The recent report by the eThekwini Municipality Audit Committee on uShaka Marine World reveals that the entity is in financial trouble, and suggests various shortcomings with regards to its board of directors.[1] These findings are important given the widespread concern over local government’s overall ability to deliver services to citizens reliably, says Parmi Natesan, CEO of the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA).

“The eThekwini Municipality Audit Committee is to be commended for raising these concerns in respect of uShaka Marine World. Given the widespread lack of progress in achieving financial stability and acceptable levels of service delivery across the country, it seems highly likely that the same issues are affecting a number of our municipal entities,” she says. “These entities are at the coalface of service delivery and, at the end of the day, if an entity is not delivering on its mandate, its board needs to be held accountable and face the consequences.”

Ms Natesan says that the findings of the eThekwini audit report reveal several common issues experienced on boards. One of these issues is a lack of training. The IoDSA has repeatedly warned that directors need specialised training in governance and other directorial skills in order to discharge their duties properly, and that these specialist skills need to be kept up to date via rigorous continuous professional development.

The IoDSA currently trains more than 6 000 directors and prospective directors annually, and has introduced two professional designations—Chartered Director (SA) and Certified Director (SA). These designations provide a credible framework that enables directors to acquire the necessary skills through training, prove them through certification, and then maintain them through continuous professional development.

“The question of specialist skills also speaks to the whole nomination process, which we have found to be a challenge, particularly in the public sector. Too often, appointments are made on political or other inappropriate grounds, thus effectively setting the organisation up for failure,” Ms Natesan says.

She argues that board nominations need to be the result of a formal and robust process conducted by an independent and qualified nominations committee that undertakes the necessary due diligence on each candidate.

“It’s vital that only individuals who have the knowledge, skills and experience that the organisation requires are put forward. In addition, candidates should also enough time to discharge their board commitments, and lack of conflicts of interest,” she says. “This report demonstrates yet again that governance and performance go hand in hand, and that organisations are likely to fail if their boards do not have the ability to perform their duties effectively.”

ENDS
 
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As long as Government’s cadre deployment policy is defended, governance of South Africa’s state- owned entities (SOEs) will remain vulnerable and at risk, says Dr Simo Lushaba, Facilitator of Director Programs at the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA).
 
He was reacting to the testimony of President Cyril Ramaphosa before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, who acknowledged that “massive system failures” with board appointments paved the way for SOE failures. At the same time, the President defended cadre deployment.
 
Lushaba says boards are the custodians of good governance. When there is interference with their appointment it compromises the essence of good corporate governance.
 
According to King IVs sector supplement for SOEs, the composition of its board is a key factor driving the performance of an SOE. Like the boards of all organisations, an SOE’s board must have the right balance of knowledge, skills, experience, diversity and independence for it to discharge its governance role and responsibilities objectively and effectively.
 
The deployment committee, which the President described as overseeing board appointments to SOEs, should thus have been mandated to recommend people who were fit for purpose to be appointed to SOE boards.
 
By-passing the deployment committee
 
In addition, some of the SOE board member appointments, now being questioned before the Zondo Commission for their role in state capture, actually bypassed the oversight role of the deployment committee. “The question then is what did the committee do about it. It clearly shows that it is a system that lacks accountability”.
 
If any individual can bypass a committee of this nature, and it does not act; it can only mean there is no respect for the committee or its mandate.
 
Parallel structures
 
Lushaba feels there is a thirst within Government to exercise an undue level of power. South Africa was exposed to state capture because of the abuse of power. State entities failed because of the abuse of power.
 
Government seems to have satisfied its thirst by creating parallel structures outside of the established oversight Government structures. He argued that if the deployment committee was a structure of Government, as appointments are a responsibility of Government, the deployment committee would account to Parliament. He questioned why the deployment committee operated outside the oversight of Parliament when it carried so much weight in providing names of candidates that are appointed to such key leadership roles in Government and its entities?
 
