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South Africa 2011 Notes

28 August 2011

Just back from our Cape holiday in South Africa. The first few days were spent in Swellendam, with visits to the dams (where poor Dusk, now 15 years old, ripped her back claw and needed rushing to the vet) and Barrydale (for the family’s traditional Sunday lunch at the Country Pumpkin). Then we went to Hermanus, where we spotted a single whale and Veneta & Indira swam in the icy water at Grotto Bay, before we headed to Bertie & Magda’s house in Kraaifontein, where we spent two nights.

The next day, I met with Guy Lundy while the girls went to the aquarium at the Waterfront. As it turned out, we had a bird’s eye view of a municipal strikers’ protest down Hertzog Boulevard, during which some of their members callously looted nearby hawkers’ stands. I then picked up Marie Steyn (now 82 and still sweet as ever) and we joined I & V for lunch at the Waterfront. After Marie confessed that she’d never had a ‘sparkler’ at the Spur restaurant, I told the manager that it was her birthday (even though it wasn’t) and she duly received a sparkler in her ice cream desert, complete with a round of happy birthday sung by the waiters.

After dropping off Marie, in the afternoon we headed to Kirstenbosch to meet with Gordon Oliver. There was a stunning exhibition in the Gardens called ‘Untamed’, combining Dylan Lewis’ sculptures, Ian McCallum’s poetry, Enrico Daffonchio’s architecure and David Davison’s conceptual design. In the evening, we had dinner with Karen Weinberg, who is almost fully recovered from the brain virus which wiped out her speech capacity some 18 months ago.

On our second day in Cape Town, we went up Signal Hill and Table Mountain (the weather was windy but clear). We had hoped to take a ferry out to Robben Island, but it was booked up a day in advance. Back in Swellendam, we did excursions to Montagu hot springs, the Duiwelsbos waterfall and Sulina’s Faery Sanctuary, before heading to Oudtshoorn for a visit to the Cango Caves, Cango Ostrich Farm and a Wildlife Sanctuary. I got to ride one ostrich (for about 10 metres) and to ‘kiss’ another (allowing it to peck a pellet from between my lips). The next day we went all the way to Seaview via Mossell Bay, Knysna and Plettenberg Bay (where we swam). A day later, we heard there had been a shark attack at Plett, so I guess we were lucky.

A visit to the Elephant Sanctuary outside Knysna gave us all a chance to feed and touch some tame (but free range) elephants, while Lion Park in Seaview gave Indira & Veneta the chance to handle some 6 week old lion cubs, as well as to spot some giraffe and hartebees. When we finally made it to Addo Elephant Park, the weather was cold, with light showers, so not ideal for game viewing, but we managed to see some kudu and elephant fairly close up.

On our final day, we managed to get the Robben Island ferry and to visit the prison. The prisoner stories, displayed in some of the cells, were most interesting, so it was frustrating not to have much time to look at these (having spent excessively long on the bus driving to less interesting sites around the island). Nevertheless, I was inspired to buy Ahmed Kathrada’s Memoirs, so that should give similar (and much more detailed) insights.

Overall, it was a good holiday and wonderful to spend a bit of time with my parents and see the great progress that has been made on the property. The garden is looking very established and the lodge is three-quarters complete. It was an ideal time of year to visit, with all the early spring flowers and green cultivated fields. The weather was cool most of the time, with some rain, but we had some great sunny days too.

My impressions from talking to friends and family is that poor political leadership is a constant frustration, exacerbated by waves of labour strike action (the media now refers to a ‘strike season’ every year). Indira was clearly shocked by conditions in the squatter camps and townships, as well as the pervasive division of labour along racial lines (virtually all blue-colour jobs are still done by black people). However, I saw positive signs as well, such as solar panels on the roofs of thousands of low cost houses, well maintained roads and other infrastructure and a healthy climate of political debate.

The overwhelming social challenges did make me wonder more deeply about whether I am doing enough; whether my vision is too tame and my actions too pedestrian. I also felt more nostalgia on this trip than previously, so maybe something is shifting in my attitude to both my work and South Africa. Now that I am back in London, there is not much time for reflection, as I head off on my Singapore-Philippines-Vietnam trip in a few days. However, sooner or later, I feel I will need to make a big shift in my work. I sense it is time for another bold career move.

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Corporate Citizenship

Corporate Citizenship:

Is South Africa World Class?

