Good afternoon and thank you for the invitation to speak. As mentioned, my name is Ashanti Kunene and I’m here because Cathy saw a recent poetic provocation I gave at the Systemic Investing Summit held in London 2 months ago, a provocation that has now gone semi viral on LinkedIn. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you find something to hold on to. If you have seen it, I guess you know to find courage for I am about to provoke you all with love.

Today is a momentous occasion for me because it is the first time I get to address a captive South African audience of organisational leaders. My Learning 2 Unlearn work often takes me overseas, because the things that I speak to tend to resonate more with your peers on that side of the ocean. In South Africa, because of the politics of respect, hard truths coming from a young person often gets misconstrued as disrespect. I was born a few days after Nelson Mandela was released from prison and as a young South African raised on the rapture of the rainbow nation and the narrative of democratic freedom, trust me when I say –  I am about to make the most of this opportunity to tell you all exactly what I think of  your CSR and your CSI and your ESG.

But please know that what I am about to say comes from a place of deep pride in being a South African, we have a particular flavor about us that cannot be imitated and whenever I travel I walk with my head held high. There is no place like home, and no other place can be home for me. So I just want to announce that because if at any point you feel some type of way or get uncomfortable, or you get hot under the collar please know that it’s ok.

That is exactly what I have been mandated to do, to come and touch you on your studio. But after Mam’ Busisiwe’s powerful talk this morning I think you will all be fine.

So to begin in true Unlearning fashion, I invite you all to take a deep breath in and inhale the privilege of being in my presence today. And exhale any illusion that your CSI, you CSR, you ESG have absolved you from the sacred spoken seeds I intend to plant deep in you today.

And may these sacred spoken seeds take root, finding fertile ground in the soil of your soul.

My purpose in life, as I have discovered it, is to speak truth to power, unfiltered and unafraid of the consequences because I walk with love, I walk with light. What you do with what I have to say is yours to deal with.

And my fearlessness in speaking truth to power began ten years ago during #FeesMustFall,  If you recall, the born-free generation came of age and we started asking critical questions about the nature of this democratic freedom we were born into.

And upon reflection, I’m not entirely sure what the grown ups of South Africa thought was going to happen, when there are no spaces for us to have open honest intergenerational conversations about the nature & structure of our South African society.

And so I stand before you today as an anointed witness of the impact of your deeds – not your words – but your deeds.

I stand before you holding not the freedom that was promised to me as a supposed “born free” but I stand holding a ledger  A ledger accounting for all the times  your CSR, your CSI, your ESG has largely been measured in photo ops in front of libraries built for poor children in the township.

This ledger I hold accounts for all the times you have spent small money, done big PR and then celebrated yourselves for being socially responsible.

The title of my talk today is called the bones of the business. Bones which I intend to unbury for you today  because I, I am the daughter of a sunset claused democracy that fed its children’s future to a neoliberal capitalism and then had the audacity to name my generation born-free.

So the gentle and loving provocation I have for you all today is that  your CSI, your CSR, your ESG these are all alibis for a continued capitalistic extraction from this land-

It is the gold coin tossed to the hungry after stealing their harvest.

It is the capacity to pay private school fees for your own children but then accept the unacceptable by building libraries at public schools where other peoples’ children cannot even read for meaning

It is supporting your offspring to go overseas to offer their skills elsewhere but then lamenting the lack of skills here at home.

It is the building of clinics on the one hand, while your mining operations poison the people on the other

It is the calling out of White Monopoly Capital, while you gentrify the township instead of abolishing it, all the whole celebrating the fact that you made out the hood into the suburbs.  It is the caucacity (which is caucasian audacity if didnt know) the caucacity of crying to Trump that you are suffering from white genocide in South Africa when we simply want to transform the diaboliocal fact that julle wit mense to continue to own most of the land and the means of production in my country.

It is the expectation of taking home multi million rand c-suite executive salaries, while you legally fight against paying your employees a living wage but announce your belief in equality. It is the fact that your dividends bloom from townships where children have no breathing room  It is crowning yourselves the kings of connection, while the people must trade bread for data or face disconnection

It is that your spreadsheets price black pain, where economic reparations become a decimal point in your profit chain

This is the necropolitics I bear witness to, these are the bones I have come to unbury for you, you who profit from the slow deaths of the very people you claim to uplift with your CSI, your CSR, your ESG.

From where I stand, Fanon has been proven to be prophetically correct.

You Black elites would rather mimic the master than dismantle the plantation.

I’m seeing black faces in old white corporate spaces polishing the chains that bind them to capital, instead of breaking them.