Transparency and accountability
 
Lushaba says that if the deployment committee is retained it should be transparent and accountable. Its meetings should be public, similar to that of the Judicial Service Commission, which is responsible for the appointment of fit for purpose individuals in the judiciary.   The deployment committee should also be accountable for making appointments of individuals who display the necessary competencies and are fit for purpose to serve as directors.
 
“Without transparency and accountability on board appointments, the current state of SOEs will remain the same or it may even become worse.”

ENDS
 
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Cricket South Africa (Cricket SA) has lurched into yet another crisis with the Members’ Council rejecting the interim board’s proposal that the new board be composed of a majority of independent directors. The move by the Council goes against widely-accepted international best practice, including the King IV Code on Corporate Governance, and is probably indicative of the lack of trust between the Members’ Council and the Cricket SA board, says Ansie Ramalho, Technical Facilitator at the Institute of Directors in South Africa and Chair of the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa.
 
“The challenge that Cricket SA faces is common in the non-profit sector, small businesses and even some state-owned entities, where boards are often dominated by representatives of key stakeholders such as donors, communities, beneficiaries or investors. Stakeholder representivity might seem like a good idea as it gives stakeholders a say at the highest level, but in fact it is not ideal,” she explains. “Directors have a primary duty to the organisation itself—in this case Cricket SA—and not to the Members’ Council or other stakeholder groupings. Usually, the interests of the organisation and its key stakeholders are aligned but there are situations in which the short-term interests of a particular stakeholder may conflict with longer-term considerations relating to the organisation’s sustainability. So-called representative directors are often mandated to promote a particular agenda at the board which also increases the potential for conflicts of interests.”
 
For this reason, good governance practice for a company such as Cricket SA would be to have a majority of independent non-executive directors who are better placed to take a more objective view of issues, and to put the interests of the organisation first. This was also a recommendation by the Nicholson Commission of Enquiry in its 2012 report on maladministration at Cricket SA.
 
Ms Ramalho also argues that there is a good case to be made for the appointment of professional, career directors who have the governance and oversight skills necessary to discharge their fiduciary duties competently. The dilemma of non-executive directors is that they do not have the benefit of day-to-day knowledge of the organisation, and thus suffer from a “knowledge deficit” when compared with executives.
 
“Being an expert at wielding the tools of governance and oversight compensates for the asymmetry of information between non-executive directors and executives. Merely representing a stakeholder grouping or having had a successful career as an executive are not in themselves adequate for offering rigorous and objective oversight,” she says. “If the directors are not sufficiently independent and fully qualified to offer oversight and look after the organisation’s long-term interests, the whole system of checks and balances is rendered ineffectual.”
 
Ms Ramalho suggests that, the primary focus of the Members’ Council should be to ensure that Cricket SA has the best possible board, composed of directors with the ability to hold management to account competently and without bias. It is after all ultimately the responsibility of Members’ Council to elect the board members and it is therefore within its power to insist on a rigorous selection process that delivers this outcome. “That is the only way to ensure Cricket SA is governed with its long-term interests—and the interests of the game as a whole—at the forefront,” she urges.
 

News reports indicate that the suspended board of North West Cricket might be facing an application by parent body, Cricket South Africa, to have them declared delinquent directors. While the facts of the matter have yet to be tested in court, being declared delinquent is a serious issue and all directors should take note, says Advocate Fay Mukaddam, Chartered Director and Technical Advisor at the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA).

“On the face of it, this seems to be an issue that does not appear to revolve around looting or corruption such as we see on vivid display at the Zondo Commission. Rather, the issue here seems to be maladministration and the misappropriation of funds,” she explains. “This was only possible if the board failed in its primary responsibility to exercise oversight effectively, and that’s why it and its chairman may potentially be held liable.”

The basic facts are that Cricket South Africa made funds available for upgrading a stadium. An investigation by Deloitte showed that R2.2 million of the R10 million received had been used not on the stadium but on operational matters.[1]
According to Advocate Mukaddam, this misappropriation of funds should have been picked up by the board in the course of its normal oversight activities.

