THE GATHERING 2026: Fixing failing cities is in business’s own interest, leaders say

Business leaders say fixing South Africa’s struggling cities can no longer be viewed as charity, arguing that functioning municipalities are essential to protecting businesses, their employees and the markets they depend on.

Business could not afford to remain an “island of prosperity in a sea of poverty” while South Africa’s municipalities continued to deteriorate, University of the Free State Chancellor Bonang Mohale warned.

Speaking at Daily Maverick’s The Gathering in Cape Town on Friday, 11 September, Mohale argued that businesses should stop viewing interventions in struggling communities and cities as corporate social investment (CSI) projects and instead recognise them as an investment in their own future markets.

“Because business cannot be an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. When business does well, ordinarily, South Africans do well,” said Mohale, a former president of Business Unity SA.

The discussion, with the theme “Should business be helping to fix cities and invest in them? Is there a return on the investment or is it a bottomless pothole?”, included Mohale, Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber CEO Denise van Huyssteen and SA Harvest CEO Ozzy Nel.

Mohale said the failure of government institutions had already created opportunities for private businesses. He pointed to the decline of the SA Post Office, where operational and financial problems had led to some branch closures, and the growing reliance on private healthcare through medical aid as examples of how private alternatives emerged when public services fell short.

But he also argued that business needed to become more deliberate about its role in society.

“I think business needs to disabuse itself of thinking that when it helps society, they’re doing corporate social investment,” he said.

South Africa’s relatively small population meant businesses could not simply rely on existing markets indefinitely, he said.

“The continent of Africa is 1.5 billion people. In South Africa, there’s only 65 million of us. So we’re not enough.

“So we have to create the market. Otherwise, honestly, where will business get its customers from?”

Van Huyssteen offered a practical example from Nelson Mandela Bay, where the business community has increasingly stepped into the gap created by municipal dysfunction.

She said businesses in the metro had moved beyond complaining about poor services and had organised themselves to address problems affecting their operations and the wider community.

More than half of the municipality’s rates and taxes and payments for services were contributed by businesses, Van Huyssteen said, arguing that this gave the business community a legitimate interest in how the municipality was run.