Article by Wayne Visser

At the 2003 World Economic Forum, a global CEO survey on corporate citizenship was launched, representing companies with headquarters in 16 countries (including South Africa) and covering 18 industries. The report of findings identified ten key messages for engaging successfully with the corporate citizenship agenda. In this article, I use these ten messages as a framework for questioning South Africa’s progress in the corporate citizenship field. I also subjectively score South Africa on each issue, based on their relative global performance.

The Power of Personal Leadership

The global CEO survey highlighted the important role of the chief executive as a champion of corporate values and a consensus builder on issues of corporate citizenship. Who are South Africa’s corporate citizenship executive champions? Who has taken it upon themselves to be an active campaigner for business’ contribution to society? South Africa certainly had such leaders in the past. For example, Pick ‘n Pay Chairman, Raymond Ackerman, was one of the 50 global executives that formed the Business Council for Sustainable Development and issued its report entitled Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment to the 1992 Earth Summit.

But who has taken over the mantle? There certainly seems to be several contenders from the Anglo American stable: Perhaps someone like Michael Spicer, former Executive Director: Corporate Affairs and Executive Vice President of Anglo American plc, and now Chief Executive of the South Africa Foundation? He has taken high profile positions on corporate citizenship issues and seems to embody a heartfelt commitment. Or the tireless efforts of Chairman of Anglo’s Chairman’s Fund, Clem Sunter, who has championed both the HIV/Aids and sustainable development causes? Or do we look to Anglo’s Chairman, Sir Mark Moody Stuart, who managed Shell’s difficult transition towards embracing sustainability?

Who are the others? South Africa needs business leaders who are vocal champions for corporate citizenship. I am not referring to CEOs who simply embrace the rhetoric in their annual reports, but to individuals who are personally committed to the cause of social upliftment and ecological protection – leaders who lead the corporate citizenship movement from the front, with passion. We all need something to believe in, and our corporate leaders are in the unique position of being able to create a vision of how we can make a difference in South Africa. Who will stand up and be counted?

My score for South Africa: 5/10

Strength in Collective Action

The global CEO survey stresses that although personal leadership matters, there is also strength in collective leadership, especially when it comes to addressing public policy issues, industry-wide concerns, national development challenges, or global issues that are beyond the remit or capacity of any one company, but vital to long term commercial success. What is South Africa’s track record of collective action? This seems to me to be one of the areas in which South Africa has excelled, and may be regarded as truly world class (Fourie & Eloff 2005) …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/article_citizenship_sa_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Corporate Citizenship (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/corporate-citizenship-in-africa”]Page[/button] Corporate Citizenship in Africa (book)

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Visser, W. (2005) Corporate Citizenship: Is South Africa World Class? The Corporate Citizen, Trialogue: Johannesburg.

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Corporate Sustainability in South Africa

Corporate Sustainability in South Africa:

A Ten Year Review

Article by Wayne Visser

What have ten years of democracy meant for the corporate sustainability agenda? This section looks back at what have been the main catalysts for change since 1994, the trends where substantial progress has been made and the key areas where companies still lag international best practice.

Catalysts for Change

Legislative Reform

The wave of legislative reform initiated by the post-apartheid government fundamentally changed the landscape of corporate sustainability. Between 1994 and 2004, approximately 60 entirely new or substantively revised statutes were introduced which had direct implications for corporate management of safety, health, environment, socio-economic development, labour, governance and ethics issues. Some of these, such as employment equity and black economic empowerment, reflected the aspirations of the ANC’s pre-election Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) agenda, while others, like sustainable development and corporate governance, strongly echoed international trends.

Globalisation

At the same time, South Africa’s re-entry onto the international staged forced many companies to raise their sustainability standards to meet global market expectations. As a direct result, there was a substantial increase in environmental management certification and sustainability reporting, as companies like BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Old Mutual, which became Fortune 500 companies, and SABMiller, Lonmin and Dimension Data, which became FTSE 250 companies, quickly upped their game to conform to the corporate governance requirements of the New York and London stock exchanges and the corporate sustainability requirements of various social and environmental investment indexes.

Stakeholder Activism

Newly empowered by the law and supported by international NGOs, South African civil society also became visibly more active in challenging companies on the basis of the public’s social and environmental constitutional rights. Cases in which companies became the target of such stakeholder activism included the likes of Thor Chemicals, AECI, Caltex, Iscor, WasteTech-Enviroserv, Sasol Mining, Cape plc, Gencor, Anglo American, De Beers and GlaxoSmithKline. Not surprisingly, there has been a parallel trend among companies of improved public transparency, increased stakeholder involvement and active pursuit of public-private partnerships.