“In other words - and this is a point the IoDSA has always stressed - directors need to have the right skills in order to discharge their fiduciary duties. Being a successful businessperson or professional, or just a good person, is no guarantee you will be a good director,” she says. “Directors bring their existing skills, experience and personal qualities to the table, to be sure, but they also need to learn how to be directors. It’s for that reason that we introduced our Certified Director and Chartered Director designations to provide directors with a way to acquire the necessary directorial skills.

“Directors don’t have to be bad apples to be held liable for not fulfilling their duties—if they can’t or don’t do their job, they can also be held liable.”

Cricket South Africa placed North West Cricket under administration in 2018 on the basis that its administrative, governance and financial functions were not satisfactory,[2] a lack for which the board is ultimately responsible.

If found to be delinquent, directors face the prospect of fines or even jail time and being barred from serving on a governing body for a length of time or forever.

[1] Tiisetso Malepa, “North West Cricket board directors could be declared delinquent”, TimesLive (16 March 2021), available at https://www.timeslive.co.za/sport/cricket/2021-03-16-north-west-cricket-board-directors-face-delinquency/.

[2] Cricket South Africa press release, “CSA appoints administrator for North West Cricket”(13 December 2018), available at https://cricket.co.za/news/27470/CSA-appoints-administrator-for-North-West-Cricket.

In his recent State of the Nation Address, President Ramaphosa emphasised the deep negative impact of corruption on the country’s growth and development, with specific reference to the shocking revelations emerging from the Zondo Commission. The President noted that good progress had been made in rebuilding the law-enforcement bodies, and the implementation of a National Anti-Corruption Strategy.

“South Africans need no reminding that corruption is a cancer that is destroying the fabric of our society, and the recent scandals relating to the procurement of personal protective equipment have driven home how brazen the looting has become. But, at the same time, society is cynical about government’s political will truly to bring malefactors to book,” argues Parmi Natesan, CEO of the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA).

“Accountability is critical to rebuilding trust in the institutions of state and in government itself. It’s critical that the Anti-Corruption Strategy works and is seen to work.”

The IoDSA urges that government needs to consider the following in order to ensure its anti-corruption strategy actually works:

Is it well designed? “It’s important the programme is aligned with legal requirements and stakeholder expectations—it must deliver accountability in line with what long-suffering citizens want,” she explains. “Equally important, the programme must focus on the key risks to ensure maximum impact, and its results must be rigorously measured and reported. Transparency is the twin sister of ethics and accountability.”

Is it being applied in good faith? With the greatest respect, it is easy to set up initiatives but only few actually deliver. Adequate resourcing and a record of swift action taken against corrupt individuals indicate good faith. It must also be clear that initiatives are in place to make ethical behaviour the default setting across government. These would include a visible commitment to ethical behaviour at the highest echelons of government, comprehensive training throughout the organisation and a well-communicated anti-corruption policy. In a sense, government is the board of South Africa Inc, and so is responsible for setting the “tone at the top” and driving it down throughout the country.

Does it work? Any programme is only so good as its results. Government must commit to actively monitoring how well its anti-corruption programme is working based on a consistent set of metrics, one of which should be the incidence of corruption both in terms of value and number of incidents. “Government needs to ensure not only that that monitoring takes place, but that it reviews the results regularly to identify and remediate any gaps,” Ms Natesan notes.

It’s worth reminding ourselves of how serious the consequences of corruption and unethical practices are. They include lack of societal service delivery, and reputational damage to the country and the government, as well as their leaders.

From a governance perspective, corruption is essentially the opposite of good corporate governance i.e. ethical and effective leadership.

“A corrupt country will find it hard to attract foreign direct investment, inhibiting the growth of a tax base government can use to fund social-upliftment projects. Civil claims by parties who suffered loss as a result of corruption are also a possibility,” Ms Natesan concludes. “Of course, individuals convicted of corruption could face criminal charges as well.”

​ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: Stephné du Toit, 084 587 9933, stephne@thatpoint.co.za,  www.atthatpoint.co.za
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Testimony at the Zondo Commission relating to the prepayment of R1.68 billion to Tegeta, a company owned by the Gupta family, provoked strong words from Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.[1] Dr Simo Lushaba, Facilitator of Director Development Programmes at the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA), says the whole incident illustrates how seriously directors should approach their duties.

