294: Ek speel net vir julle: Abdullah Ibrahim reminds us of what’s what
Dear friends
I woke on Tuesday to the news that the great Abdullah Ibrahim had passed on the day before. False Bay was wind-whipped; the Cape howling its grief. Bruised blue swells boomed off granite boulders, a marching band’s bass drum, proclaiming: a giant returns home.
It was also Youth Day. The day that commemorates the young people who, protesting for a decent education, were massacred by the apartheid state. A day for contemplation.
In the lead-up to Youth Day, I’d read Lebo Diseko’s The House at 6001: A Memoir of Uprising and Exile. I intended to start writing this letter, reflecting on her wonderful telling. In the moment, I decided on a different day which led to a different letter. I’ll return to Diseko’s book next week.
Mr. Ibrahim’s compositions became the soundtrack for the day, as I read his obituaries. Here are two: The New York Times and The Conversation
One commented that he had once been called South Africa’s Mozart. With respect to Wolfgang Amadeus, a more accurate description would be ‘the world’s Abdullah Ibrahim’.
Prof Melber’s remembrance recounts that “whilst performing in West Berlin in the mid-1970s, a few exiled Namibians living there visited him backstage before the concert. When on stage to play before a packed auditorium, he stopped after intonating a few notes on the piano. Turning around, he looked at the group and declared, ‘Ek speel net vir julle.’ (I only play for you)”.
As the day unfolded, I kept returning to the simple gesture of Pan-African solidarity, conscious that across the networks that call themselves social, fires of hatred against African immigrants were being fanned.
Those of you who have been reading for a while know that I occasionally step outside of the triptych of strategy, soul and self to reflect more broadly. I am not a political economist of any training, but still Abdullah Ibrahim’s gentle act of welcome reminded me of my (our) obligation to use my (our) voice(s). The result is that this week’s letter is double our norm. The topic needed the words.
Over the last months, South Africa, like elsewhere in the world, has seen increased rhetoric against illegal immigration. The mobilisers insist that they intend to ensure compliance with the law and no more. Yet, our context is more complex. At repeated moments in recent history, language like this has led to much destruction.
In July 2021, South Africa teetered on insurrection’s edge. More than 330 people were killed; an estimated R50.4 billion (US$3.4 billion) in damage was caused. The World Bank notes that the state-owned South African Special Risk Insurance Association which insures businesses against assets destroyed during social unrest faced claims of R37 billion ($2.5 billion). To cover them, it required an injection of R21 billion (0.3 percent of GDP) from the National Treasury. This was not xenophobic violence, but certainly it quickly became a vehicle for targeting the ‘other’ – in our country, collective anger can and has often escalated rapidly catching many innocents in the conflagration. We cannot wish this away. We must see its real risk.
The first step in effective strategy design is always, what is the context?
Any discussion of migrancy, legal or otherwise, must account for this context, must acknowledge we are a country that easily others others. The result: death, mayhem. However well-intentioned some of the commentary, moments like this have historically always, unequivocally, resulted in enormous cost.
Whilst these questions are of course moral questions, my purpose today is slightly different. Moral arguments ask, “What should we do?” They tend towards binary answers. But the questions of nationhood, of immigration, of building humane lives for all who live in South Africa, are complex challenges. They cannot be answered with a yes or a no.
The morality is also more complex than a narrow focus on legality. Every South African has tales of Home Affairs ineffectiveness, often accompanied, with a knowing wink, “I can recommend someone who can help”. I know of post-doc students arbitrarily refused visa renewals midway through their studies, of legal immigrant families, where two children receive their documents and a third mysteriously doesn’t, of poorer migrants, for whom each day’s wage is critical, who have spent too many in Home Affairs queues to no avail.
Every South African knows of a South African, born and raised, harassed because someone deems their accent strange or their skin too dark. This poison spreads easily. Still, for the purposes of clarity, I will not detail those any further, but they are there. Irrefutable. Moral questions that also require answers.
Those who press their case contend they’re merely marshalling facts. The truth. Today’s intent is to reflect on how strategic thinking can help us see more clearly in a moment of heightened emotion and recrimination (My position on historical and moral debt is articulated here and here).
Let’s start with two facts.
Immigration carries a real cost for the receiving country. Yes, immigration can and does create (often exponential) benefits. However, for migrants fleeing dictatorships and collapsing economies that’s unlikely to be the case. To say that illegal immigration has an economic cost is simply a fact. Add to this another reality, 43.7% of adult South Africans are unemployed, 23 million people, 38% of the population, live in poverty.
Let’s add a third. The tourism sector accounts for 4.9% of South Africa’s GDP, employing over 1 million people. 77% of all tourist arrivals come from the African continent. Several of South Africa’s largest corporations earn substantial chunks of their revenue and profits from their African investments.
Let’s pause.
In a 1983 Psychological Review paper, Extensional vs Intuitive Reasoning, psychologists and behavioral economics pioneers, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky described what has become known at the Linda problem. They presented subjects with this description:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
They were then asked which was more probable:
- Linda is a bank teller.
- Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
The majority chose the logically impossible answer: Option 2.
“Bank teller and feminist” is a subset of “bank teller.” There are fewer feminist bank tellers in the world than bank tellers. Fact. Our brains like stories. They help us make sense of the world. Enriched stories are intuitively appealing. We believe them, even when unsupported by data.
Statistics South Africa’s Migration Profile Report estimates immigrants to constitute 3.9% of the population. A separate estimate puts it just over 3 million, 5.1% of the population. Tellingly, given the narratives about illegal immigrants and crime, between 2017 and 2021, immigrants constituted on average 2.3% of South Africa’s prison population.