Codification

Given these pressures to demonstrate their corporate sustainability, South African companies have followed the international trend of codification, i.e. adopting standards and guidelines as a form of voluntary self-regulation on social, ethical and environmental issues. The codes which have had the most impact include ISO 14001 (for environmental management), the King Code (for corporate governance) and the Global Reporting Initiative (for sustainability reporting), while the influence of other frameworks like those on social accountability (e.g. AA 1000, SA 8000) and general corporate citizenship (e.g. the Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines for Multinationals) have been more limited.

Trends

Over the last decade, corporate sustainability has steadily broadened from an initial focus on philanthropy and environmental management towards including health, safety, labour, community and broader socio-economic issues. By the time Trialogue surveyed the top companies in 2004, 100% regarded corporate citizenship (reflecting the contemporary broad definition of corporate sustainability) as a priority, with 52% giving absolute priority status and 32% high priority.

Corporate Philanthropy

Trialogue estimates that the total expenditure on corporate social investment (CSI) in South Africa  …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/article_sustainability_sa2004_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Corporate Sustainability in South Africa (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/corporate-citizenship-in-africa”]Page[/button] Corporate Citizenship in Africa (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (2004) Corporate Sustainability in South Africa: A Ten Year Review. 2004 KPMG Survey on Integrated Sustainability Reporting in South Africa, KPMG: Johannesburg.

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Ubuntu Capitalism

Setting the Global Agenda for Ubuntu Capitalism

Chapter by Wayne Visser

Extract from South Africa 2014: The Story of Our Future

Within the space of a decade, South African business has moved from being pariahs of the world to leaders in the global corporate responsibility movement. This section highlights the significant progress which has been made by the private sector, as well as the potential for South Africa to continue to shape a new agenda for capitalism across seven key dimensions.

Legal reform

Building on the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development agenda (which in turn was based on the Freedom Charter), human rights, sustainable development and corporate transparency became enshrined in the 1996 constitution and embedded in what is widely regarded as some of the most progressive legislation in socio-economic and environmental development in the world. For example, the environmental rights now enshrined in the Bill of Rights are hailed worldwide.

By inextricably linking social, economic and ecological development in its legal framework, South Africa is showing the world that the old conflicts between environmental conservation, social development and economic growth can be resolved by adopting a new model of integrated sustainable development. The foundation for improved quality of life has therefore been laid and in the next 10 years in South Africa we can expect to see:While many countries still rely on outdated legislation, the wave of reform over the past decade in South Africa has resulted in brand new statutes on ecological responsibility (e.g. the National Environmental Management Act), occupational health and safety (e.g. the Mine Health and Safety Act), investment in human capital (e.g. the Employment Equity Act), governance (e.g. the Promotion of Access to Information Act), ethics (the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act) and socio-economic development (e.g. the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act).

  • Civil society demonstrating increasingly healthy activism to bring about environmental and social justice
  • Government continuing to enact and refine progressive legislation and to enhance its enforcement capacity
  • Business becoming the primary vehicle for ensuring that integrated sustainable development is delivered on the ground

Corporate governance

When the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IoD) published the King Report on Corporate Governance in South Africa in 1992, it was the first of all the governance codes in the world to stress the importance of wider stakeholder interests beyond narrow shareholder demands. This global thought leadership was once again demonstrated when, in its revised King Report in 2002 (King II), the IoD included a whole chapter on sustainability reporting, including extensive referencing to two leading-edge international standards, the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, and Accountability’s AA 1000 framework.

The King II requirement that “every company should report at least annually on the nature and extent of its social, transformation, ethical, safety, health and environmental management policies and practices” has already paid dividends. Surveys by KPMG show that 85% South Africa’s top 100 listed companies in 2003 were already reporting on sustainability-related issues, compared with only 48% in 1997. This remarkable progress is assisted by the fact that the Johannesburg Stock Exchange has made compliance with King II a listing requirement …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/chapter_wvisser_ubuntu_capitalism.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Setting the Global Agenda for Ubuntu Capitalism (chapter)

Related pages

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/”]Page[/button] South Africa: The Good News (website)

Cite this chapter

Visser, W. (2004) Setting the Global Agenda for Ubuntu Capitalism, In B. Bowes, S. Pennington & G. Lundy, South Africa 2014: The Story Of Our Future, Johannesburg: South Africa The Good News, 349-351.