“Justice Zondo suggested that the directors were negligent at best. If we take that line of thought to its logical conclusion, they could be at risk of being sued for damages in their personal capacities,” he says. “Directors need to accept that theirs is a very serious job and that the stakes are high. Their only protection against decisions that are proved to be wrong is that they did discharge their duty of care, and made decisions based on a thorough examination of the facts and in the best interests of the company.”

Dr Lushaba pinpoints the lessons for directors as follows:

Understand your primary duty as a director. When individuals accept a board appointment, they are assuming a duty of care towards the entity, not to whoever appointed them or themselves. Their actions and decisions have to be guided by the interests of the company and its stakeholders.

Apply your mind and ask the right questions. In this case, the trigger phrase was “proposed owners”, which should have prompted directors to question why money for a commodity was not being paid to the existing owners. “In any event, you don’t buy something from the owner of the store, you buy it from the store itself,” he comments. “The most basic question was never asked—who owns the coal and why aren’t we paying them?”

Dr Lushaba emphasises that one of the primary duties of a board member is to ask questions and that there is no such thing as a stupid question. Directors are under an obligation to apply their minds to whatever is before them and to adopt a stance one might call “professional scepticism”.

Be courageous in discharging your duty of care. The fact that no directors dissented when approving this prepayment to “proposed owners” indicates that the board dynamics were out of tune. Directors must have the courage not only to ask tough questions but to dissent when a decision they believe to be wrong is adopted—a good director is an independent thinker.

An important corollary is the importance of diversity. Boards will not generate the necessary quality of questioning if they do not contain individuals with different backgrounds, experience and skills.  

A board is a collection of individuals, not a group and, crucially, directors are held individually responsible for the board’s actions.

Understand the interplay between risk and opportunity. One of the then-directors attempted to portray the board’s action as an effort to secure the supply of a necessary raw material. However, what seemed to be an opportunity hid considerable risk. The same point could be made about risks. “One of a board’s key jobs is to understand the risks the organisation faces and protect it from them,” Dr Lushaba concludes. “Directors cannot just look at opportunities.”
 

[1] News24Wire, “Zondo blasts 'negligent' former Eskom board over R1.68bn prepayment to Gupta entity”, Engineering News (11 February 2021), available at https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/zondo-blasts-negligent-former-eskom-board-over-r168bn-prepayment-to-gupta-entity-2021-02-11/rep_id:4136.

ENDS

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The Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA) welcomes the President’s emphasis in his State of the Nation Address on the need for competent individuals to be appointed in the civil service. The President argued that professional civil servants were vital in ensuring effective service delivery and restoring public confidence in the government. However, says Parmi Natesan, CEO of IoDSA, there is an equal need for professionalism on the boards of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) which deliver critical services to citizens and the economy as a whole.

“President Ramaphosa repeatedly emphasised the need for well-trained, professional civil servants and ‘capable, experienced and trustworthy professionals’ in order to ensure effective service delivery,” she says. “But when it comes to board appointments at the SOEs, we have experienced that there is considerable room for improvement. We have frequently seen political appointees failing the organisation—much of what is emerging at the Zondo Commission can be traced to inappropriate board appointments.

“Proper due diligence of board appointments will go a long way towards helping get our SOEs back on track, something that’s critical to rebuilding our economy.”

Given the vital role played by non-executive directors, the IoDSA has long promoted the need for creating a deep pool of professional directors whose competencies are objectively certified and who subscribe to a code of professional ethics.

In this regard, the IoDSA introduced the Certified Director and Chartered Director destinations that provide a framework through which directors can acquire the necessary competencies, and demonstrate that they have them. The IoDSA’s Director Competency Framework allows directors and would-be directors to acquire the skills they need to add value to the boards on which they sit. Holders of these designations also have to commit to lifelong education to ensure that they keep up with developments in the field of directorship, and that their existing skills are kept current and that they acquire new ones as necessary.

