and social devastation of the global financial crisis, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine described Goldman Sachs as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity". The US private equity firm that is attempting to purchase the Springboks’ commercial rights in perpetuity, Ackerley Sports Group (ASG), I think of as the lowly offspring of the original great bloodsucking vampire squid monster, trying its wiry squid arm at wrenching our most prized asset from our adolescent hands.

That no government body, including the Competition Commission or department of trade, industry & competition, has had anything to say about this deal, which is on paper to the eyes of anyone with even an iota of investment banking experience appallingly one-sided and almost certainly corrupt, is distressing.  

Somewhat coincidentally, before our very eyes yet another unholy deal had been starting to to unfold with Transnet’s intention to award a 25-year tender to Philippines-based International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI), to take over operations at Durban Container Terminal Pier 2. Bear in mind that this distressed terminal, in need of urgent attention, is responsible for 65% of SA’s container volumes.

A fortnight ago the high court in Durban temporarily barred the deal from going ahead following a legal challenge from rival bidder APM Terminals (APMT), a subsidiary of Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk. APMT argued that ICTSI’s bid should have been disqualified by Transnet as the company had failed to meet the required solvency ratio of 0.4. Transnet had allowed ICTSI to use its market capitalisation rather than its balance sheet equity to prove its solvency, a concession that was not extended to any other bidder.  

Without AP Moller-Maersk we may have unknowingly sold our most important maritime asset to a company that did not even meet the basic tender requirements Transnet itself set. To be sure, Durban’s port, like many other infrastructure assets in SA, is in dire need of private sector investment and the delay in securing it is frustrating. But in these times it is essential to ensure we get a fair deal.  

In contemplating the proposed Springbok deal there is a finer point to be made. It is precisely because capitalism is inherently self-serving and rapacious that it needs to be balanced by social conventions and rules of conduct, best exemplified by sport. Especially by sport at a national level. In our struggling economy, almost recovering from a decade of abuse, we seem to be all too eager to give away our finest assets.

There is a difference, though, between selling a concession of a port, and selling a national sports team. Both need to meet the minimum standards of being net positive for our country, but the second also needs to make sense to us at an abstract, emotional level. Surely there are certain aspects of human endeavour that are not for sale? 

• Buckham is founder and president of Johannesburg-based international management consultancy Monocle Solutions.