In August 2017 Business Leadership SA (BLSA) launched the Business Initiative, a social compact in which the country’s richest men (and women) pledged to fight corruption, create jobs and drive transformation in the private sector. Less than a year after this campaign was launched one of BLSA’s directors and CE of Imperial Holdings, Mark Lamberti, has been found by a court to have called a qualified black African chartered accountant an "employment equity" candidate. Although this was prior to the BLSA social compact, it is worth noting that these comments were made by someone who has oversight of BLSA’s "corporate transformation" agenda. His comments give the nation an indication of why transformation remains an elusive goal in the private sector. Rich white men like Lamberti see black people as mere affirmative action beneficiaries who are parachuted into "their" companies despite the fact they neither trust them nor believe they have the competence to lead multinational organisat...
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