Sadly, unity of purpose and the drive to work collaboratively between the two powerful actors is absent. Yet this is what we need to make socioeconomic progress. Instead, the relationship between the government and business is marked by mistrust and tension. Former president Thabo Mbeki set up the Big Business Working Group, which included captains of industry, but dissenting views expressed publicly were not tolerated.

One of the ugliest manifestations of the animosity between the government and business was Mbeki’s attack on Tony Trahar for alluding to SA’s political risk. This animosity reached a crescendo recently, with various African National Congress (ANC) leaders and government technocrats publicly denouncing individual business leaders for daring to question the country’s leadership. Reuel Khoza of Nedbank and Michael Spicer of Business Leadership SA were among the casualties.

For their part, leaders of corporate SA have shown little enthusiasm for taking proactive action to offer a meaningful contribution towards socioeconomic development without being forced by policy and legislative instruments. Blinded by their obsession with the bottom line, business leaders are often inward-looking and have no sense of developmental responsibility apart from their narrow corporate social investment projects for brand projection, and are generally disconnected from politics and society.

Tensions between the government and business leadership leave unexplored critical social capital that the two can co-generate to advance SA’s social and economic development. Regular dialogue between the two can facilitate solutions to the country’s socioeconomic challenges and help position SA well in a changing global environment.

There are various reasons why relations between government and business leaders are at a low point. The first is that the ruling party resents the fact that big business kowtowed to the apartheid government and failed to challenge the system. The ANC still views big business as either a remnant of apartheid or of Anglo-Saxon imperialism.

Second, there are very weak social networks between our political elites and business elites. Unlike elites in culturally homogenous societies, where political and business leaders may have attended the same schools or socialised in the same private clubs, SA’s predominantly black political elites and predominantly white business elites lived parallel existences with different experiences.

Third, the governing party is generally intolerant of a section of society that has economic power and poses a potential political threat. Keeping business out of political issues is, in a sense, meant to emasculate it. This explains why the ANC has chosen to create a quasi-business association in the form of the Progressive Business Forum, to keep business groups on a tight political leash.

None of these obstacles is insurmountable. For these two actors to develop productive relations, they need not agree on everything. Rather, the relationship between government and business leaders should be based on respecting differences while seeking common ground to tackle some of the country’s major challenges.

The starting point to build bridges between these two important actors is to create a climate of candour by casting the dialogue initially on an informal basis and at the presidential and CE levels. It should be less solemn and rigid than the meetings of the Big Business Working Group that were regularised under Mbeki. Obsession with the past and the pointing of fingers are sure ways to stifle this kind of dialogue.

This article appeared in the Business Day of 7 September 2012