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Top 10 Reasons to Believe

Top 10 Reasons to Believe

Chapter by Wayne Visser

Extract from the book South Africa: Reasons to Believe

1    SA is a nation of survivors

We’ve transformed countless times and faced untold hardships with great courage and remarkable endurance. We’ve got tried-and-tested skills to vasbyt, to adapt, to survive, to thrive.

2    SA is proof that miracles do happen

Between 1994 and 2001, people with houses increased from 64% to 77%, people with electricity went up from 58% to 80% and those with piped water rose from 68% to 76%.

3    SA is rapidly redefining its image

From morrisjones&co’s Homecoming Revolution ad campaign to expats, to Proudly South African’s logo for quality local products, to the IMC’s Brand South Africa initiative, ‘Alive with Possibility’.

4    SA is poised for an economic take-off

We’re currently the 7th best performing economy in the world with the 3rd highest export growth rate (higher than the export explosion Japan experienced in the 50’s and 60’s!).

5    SA inspires world-class business

SAB (now SABMiller) is the world’s 2nd largest brewer, while the inspirational Mark  Shuttleworth captured 40% of the Internet digital certification market before selling Thawte Verification for $575 million.

6    SA is blessed with natural and cultural assets

We have four World Heritage Sites: The Cradle of Humankind, Robben Island, St Lucia Wetland and the Drakensberg. And the new 35 000 km2 Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park is larger than many European countries.

7    SA’s diversity is a fountain of creativity

Miriam Makeba was the 1st African Grammy winner in 1967. Nadine Gordimer and J.M Coetzee have both won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Athol Fugard is the second most performed playwright in English, after Shakespeare.

8    SA has produced icons of history

We have four Nobel Peace Prize winners — Albert Luthuli (1960), Desmond Tutu (1984), and Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk (1993). Gandhi first tested his passive resistance technique in SA and Jan Smuts wrote the preamble of the UN Charter.

9    SA can show the world a new better way

No country is better positioned to prove to the international onlookers that different cultures can co-mingle and produce a remarkable civilisation.

10   South Africans can make a real difference

Challenges bring opportunities to really do something meaningful.  As SA rabbi, Warren Goldstein, puts it: ‘Our lives are full of significance here. It may not always be “pleasantville”, but it’s always “meaningful”.

Related pages

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/south-africa”]Page[/button] South Africa: Reasons to Believe (book)

Cite this chapter

Visser, W. (2003) Top 10 Reasons to Believe, In G. Lundy & W. Visser, South Africa: Reasons to Believe! Cape Town: Aardvark, 1-14.

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Rainbows and Stormclouds

Rainbows and Stormclouds

Chapter by Wayne Visser

Extract from South Africa: Reasons to Believe!

There are many words to describe South Africa’s incredible journey through recent history. ‘Dull’ is certainly not one of them; neither is ‘boring’ or ‘predictable’. Rather, words like ‘epic’ and ‘revolutionary’ come to mind. Much like those brave and sometimes arrogant navigators and explorers of the new world, we South Africans are a travel-hardened and weather-beaten bunch, with many rough storms and cruel twists of fate behind our back. Amazingly, we have endured. We are survivors. And we should be immensely proud. We should constantly remind ourselves how tough we really are; how, despite all the trials and tribulations we have faced, we have, repeatedly, overcome.

Of course, it’s easy to be philosophical during the good times, when the sun is shining brightly and the waters are calm and sparkling. It’s far more difficult when the wind is howling and the ship’s mast is creaking, when the waves are crashing over the bough and the senses are numb from the lashing rain. And yet, this is exactly what the last few decades in South Africa have felt like – a relentless cycle of storms and rainbows. Like a sailing ship on the high seas, we have ridden out deep, dark troughs of fear and intimidation to ride high on the crest of the waves of liberating change, only to be plunged back into the torrid swells again. It has been a rough ride, by anyone’s reckoning, and the journey is not yet at its end.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that fear and uncertainty still hangs like a dark cloud over our national psyche. We want to start this book by acknowledging the bad-weather pessimism that many people feel in our country today. But we also want to place it into perspective. In this first chapter, as we briefly recall some of the highs and lows of our roller coaster ride of recent years, we take heart from how far we have come in such a short time. After all, in the broad sweep of history, our achievements are nothing short of amazing. We remind ourselves how good we are at surviving and thriving, despite the odds. We are proof that the sun always does come out after the storm. We show that even the darkest clouds on our horizon have a silver lining. And, for good measure, we buff up those breathtaking colours of the rainbow that this nation has become. …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/south-africa”]Page[/button] South Africa: Reasons to Believe! (book)

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Visser, W. (2003) Rainbows and Stormclouds, In G. Lundy & W. Visser, South Africa: Reasons to Believe! Cape Town: Aardvark, 1-14.