So, here we have a country where huge numbers of people experience unimaginable poverty, where there are illegal immigrants, but even total immigration is small relative to the population, a reasonable part of the country’s economic prosperity depends on the continent and we have an anti-illegal immigration movement in a context where similar movements have resulted in looting, massive destruction of value and the tragic violent loss of many lives.
What does the strategist do?
Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy reminds us to start by creating clarity:
“The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.
A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them. In contexts ranging from corporate direction to national security, strategy matters. Yet we have become so accustomed to strategy as exhortation that we hardly blink an eye when a leader spouts slogans and announces high-sounding goals, calling the mixture a ‘strategy’”.
The World Bank estimates that crime costs South Africa 10% of its GDP annually.
In 2025, Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana noted that R521 billion was spent on rescuing just state-owned enterprises from the consequences of corruption and mismanagement. The Foundation for Rights of Expression and Equality estimates that the money could have been used to build 8600 new schools, 2.6-million homes, and a police force three times the size of what it is today.
Thanks to the incredible bravery of Babita Deokaran, who was assassinated by a syndicate looting Tembisa public hospital and the work of equally courageous journalist, Jeff Wicks, who uncovered and told her full story, we know that R2billion was stolen from just one public institution. In this case, The Special Investigating Unit attached assets of R133 million, including three Lamborghinis, two Aston Martins, one Ferrari and a Rolls-Royce and despite this, Hangwani Morgan Maumela, whose name is at the centre of the scandal, is yet to be charged. (You can read more here).
In South Africa’s economic heartland, Johannesburg, residents frequently experience water outages. 40% of the city’s water is lost due to poorly maintained infrastructure. Across the country, R26 billion is lost for the same reason and behind it, corruption.
In other words, the strategist would already start to question whether illegal immigration is the critical lever to addressing the devastating poverty that so many experience.
Let’s widen our lens.
The latest Commission for Employment Equity Report tells us that 64% of top management positions in the private sector are held by white people, who constitute 7.5% of the total economically active population. A recently released study estimates that direct black ownership of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies sits at around 6.9%, and even if one expands the definition to indirect ownership, one gets to around 30%. The 40 CEOs who head the JSE’s largest companies earned a combined R6.7 billion in 2025.
Now, if we could magic all illegal immigrants out of the country (leaving aside whether that would be morally acceptable) would it make a difference? Yes, some. Is it where the country’s attention should go? Or does it distract whilst the true problems go unaddressed?
Think of it like this: Your CFO spends 5 days digging into the GL to disaggregate ‘other expenses’ on the income statement. 4% of total costs. All the while your gross profit has slid by 12%. Every complex system has more problems than can ever be completely fixed. Impactful leaders choose impactful levers.
Let’s make this real: at its worst, in 2024, national power generator, Eskom spent R33 billion on diesel to compensate for failing conventional power generation – caused by corruption and mismanagement. The Iran war triggered a 53.8% increase in diesel costs. Had the leadership of Eskom not fixed the underlying problem, diesel expenditure could have escalated to approximately R51 billion. Instead, at the end of 2025, it was only R6 billion. Of course, there is nuance in the numbers, but the strategic direction of travel remains: pulling the right levers generates outsize results.
South Africa’s democracy has had incredible successes. There are many people of enormous integrity working tirelessly in and outside the state. These are things to be proud of, celebrated and amplified (Yellowwoods CEO, Adi Enthoven’s recent lecture on this topic is worth reading).
Still, good strategy requires that we confront the brutal facts, and that we don’t get distracted by the soundbite, the easy answer.
Complex systems require contextual awareness, considered analysis and action. We must hold that we have done well, could have done better and confront very real threat. Remember, June 2021 cost 330 lives and over R50 billion.
You might ask, what does this have to do with me? Well, we all have voice. Many of us here lead organisations of considerable influence, what we say, or don’t, materially shapes the world we create.
I am sympathetic to those who say we don’t want illegality. But of all the illegality to address, which is most pressing?
You might ask, “Why these numbers?” Well, because corruption, economic participation, executive remuneration – these are things under our control.
The Eskom team eradicated corruption and mismanagement in a complex utility saving, give or take, R45billion on just one line item. Incidentally, Dan Marokane’s salary, leading one of the country’s most complex turnarounds is R14 million – a mere 24% of the median CEO remuneration across the JSE Top 40.
I’ve deliberately kept clear of the moral arguments. They’re important, but emotive and, as Kahneman and Tversky remind us, humans are meaning-making machines; compelling stories can make us miss the facts. This is true for any strategy. The dispassionate approach is even more critical in this moment, because the potential devastation is real.
South Africa has always, since Nelson Mandela stood in the dock in 1964, since Steve Biko wrote I Write What I Like, since Pixley ka Isaka Seme spoke of the Regeneration of Africa in 1906, stood for something more, has always imagined a world beyond parochial chauvinism. That spirit has served us well. Whenever we’ve embraced it, we’ve become better.
On that Tuesday that started this letter, obituaries complete, I picked up Antjie Krog’s Blood’s Inner Rhyme. Woven through it are the personal and political costs of not being seen, and of not seeing. She cautions: “To regard or disregard, probably the origin of endless destructiveness in South Africa”. For too much of South Africa’s life too many have been told they don’t belong. We know the consequences. We live with them. And that, my beloved friends, is a moral argument.
Karl
PS: For those of you grappling with which levers to pull, invest a couple hours reading the preparatory research done for this year’s News 24 On the Record. You’ll be glad you did.