What the government needs to do if it wants to save South Africa: Capitec CEO

Capitec chief executive officer Gerrie Fourie says that he is positive about the potential and opportunities available in South Africa, despite the many crises and challenges it faces.

But for the country to truly pull itself out of the darkness – quite literally – the government needs to shed its aversion to the private sector and give it space to do what needs to be done.

Speaking during the bank’s results presentation on Thursday (28 September), Fourie said that he is optimistic about Capitec’s position in South Africa and its prospects for the future.

“I’m positive about the future. I’ve learned, if you’re negative, you can’t see the opportunities – and I think we have a lot of people here who see opportunities,” he said.

However, the CEO’s views on the wider issues in South Africa – not specifically relating to Capitec’s operations – show that the situation needs a little bit more than positive thinking to overcome.

Speaking to BusinessTech following the results briefing, Fourie said that hours could be spent discussing the state of the country and what needs to be done to get it on a better path – but it all ultimately boils down to the government needing to get out of its own way.

“What we need is for the government and the private sector to work together and to make sure that plans are implemented and implemented fast,” he said.

“Unfortunately, that’s what the government can’t get right – and that’s where we need to take hands and make certain that we can deliver on things that need to be done.

“And we need to do it quite quickly,” he said, adding that this is the only way to unlock South Africa’s potential.

Fourie said that the government’s general attitude towards the private sector is adversarial.

“We need to get your political and private sector people to work together and see each other as partners and not as enemies,” he said.

The government sees private sector involvement in anything it does as “giving control away”, Fourie said, when really it’s about getting service delivery going.

“(The private sector is) enhancing client value,” he said. “Unfortunately, our politicians see it as giving control away.”

Fourie said that the government has a massive skills gap when it comes to tackling the issues facing the country, and it should lean and tap into the private sector to deliver what needs to be delivered.

Private-public partnership

The government’s history around turning to the private sector has always been strained, with many critical political views painting the involvement of private companies or the breaking down of state monopolies as “privatisation”.

This has been a common line uttered whenever suggestions are made that private companies be allowed to compete openly in things like power production, infrastructure and other government functions.

However, state institutions that have monopolised certain functions in society have all but collapsed, leaving the government with no choice but to rely on private help to resolve the problems they created.

Private schools, private security, private healthcare, and more recently private energy production and private companies fixing infrastructure – wherever the state has failed, private companies have stepped in – usually to a politician’s chagrin.

More recently, the government has taken a softer stance towards the private sector in some aspects, with president Cyril Ramaphosa forming various committees and task teams comprising cabinet ministers and CEOs of big companies to tackle the foremost problems in South Africa.

This includes the National Energy Committee (Necom) to tackle the ever-present power crisis and similar structures to look at logistics, infrastructure and crime. CEOs have also committed to working with the government to take these matters on.

At the same time, however, the state has also moved against the private sector and is looking to monopolise other sectors – such as health, with the pushing through of National Health Insurance.

Read: Over 100 businesses pledge to save South Africa from the brink of collapse