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Greening the Corporates

Greening the Corporates:

The Transition, Local business and Sustainable Development

Article by Wayne Visser

The Short History of Sustainable Development

“Sustainable development” hustled its way into the English vocabulary and onto the world’s political agenda in 1987, with the publication of Our Common Future, an official report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by former Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland. In terms of this document, sustainable development is defined as:

“Development which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their needs.”

This cleverly crafted concept tactfully allied the fears of powerful business lobbies in the developed countries of the North by not being “anti-economic growth”, while at the same time soothing the governments and civic organisations of the developing world in the South by talking “development and equity”. It also befriended and found a guardian-for-life among the environmental pressure groups by putting their “green” issues on the map.

Five years later, in 1992, 178 country leaders paraded on the world stage of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, more endearingly referred to as the “Earth Summit”, and committed their nations to a variety of conventions, agreements and programs aimed at making the now politically acceptable notion of sustainable development a reality.

Global Business and the Environment

The corporate sector is not generally one to be caught napping and the global gearing up on environmental issues proved no exception. In 1991, a group of 50 of the world’s top executives formed the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) and issued its report to the Earth Summit entitled Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment. (Pick ‘n Pay’s Raymond Ackerman was one of these contributors). In a parallel initiative, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) launched its 16-principle Business Charter for Sustainable Development in 1991 and contributed a book to the Earth Summit entitled From Ideas to Action: Business and Sustainable Development.

Today, there are more than 2 000 corporate signatories of the ICC Charter for Sustainable Development and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which grew out of a merger between the BCSD and the World Industry Council for the Environment, has more than 120 international member countries.

Other environmentally oriented corporate standards have enjoyed similar growth in world-wide support, for example: the International Council of Chemical Associations’ Responsible Care Programme, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies’ (CERES) Principles, the Keidanren Global Environmental Charter, the British Standard (BS) 7750, the European Eco-management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the International Standards Organisation (ISO) 14001 standard for Environmental Management Systems.

Environmental Awareness in South Africa

In general, South Africa has tended to lag behind international developments in public policy and corporate responsibility by between 10 and 20 years. For example, while the US enacted their National Environmental Policy Act in 1970, South Africa had to wait two decades for its own comparable legislation in the form of the Environmental Conservation Act 73 of 1989. Similarly, while the ICCA launched its Responsible Care Programme for the international chemicals industry in …

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Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/business-frontiers”]Page[/button] Business Frontiers (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (1999) Greening the corporates: The transition, local business and sustainable development. Development Update, Special Issue: Election 1999: Where have we come from? A balance sheet of the political transition, Volume 3, No. 1.

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Grassroots Ecological Economics in South Africa

Grassroots Ecological Economics in South Africa

Article by Wayne Visser

South Africa’s recent political transformation is like a hard won gift which keeps giving, and the environment is one of its greatest beneficiaries. For example, South Africa is now one of the few countries in the world to have the environment enshrined in its Constitutional Bill of Rights, according to which:

“Everyone has the right:

(a) to an environment not harmful to their health or wellbeing; and

(b) to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that:

(i)   prevent pollution and ecological degradation;

(ii) promote conservation; and

(iii)secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development.”

From this basic premise has flowed a stream of national policy reforms, culminating in a host of new and emerging environmental legislation, including, for example, the Environmental Management Bill, Water Bill, and Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations. As important as the results of these, has been the multi-stakeholder participative process followed.

On the Agenda

Fortunately, the role of economics in this environmental revisioning process has been included on the political agenda. Towards the end of 1993, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism established an Environmental Resource Economics Steering Committee, which issued a number of discussion documents on the use of economic instruments in environmental management. More recently, a discussion document on “A National Strategy for Integrated Environmental Management in South Africa” was released which contains a whole chapter on market-based instruments, covering the following items:

Resource charges, non-consumptive user charges, pollution charges, product charges, land-use charges, input charges, investment credits, accelerated depreciation, product/service subsidies, basic needs subsidies, tradable permits, tradable quotas, tradable shares (resource shares), deposit refund system, environmental performance bonds, green funds and environmental valuation.

