In the vigorous buzz created by all the industrial, retail and service businesses financed by Business Partners Limited throughout South Africa, it is easy to forget just how embedded the financier’s activities are in the national effort to contribute to human rights as a way of life in the country.
If you read between the lines of all the spreadsheets predicting profitability and business growth for the myriad of Business Partners Limited clients, you can discern an organisation committed to restoring dignity and freedom to all South Africans, says David Morobe, Executive General Manager for Impact Investing at Business Partners Limited. David believes that Human Rights Day, which is celebrated on 21 March, is a good opportunity for South Africans to reflect how the efforts of entrepreneurs to grow their businesses is deeply rooted in cultivating a culture that respects and promotes the right to pursue opportunity and thereby an equitable society.
Human Rights Day is commemorated annually on the date of the Sharpeville massacre, where 69 people died and 180 were wounded when police fired on a peaceful crowd protesting against pass laws. The day captures the essence of the struggle of South Africans for an inclusive, non-racial democracy. Human Rights Day celebrates the full range of rights won through that struggle, from the right to human dignity, language and culture, equality, life, education, and the right to vote.
But for David it is significant that the Sharpeville protest at its core was driven by economic concerns – for the right to live, work, trade, settle and prosper anywhere in the country, all of which the pass laws tried to stifle by corralling millions into impoverished corners of South Africa.
“It reminds us how much of an economic struggle the human-rights movement is in South Africa today,” says David. The right to work and the right to dignity may be on the statute books and in the hearts of the current generation of South Africans, but it will struggle to take root as long as there is not enough work for everyone, and as long as the freedom to trade does not lead to the creation of intergenerational wealth for everyone.
Business Partners Limited sees its core function as nurturing the ventures of all South Africans who bring to life our hard-won freedom to trade by growing their own businesses. Each of those ventures is a means to create wealth, jobs and income, turning the theoretical right to a decent standard of living into practical reality.
Just one example of human rights in action in this way is that of Tshepo Letjane, an entrepreneur from Soshanguve, Pretoria, who grew up in Mpumalanga in such poverty that he never went to school until his teenage years. But with the freedom to trade and work that was entrenched at the end of apartheid, Tshepo’s efforts to pull himself out of poverty blossomed.
He started businesses in the security and construction industries and by the time he approached Business Partners Limited for finance, he had already invested R20m of his own money into a residential development in Soshanguve. The nearby Tshwane University of Technology had asked him to convert the development into much-needed student accommodation. Business Partners Limited financed further phases of the project to the tune of R38 million, and today the Shaka Residence accommodates more than a thousand students.
This illustrates how only one finance intervention from Business Partners Limited, combined with the entrepreneurial energy of one South African, can multiply and facilitate the right to education, housing and dignity for hundreds of students.
David says Business Partners Limited goes beyond viewing these positive outcomes as incidental, but specifically aims to be an impact investor, meaning that it purposefully seeks out businesses and projects that generate positive social and environmental outcomes alongside financial returns. Business Partners Limited actively invests in black and female entrepreneurs, as well as tracks its investments in education and renewable energy initiatives.
“In addition, we subscribe to the philosophy of Ubuntu, which emphasises a set of values among which are common good, human dignity as well as consensus, tolerance and mutual respect,” says David.
This is in sync with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which advocates for recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
We wish you a restful Human Rights Day!
About the Author: David Morobe