“Directorship is a professional like any other, and there is an urgent need to have a way of ensuring that only individuals with the right skills (professional and personal) and ethics are appointed to boards, including SOE boards,” she says. “Professional directors can also be held to account by their professional body and disciplined for deviating from the Code of Conduct they signed up to, making accountability much easier to enforce.”

ENDS

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The testimony of Dikeledi Magadzi, Deputy Minister of Transport, at the Zondo Commission has highlighted the fact that many in Parliament do not fully understand their role and responsibilities, says Advocate Fay Mukaddam, Chartered Director and Technical Advisor at the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA).

Ms Magadzi’s testimony concerned events in 2016 when she was chair of the Portfolio Committee on Transport. At the time, it was alleged that a R51 billion Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) tender had been rigged. Under her watch, the ANC members of the committee quashed a proposed investigation. During the same period, ANC MPs were instructed to vote against a parliamentary motion to investigate the Guptas and state capture.

Her justification for these actions was that she sat in Parliament only as a member of the ANC: I’m not in Parliament as myself, I represent the African National Congress, and will always ensure that I toe the party line, and that is what I did.” Even more tellingly, she said that even knowing what she knows now about the Guptas and state capture, she still believes that what the party instructed its cadres to do was “correct”.[1]

“Ms Magadzi is not an outlier. Many in Parliament simply do not fully understand the role they have to play,” Advocate Mukaddam says. “This is an issue that goes to the heart of governance in both the public and private sectors: understanding what a leader’s role and responsibilities are, no matter the organisation.”

The problem is common in companies, where directors frequently see their role as one of advancing the interests of the stakeholder groups they represent. This a mistaken understanding, Advocate Mukaddam argues.

“No matter how they are appointed, directors have a duty to act in the best interests of the entity itself, and nobody else. Only then are they able to fulfil their real purpose: exercising oversight over the executive and helping the organisation achieve its stated goals,” she says. “In many ways, Parliament constitutes the board of directors of South Africa Inc, with its committees playing a similar role in respect of various state-owned entities. No matter who puts them in Parliament, MPs and members of oversight committees have a primary allegiance to the country and its citizens as a whole.”

While a far-reaching reform of the electoral system is probably going to be necessary in the long term, she continues, we must focus now on educating our parliamentarians on the basics of governance and what their roles and responsibilities are.

“In effect, we need Governance 101, with the King Report as the essential guide,” she says. “We don’t need new frameworks or position papers—we already have everything we need. We must implement what we have and ensure that those that fall short suffer the consequences.”
​
[1] Jan Gerber, “’I represent the ANC, and I will always toe the party line’—Magadzi tells Zondo Commission”, News24 (8 February 2021), available at https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/i-represent-the-anc-and-i-will-always-toe-the-party-line-magadzi-tells-zondo-commission-20210208.

ENDS

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The recent testimony at the Zondo Commission by Dudu Myeni (former Chair of the SAA Board) and Yakhe Kwinana (former Chair of SAA Technical) should be a wake-up call both for directors and the government, says Parmi Natesan, CEO of the Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA). “Directorship is profession like any other and those taking up board seats must have the correct skills combined with independence in order to fulfil their duties,” she says. These fundamentals are:

Duties. The primary duty of directors is to act in the best interests of the company in good faith. In addition, they must act with care, diligence and skill. They are required to understand what skills they need and to acquire them if they are lacking. “This is non-negotiable—one simply cannot serve as a director if one doesn’t understand what the basic fiduciary duty is, and what skills are required,” she argues. “Board members also need other technical competencies that they should acquire.”

Advocate Fay Mukaddam, Chartered Director and Technical Advisor, IoDSA adds: “Based on board evaluations the IoDSA does, it’s clear that many board members haven’t even read the applicable legislation and/ or regulations, or even King IV,” she says. “Having a degree, great technical competence or having filled a senior management role does not necessarily make you a good director.”