The implementation of these various concepts remains to be seen, although they are already finding expression in the anticipated changes to the water laws. In essence, South Africa will be moving towards a “true cost” pricing of water (to reflect its scarcity and ecological value) and effluent charges will increasingly be linked to levels of pollution. In addition, to address the “tragedy of the commons” and inequitable access currently associated with the country’s water resources, the practice of riparian rights will be replaced by a system of regulated water leasing (amidst much political and commercial controversy).

Hence, at least in theory and partially in practice, environmental resource economics has secured a sound basis on which to justify its importance in the national macro-policy arena. That is good news, but not the whole story.

A New Perspective

What interests me equally is the way in which ecological economics is finding applications at a grassroots level – especially in local communities, and among South Africa’s most marginalised people.

This is as important, if not more so, than the government-led national policy initiatives. It is what will decide whether protection of the environment can escape its historical “white, colonial, nice-to-have” image and become a relevant developmental movement enjoying the support of the wider …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”download” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/wp-content/uploads/1998/07/article_ecological_economics_wvisser.pdf”]Pdf[/button] Grassroots Ecological Economics in South Africa (article)

Related websites

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/business-frontiers”]Page[/button] Business Frontiers (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (1998) Grassroots Ecological Economics in South Africa. The Ecological Economics Bulletin, Fourth Quarter.

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Ethical Investment

Ethical Investment:

Money With Values

Article by Wayne Visser

Ethical investment – also called social investment, socially responsible investment and green investment – is an international trend which refers broadly to the conscious use of investments to achieve social, ethical and environmental performance objectives, over and above the usual financial returns. The relevance of the ethical investment movement lies in its potential to deliver good financial returns while also helping to deliver on the countries social objectives, like empowerment, good labour practices, and environmentally sustainable development for instance.

Apartheid as a Catalyst

The phenomenon can be traced back to the beginnings of the corporate social responsibility movement in the United States in the 1930s, although it only really became visible in the 1970s. At this time, church and university groups set up the first funds, such as the Pax World Fund, to avoid investment which supported the Vietnam War and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Since the political transformation of South Africa is widely regarded as one of the great motivators and success stories of ethical investment, this background is worth recalling.

Many would argue that it all began in 1970. South Africa had just been ejected from the United Nations for its apartheid policies, and Reverend Leon Sullivan proposed that this be reinforced by the adoption of a set of minimum standards by US companies with South African operations. These standards, formalised as the Sullivan Principles in 1977, included clauses on non-segregation of facilities on racial grounds, affirmative action for blacks, and social upliftment for underprivileged employees. Various civil rights, labour and religious groups took it upon themselves to monitor and report on companies’ adherence to these principles.

In 1982, Connecticut became the first US legislature to require all its investments to be screened against the Sullivan Principles, setting the precedent for similar action by other bodies. Then, as the South African regime toughened its stance on apartheid, complete disinvestment began. As a result of increasing stakeholder pressure and led by Citibank and Chase Manhattan Bank, 135 US industrial companies pulled out of the country between 1985 and 1987. Over the same period, the level of US Funds screened for South African links rose from less than $100 million to nearly $400 million.

Similar ethical investment forces were at work in the UK over the same time. Lobby organisations like Christian Concern for South Africa, End Loans to South Africa, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, put tremendous pressure on the major UK banks (Midlands, Standard Chartered and Barclays) to withdraw from South Africa. There were also campaigns against users of South African gold and suppliers of oil to South Africa (especially Royal Dutch Shell). These were given added weight by the emergence of screened ethical unit trust and investment funds with avoidance criteria for oppressive regimes chiefly targeting South Africa. By 1985, South Africa was forced to default on its foreign loans, and in 1986 the US passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, with the European Community following suite shortly after to consolidate international financial sanctions.

Types of Ethical Investment

There are basically two types of ethical investment: shareholder activism and screened investments …

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[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”tick” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.csrinternational.org”]Link[/button] CSR International (website)

[button size=”small” color=”blue” style=”info” new_window=”false” link=”http://www.waynevisser.com/books/business-frontiers”]Page[/button] Business Frontiers (book)

Cite this article

Visser, W. (1997) Ethical Investment: Money With Values. Money Values online column.

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