Angels needed
Gotta find me an angel
To fly away with me
Gotta find me an angel
Who will set me free
- Mick Hucknall, Simply Red
Recently I read an engaging book titled “Being Afrikan: Rediscovering the Traditional Unhu- Ubuntu- Botho Pathways of Being Human” by Mandivamba Rukuni and this quotation grabbed my attention:
“We Afrikans on the other hand [unlike Westerners] have maintained strong family ties, but do not use them for business……….When it comes to business we shy away and avoid working with family members.”
I ruminated on this for a while wondering if it was an accurate description of our state of affairs. Historically black businessmen and women in Zimbabwe have relied heavily on the family network to provide the vital venture resources of labour and capital. As I pondered on Rukuni’s words I was reminded of my uncle who owned a butchery in Highfields. He had a wonderful employee who for over ten years was at the shop through rain and sunshine and never stole a dime. In short he was the dream worker loyal, hard working and completely trustworthy, he also happened to be my uncle’s cousin (brother in Shona culture).
In pre-Independence Zimbabwe black businessmen such as Makombva, Machipisa, Matambanadzo etc heavily relied on family networks to build and run their empires. Today if you visit a certain local college that has branches nationally you will invariably find that all the staff members speak siNdebele. Such patterns are still to be found in certain Zimbabwean black owned businesses.
Despite the evident success of using family networks as an enterprise development tool a stigma has become associated with it. The general impression in Zimbabwean society is that when black business engages in this practice it is labeled as nepotism, which basically has negative connotations.
In its extreme the practice of using family and clan members has had a bad rap not only in Zimbabwe but Afrika in general. Nepotism has come to be associated with crony capitalism of the worst kind, corruption, incompetence and inefficiency. A quick scan of how Afrikan governing elites have used government resources and jobs as a means of rewarding political clients, family and clan members, shows the ugly underbelly of this practice.
But should we throw the baby out with the bath water? The answer to me seems to lie in the hypocrisy and double standards we seem to apply in using this term and the judgment implied with regards to white business.
You see it’s not only blacks that engage in nepotism, whites (and people of other lighter shades that are difficult to classify) also do it and far more extensively to boot. You just won’t here anyone calling them nepotists though, and even when the phenomenon is self evident no one will cast a frowning glance upon it.
In Zimbabwe and South Africa white business not only regularly employed the progeny of the owner(s) but filial networks where successfully extended around the nexus of country clubs and ‘white’ sports such cricket and rugby.
But this should not be surprising, business afterall has always been a means of providing for the family, albeit a sophisticated means. A vehicle for creating wealth to provide for today and tomorrow. The Oppenheimer, Rupert and Hertzog dynasties in South Africa bear testimony to this.
In Zimbabwe one only needs to have a look at the tightly knit family businesses run by those of Asian origin. Walk through Harare’s suburb of Ridgeview where most ‘Indians’ live and you cannot fail to notice the huge houses. Their size is not just a result of affluence but serves the functional purpose of accommodating the entire clan from grandpa/ ma to grandson/ daughter and their spouses, chickens and dogs.
This tight family background is also reflected in Indian business structures. I remember once visiting a highly successful school uniforms retailer and in his office I noticed portraits of his ancestors. He also happened to share the office with his dad.
Globally this seems to be a consistent pattern though applied with varying degrees of intensity. Its several generations since Henry Ford bequeathed his heirs with the Ford Motor Co. yet today the Ford family still controls the company. The Rockefellers still have a significant chunk of ExxonMobil the successor to John D. Rockefeller’s monopoly Standard Oil.
Australian born newspaper man Rupert Murdoch employs his sons James and Lachlan at News Corporation and being the world’s largest steel maker hasn’t stopped Indian born Lakshmi Mittal from working with his son and daughter at ArcelorMittal.
I’ve heard people calling Henry Ford all sorts of things but never “nepotist” ditto Lakshmi Mital and Rupert Murdoch.
It is my argument and contention (and here I’m in agreement with Rukuni) that family is a valuable business resource and contemporary black Zimbabweans and Afrikans have showed a poor ability to utilize it.
Research shows that Germany’s spectacular economic growth after the Second World War was driven by the mittelstand the small and medium enterprises largely family owned and which today are still the backbone of the country’s economy. Today thanks to the mittelstand Germany is the world’s largest exporter (just ahead of China).
The same family ethic is evident in South Korean, Latin American, Chinese, Taiwanese etc business practice. Again this should not surprise us because as indicated earlier family is the raison d’être of business (not profits as they teach you at business school!!). Family and friends are critical especially in the early stages of a venture. Early stage capital can often only be accessed from family and friends as they are the only ones stupid enough to believe you! OK that’s too harsh, they are the only ones willing to give you a chance.
In America the term used to describe these investors high on optimism is Angel Investors. Angels are vitally important to the enterprise development and wealth creation process. Angels in the American context are not just family and friends but often they are other entrepreneurs who simply because they empathize with entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
When two geeky PhD students with a goofy sounding idea for a search engine needed some cash they approached Andy Bechtolsheim. Bechtolsheim then a Stanford professor was also a highly respected engineer and one of four co-founders of Sun Microsystems. Without much fanfare Bechtolsheim wrote Larry Page and Sergey Brin a cheque for $100,000.00 not because they gave him a detailed business plan but because he intuitively saw the potential of the venture and as an entrepreneur himself he could see the same wanderlust in the Google cofounders. The ROI on that 100K cheque must be one of the highest in investment history.
My personal experience as an entrepreneur in Zimbabwe is that relatives provide very little support and often they are the source of negativity, hostility and ridicule.
I feel things have changed somewhat in the last few years. As the Zimbabwean economy has been in free fall it’s now more acceptable to strike out on your own rather than to pursue a traditional career route. Ironically I think this is one of the benefits that our unique economic chaos has brought. The flipside of this though is that the general understanding of “Doing my own thing” is the participation in speculative and ethically questionable activities.
I’m heartened though that in my personal entrepreneurial journey, I’ve encountered entrepreneurs with an exceptional willingness to share information and provide support to fellow adventurers. I guess there is something about finding a kindred spirit that makes people open up and be generous with their time and resources. Maybe with time this new generation of black Zimbabwean entrepreneurs can become an Angel Corps that provides an advisory and capital pool that other black entrepreneurs can tap into.
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Comments
I think it’s down to the particular family members, just as much as it is down to an employee. Are they diligent, reliable, industrious etc. The only difference is if it’s just an employee, one can just fire them. A relative on the other hand, well, they’ll still turn up at funerals/weddings etc- or avoid these altogether if they made off with the profits!!!