HILARY JOFFE
That’s the way Colin Coleman, managing director of the Goldman Sachs South Africa office, describes Team South Africa’s experience this year at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which took place from January 23 to 26.
The difference was that this time, it was possible to showcase SA as a place to invest and our country received red carpet treatment, Coleman said this week.
Last year, the SA participants faced a barrage of questions about the direction of the economy. This year, with Cyril Ramaphosa as the new ANC head, there was broad consensus that change was coming that would pull SA on an anti-corruption, pro-growth and pro-jobs trajectory, said Coleman.
“Ramaphosa and the business delegation put on a joint show, which was appreciated in an environment such as Davos, in which SA is a place that people want to explore,” he said. “This was a very important opportunity for SA to show itself in a new light after years of underperformance.”
The meeting was Ramaphosa’s first international outing since being elected ANC president in December. He had led the delegation to Davos last year, but this time, he did so effectively as the country’s president-elect. By all accounts, he was an enormous success. Investors and potential investors, as well as heads of state, were lining up to see him, along with members of the international media, who were keen to interview him.
The WEF has been a very important platform in the past for SA and other countries to market and position themselves to an international audience. This audience includes a string of world leaders, global captains of industry, international bankers and others – not just in business and government, but also leading figures in the arts, civil society and academia.
Davos is “a gallery of the global elite”, as Coleman puts it, “a one-stop forum for influencers and power brokers”.
It has been an important forum for SA ever since former president Nelson Mandela made a memorable first appearance at Davos in the early 1990s, before the country’s transition to democracy. It was there that Mandela outlined the ANC’s economic policies, reassuring global investors that this country would be open for business. That has been the theme ever since, although when President Jacob Zuma led the delegation to the WEF two years ago, very few investors wanted to see him and his team.
Technically, the South African participants aren’t really a formal delegation at all, though in recent years there’s been a more co-ordinated Team SA effort.
The CEOs who go, choose to do so, and it is not cheap. The WEF’s fees for business leaders are steep, and the costs of spending a few days in the Swiss ski resort can be even steeper.
Government sends a delegation of senior ministers, led by the president or his deputy, and co-ordinated by the finance ministry. There are also a series of individuals who are there because they have been selected by the WEF as young global leaders or social entrepreneurs, or because they are participants in WEF think-tanks or in WEF “communities”. There is, for example, a high-level international grouping of university principals which meets on the sidelines at Davos and includes the University of Cape Town vice chancellor Max Price.
The WEF, now in its 48th year, is, in essence, the creation and property of one man: founder and executive chairperson Klaus Schwab. He makes sure that it is a gathering of the great and good, brought together to consider the world’s big issues and to build co-operation between the private and the public sector. The theme this year was “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World”.
And, although SA’s new direction may have won it red carpet treatment, the country still had only a bit part on a much bigger stage.
Where last year’s WEF was notable for the keynote speech by China’s leader Xi Jinping, this year he stayed home and it was US President Donald Trump’s appearance – the first ever by a sitting US president – which made the headlines.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the opening keynote speech; his UK counterpart, Theresa May, also delivered a keynote address, as did French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Other world leaders to whom the WEF programme devoted sessions included several from the Middle East – from Jordan’s King Abdullah II to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told WEF participants that “Israel has always aimed to be a ‘light unto other nations’ – we can offer security, food, clear water and many technological solutions”.
Israel was more closely aligned with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and several other countries in the Middle East than it had been for decades, said Netanyahu.
He cited the stance against Iran as one element of common ground, and the desire of neighbouring countries to benefit from Israeli civilian technology in areas such as agriculture and water as another. “There is a great promise for regional peace in developments such as these,” Netanyahu said.
In the end, though, the formal sessions at the WEF meeting are far less important for most of the participants than the many meetings they have on the sidelines. They have many opportunities to mill about in the corridors and bump into people who are famous (singer Elton John was there this year).
On his return, Ramaphosa declared Team SA’s participation in this year’s WEF a “successful pilgrimage”. He said he had been encouraged by the positive interest shown in South Africa by international investors, who wished the country well as it entered a new era.
By dealing with impediments to growth – including corruption, dysfunction in state-owned enterprises and regulatory uncertainty – South Africa would position itself as an attractive investment destination, he said.