This broad based black economic empowerment has allowed you to become the gatekeepers of a deeply racialised economy and somehow you assumed that your own children would not hold you to account.

But here I am  and I remember Marikana.

Do you remember Marikana?

What of the bones of the business buried there?

As a young person of this country I watched a liberation hero become a shareholder of slaughter and then celebrated by his peers so much so that he now presides over us all.

God forbid you are a poor man in a free democracy.

God forbid you are a poor man in a free democracy.

Marikana cannot simply be a memory.

It must be a mirror to look into and answer: whose children must suffer as part of the calculated risks of doing business,

calculated risks you take in order to keep the monthly paycheck the white man pays you  A paycheck that keeps you shackled to those capital chains, you keep polishing because to break them is apparently too much.

Speaking of the white man, I see you. I see you clearly, beloveds. I haven’t forgotten you or your women. I work most closely with you for a reason.

You keep raising up the best of us into your privileged elite circles – using our assimilated greed as your shield against the swart gevaar you know you are owed  because you refuse to give up your privilege and power.

A privilege and power can I remind you, that was acquired through historical bloody force.

Please hear me and hear me clearly, the TRC saw South Africa celebrated as a human rights example for other countries to follow because you white people received a forgiveness that you never asked for,  and it was a forgiveness you did not deserve  because apartheid in fact was a crime against humanity.

The nature of ubuntu meant we could forgive you without you even asking because we recognised the humanity in you even if you have spent centuries denying us ours.

So at this point, that you remain so resistant to transformation is behavioural evidence of you disrespecting that forgiveness.

The longer you hoard land, power, privilege, wealth and the means of production, the harder you make it for your children.

And so I pray that you find the courage to soften your hearts,

Find the courage to reconsider being better ancestors to your children and their descendants and reimagine the kind of wealth you expect them to inherit from you. Because if you continue to be unaccountable today,  your children  will be made  to account for you and your decisions, tomorrow.

And so again, the CSI, the CSR, the ESG, these are all the things you are doing to distract yourself from the real hard work of transforming our economy and that means you can no longer hoard, that which was never yours to keep and enjoy alone.

Transforming our economy means you can no longer gate keep access to tosic corporate cultures that required you to forfeit your humanity to fit in and get paid.

The children of this country don’t need you to drive social impact,  We need you to drive economic transformation as a matter of urgency.

We need you to finally allow the sun to rise on these sunset clauses that have darkened our democracy and compromised our future.

So the real social responsibility, beloveds is to

Return what was taken

To repair what was broken

To relinquish what is hoarded

That I stand before you holding not the freedom that was promised to me at birth but a ledger accounting for all the times you have sold my future to the highest bidder  should be motivation enough, for all of you to reconsider  what you think your true social responsibility is.

That you have the privilege of listening to me today means that every buried bone of your business is accounted for in the ledger that replaced our freedom as the youth of this country. and you all – sitting here, hearing me – are now the chosen ones.

You are chosen to recast the story of these bones.

You are not being asked to apologize.

I am not interested in the guilt of your complicity.

I don’t care too much for your crocodile tears or about the fact it is probably very difficult to breathe right now.

It’s ok. Take deep breaths. Because I’m saying what I’m saying with my full chest.

I’m only here to summon you to become better ancestors.

And I summon you with light and with love.

The task, beloveds, is for you to consider your real social responsibility,  never mind the corporate organisations you represent.

I have come to sow sacred spoken seeds in you, hoping they find fertile ground in the soil of your surrendered soul.

These are sacred spoken seeds waiting to be watered by the white tears that come with unclenching your hoarding fists.

These are sacred spoken seeds begging you to unfrown your assimilated black brow to feed the hungry mouths that remain open in the hope that you will do the right thing. These are sacred spoken seeds that seek to soften your hardened hearts,  pry open your folded arms

And allow the roots of these sacred spoken seeds to plant themselves deep in you, growing into forests of truly reconciliatory repair of our South African society.

The bones of the business are now unburied and are all accounted for.

That you have heard me today means you are officially on notice as the chosen ones to go out and fix what has been broken.

I only correct the people that I love. So please, with all the grace in me Feel deeply held.

Feel deeply seen.

Feel deeply loved.

Know that there is no more hiding place.

You must begin to walk your responsible talk otherwise stop talking and sit down.

There is no more space for another verbal entry in this ledger.

You carry the future of our country in your hands.

It is you who will determine our freedom. Hold it well,  nurture it well,  protect it well,  guide well

So that it may all be well with us.

And with that, I thank you for listening.

Watch Ashanti’s full TRI Talk.