The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) condemns in the strongest possible terms Organised Business’ shameful attempts to whitewash state captured tarnished McKinsey and Bain & Co.  It is beyond offensive to millions of workers that Organised Business in a moment of stupendous moral amnesia has sought fit to appoint McKinsey to help run its Business20 programmes as South Africa hosts the G20 in 2024/25 and Bain & Co as a project manager for the Energy Council of South Africa.

These appointments come in the wake of McKinsey reaching guilty pleas to both the South African and United States’ authorities, including the payment of financial penalties, for its widely reported role in Eskom and Transnet during the decade of state capture and corruption.  Bain & Co was found badly wanting by the Nugent Commission into the South African Revenue Service (SARS), another widely reported epicentre of state capture under former President Jacob Zuma’s administration and has admitted its complicity in serious governance failures.

Organised Business’ bizarre attempts to cleanse these skunks of international capital are an insult and an affront to South African workers who are still paying the price of the damage done to Eskom, Transnet, SARS, the state and the economy during the decade of state capture.  It is workers who have lost jobs, seen wages cut and eroded by inflation, the public debt soar squeezing out key essential public services, an economy devastated by unparalleled loadshedding and struggling to grow and reduce unemployment.

Business needs to appreciate that workers do not take kindly to corruption or attempts to cleanse those found to have been complicit.  These and other reckless attempts to revise recent history and rehabilitate those who plunged South Africa into the depths of anarchy and misery must be condemned for the betrayal to the nation that they are. 

These efforts by Business undermine government led by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the African National Congress’ efforts to cleanse and rebuild the state, tackle corruption and hold the guilty accountable, and attract badly needed investment to grow the economy and create jobs. 

COSATU supports President Ramaphosa’s sober call for Business to abandon this foolishness and show the moral rectitude that the war against crime and corruption requires.  Now is not the time for moral flip-flopping and appeasing those who brought South Africa to its knees.

Issued by COSATU

Matthew Parks (COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator)

Mobile: 082 785 0687

Email: matthew@cosatu.org.za