Conflicts of interest. Because the conflict of interest is poorly understood, it could not be applied appropriately. For example, it appears to be believed that if an individual declares a conflict of interest, she can simply continue to participate in the matter. The truth of it is that if one has a material interest in a matter, one cannot be objective and must therefore recuse oneself.

Personal risk to the board member. As noted above, board members must execute their duties fully by acting in the best interests of the company with all due diligence, skill and care. If they do not, they expose themselves to enormous risk. They can be held personally liable for decisions taken without due care, and can suffer irreparable reputational damage—or be barred from acting as a director, as has happened to Ms Myeni, who was declared a delinquent director by the High Court earlier this year. 

“Directors should understand how deep this end of the pool is before they accept an appointment,” Advocate Mukaddam says.
​
The solutions to this dire state of affairs are clear. Government must perform due diligence on board appointments to ensure the right combination of skills, knowledge and experience, as well as the ability to exercise independent judgement. Directors should be obligated to belong to a professional body like the IoDSA which can hold members to a code of conduct, and should obtain the professional certifications to act as a director. The Chartered Director (SA) and Certified Director designations certify that an individual has a certain level of skills based on a competency framework and, most importantly, is required to keep those skills current via continuous professional development.
“How much more needs to go wrong before government changes its thinking?” Ms Natesan asks.
 
ENDS

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The Institute of Directors in South Africa (IoDSA) and the International Women’s Forum South Africa (IWFSA) have announced a long-term partnership aimed at developing the next generation of ethical and effective women leadership. The new partnership’s first project is a custom programme for IWFSA’s Young Leaders Connect initiative, the IDEAL Board Leadership Programme. The Young Leaders Connect is an initiative by IWFSA in pursuing its strategic priority of leadership development. The IoDSA designed the IDEAL Board Leadership Programme to help potential and new board members, and those wishing to make themselves available for board positions, acquire the necessary foundational skills.

IDEAL stands for Identify, Develop, Empower, Accelerate and Leadership, encapsulating the aims of the Young Leaders Connect initiative.
 
“The IoDSA has been a strong advocate for greater gender diversity on boards for many years, not least because genuinely diverse organisations perform better and are more profitable. However, sitting on a board in today’s complex socio-economic environment is challenging and directors must have the right skills, hence our drive to professionalise directorship,” says Parmi Natesan, CEO, IoDSA.
 
“The IDEAL Board Leadership Programme will equip tomorrow’s female leaders to take advantage of the real opportunities out there by being able to demonstrate they have the skills boards are looking for.”
 
The IDEAL Board Leadership Programme will consist of three modules that will count towards the IoDSA’s Certified Director (SA) designation. The IoDSA also offers a Chartered Director (SA) designation. Both offer ways for directors to acquire and demonstrate skills falling within the IoDSA’s Director Competency Framework, and thus provide a way to demonstrate holders have the right skills.
 
“We are very excited to have entered into this partnership with the IoDSA, which is aimed at the long-term development of a new generation of ethical women leaders,” says President of IWFSA, Irene Charnley. “As convenor of the King Committee and custodian of the King Reports on corporate governance, the IoDSA is highly regarded both in South Africa and globally. Its championship of a wider pool of properly qualified, professional directors, in particular, makes it an excellent partner in providing a training platform for the Young Leaders Connect programme.”
 
Futhi Mtoba, the Chairperson of IWFSA leadership committee directing the Young Leaders Connect says that the IDEAL Board Leadership Programme is an exciting development. “We see this programme as a great opportunity for our young women to begin acquiring the hard skills they need to make a real contribution to boards in both the public and private sectors. Young women have so much to offer, and a programme like this will empower them to take their rightful place, literally giving them a seat at the table.”
 
Notes for editors
Young Leaders Connect (YLC) focuses on identifying and developing aspiring young women leaders into ethical leaders. The YLC Lead Programme has four components:

• Mentorship and coaching programme
• Entrepreneurship programme
• Board leadership programme
• Digital conversation series

ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: Stephné du Toit, 084 587 9933, stephne@thatpoint.co.za,  www.atthatpoint.co.za
 
For more information on the IoDSA please visit:
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