Ryland Fisher
I do not agree with the EFF on most things, but I appreciate the way the pressure that they sometimes bring on a variety of players can force us to have uncomfortable but necessary discussions.
My differences with the EFF are not based on policies, but on their actions and strategies and the fact that they appear to have a different set of values for their leaders as opposed to everyone else.
The pressure they are putting on Clicks for racist and derogatory advertising of hair products will hopefully have the effect of making more corporates look at the culture in their organisations which allow things like hurtful images in advertising to slip through the cracks.
The people who allowed these images to appear on the company’s website and social media must have felt comfortable and protected in their jobs for them not to have seen the potential hurt that could be caused by calling black women’s hair “dry and damaged” and “frizzy and dull” while describing white women’s hair as “fine and flat” and “normal”.
Most companies see transformation as a hassle and not as something which could potentially boost their bottom line. It makes simple sense in a way: do you want to target a minority or do you want to target the majority? Surely, reaching a broader market could potentially mean more sales and profits?
Most companies only deal with transformation at a numbers level, which means that they carefully monitor whether they have enough blacks (African, coloured and Indian), women and disabled employees in order to improve their broad-based black economic empowerment (B-bBEE) rating, which makes it easier for them to do business, especially with government.
They pay scant regard to cultural issues which need to underpin any transformation initiative.
And hair, as Clicks has now discovered, is a sensitive cultural issue in South Africa as it is in most parts of the world.
Years ago, after the publication of my book, Race, which deals with issues of race and racism in post-apartheid South Africa, I ended up lecturing in quite a few countries and also did some work with corporates in South Africa, advising them on transformation issues.
However, I soon discovered that most of the corporates were not prepared to discuss transformation issues because it made the companies’ leadership feel uncomfortable.
I stopped doing this kind of work out of frustration, but I suppose, with hindsight, I should have persisted. However, it is difficult to pursue something that you are passionate about if it does not put bread on your table.
My biggest challenge was to convince companies that they needed to talk about transformation. Once they saw the process in action, they inevitably began to accept and embrace what we were trying to do.
I remember after one workshop, the chief financial officer of the client company came to me and said, “I can now see why this is so important. We should rather spend our money on doing these cultural interventions than spending money on employing people to monitor our staff demographics to make sure that we comply with BEE requirements.”
What I have discovered in my years of working in corporates and with government, is that the situation in most big companies is that they might have changed the colour of their leadership, but quite often they did not change the culture. It is a case of the people who live in the house first making the rules and all the others who follow living by those rules.
This is why, for instance, golf has become such a big thing with black executives. They are merely emulating the white people who led the way for them to assume their positions.
Racism continues to exist at many companies now run by black executives. It will not surprise me if the staff at Clicks and TRESemmé, whose products Clicks advertised through their racist adverts, include many people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds who felt that, in order to protect their positions at these companies, they should not speak out even when they feel uncomfortable about something that is blatantly racist.
I have seen many black executives adopting the same attitudes as their white predecessors in the way they manage people and that goes contrary to transformation. But, in their minds, this is what is expected when you lead.
Transformation means much more than demographics. It is about changing mindsets and attitudes. It is about creating an environment in which all staff – black and white – will feel that their worth is being appreciated. Transformation, by its very nature, will always make some people feel uncomfortable. For me, transformation is most successful when everybody feels uncomfortable.
I hope that the staff of Clicks and TRESemmé will have some uncomfortable conversations over the next few weeks and I hope that this conversation spreads to more corporates throughout the country. It can only benefit our country and our economy.
(First published as blog on this website on Monday, 7 September 2020)
