There is quite a lot of excitement and nervousness around the ANC Youth League march into Sandton this morning. I made a bit of a snarky tweet about the JSE offering popcorn to the marchers when they arrive which got some debate going, but on a more a serious note here are some of my thoughts:

First up – and I said it in my editor’s note in this week’s edition of Finweek – economic transformation has not happened fair enough or fast enough. There are some very real gripes that the Youth League are highlighting and as a country we need to stop waltzing around these issues.

Having said that, there comes a responsibility around these protests which I think need to be considered. It is an old line but are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

We can ask the obvious questions about whether the marchers have a desire to build businesses, are using tax payer money for what it was intended (National Youth Development Agency and ANCYL take note) and whether people are spending time investing in their own personal education and development.

However it comes back to a point raised by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan earlier in the week – if you don’t make the right noises for the international investment community there is not going to be foreign investment and the associated job creation.

It is one thing when the minister says something but it helps to try and bring it back to individuals to make a point.

Last night I was receiving phone calls from banks and other business operators in Sandton asking whether or not they should let their staff come to work today. Many had already taken the decision that staff should work from home (yeah right) for “safety” reasons.

Considering that many of those businesses are already under intense pressure from shareholders to deliver investment returns and they’re effectively writing off another day of productivity and probably another one tomorrow as we gossip about the “aftermath”, what is the cumulative impact at the end of the financial year when people need to make calls on budgets and headcounts?
How many people are not going to make a decision to work or spend today because they want to wait and see what happens with this march?

Ironically this march is probably going to have the opposite impact to what they claim to want to achieve.

If Julius and the ANCYL really wanted to make a statement then they would have brought the brightest minds in the organisation – and there are plenty there – and met Nicky Newton-King and the JSE exco on the steps of the exchange and committed to tackling the problem. They could have made a commitment that in the next decade they want to build five businesses which employ 50 000 people and in turn the JSE would be expected to go out of their way to help these businesses raise capital (local and foreign), list them and ensure a decade of genuine wealth creation for these 50 000 people.

Just a thought. Use it, don’t use it.