Thinking about coordinated social responsibility

MTC, Namibia‘s leading telecommunications giant, has been leading by example in the implementation of corporate social responsibility in ways that are unmatched.

If you want to understand the impact of MTC‘s corporate social responsibility, you only need to assess the impact of MTC‘s withdrawal from the football and music industries.

The impact of the withdrawal was felt by all and sundry. Particularly those whose sectors were sponsored felt the impact on their livelihoods.

Although criticising him at times, MTC’s Tim Ekandjo had a unique strategy of not only spearheading corporate responsibility but also using MTC‘s intervention for giving directions and, at times, castigating the leadership of the sponsored sectors.

Those who criticised him for being an overzealous fellow, having leadership ambitions, or wanting to lead in a sector in which he is not employed, missed the point that some of these sports codes have long been captured by cartels, and by their very nature, cartels only succumb to power and a threat to their interests.

The intervention of MTC on this score served as a unique soundboard and opportunity to tell the truth, which would otherwise not be told.

Another angle to look at MTC’s withdrawal from music and sports is the realisation that the leaders of the sectors being sponsored were as lazy as children dependent on their parents.

This child takes no initiative, knowing that the parents will always be there. These leaders were thus exposed as dwarfs depending on MTC’s ‘samaritanship’.

Without the withdrawal, these leaders would have gone into retirement being praised for strategic leadership and foresight that had nothing to do with their tin brains. It was an opportunity to test leadership. In other words, what would a leader do in an environment that is divorced of granted resources?

Should he survive? Is he capable of innovation? Does he deserve to be in that position, and does he add value to the position and the organisation? Although the withdrawal had a negative socio-economic impact, particularly for the end-user, i.e., the musician or soccer player and their relatives, it assisted us in testing our institutions. It is indeed unfortunate that we would use a tragedy for purposes of measurement and assessment of leadership capabilities, but as they say in a crisis, it is an embedded opportunity.

Today, we are concerned about the overall national strategy on social responsibility. Because of time, we will not go into detailed definitions.

We simply view social responsibility as interventions and social supports that corporate organisations give to society for the purposes of addressing a social need, outcome or gap.

At present, companies are allowed to invest and contribute in whatever sector they so wish to contribute. It does not matter whether there are other five or six companies already in the same sector. It is for this reason that you find that an orphanage would have received assistance from 10 different organisations, while a similar one in another region has never received any assistance.

But the question may be asked: Who’s responsibility is it? Is it the responsibility of a corporate company to see who has given an organisation this or that in the past when it has done an assessment that investing in this organisation or giving that particular support to that organisation would assist in attaining the stated objectives and improve the profile of that company?

The answer to this question is what today’s column seeks to address. We must indeed find a way to have a nationally coordinated strategy to guide corporate social responsibility investments. It is not only important from the perspective of monitoring and evaluating social development. It is equally important to avoid duplication and over-concentration of resources, some of which are public, into one organisation or sector at the expense of others.

We now have an opportunity with the so-called state-owned enterprise (SOE) ownership policy, which is apparently in circulation, to properly coordinate and regulate corporate social responsibility.

This regulation is not meant to dictate, but to ensure equity and equality of both opportunity and outcome in the context of measurable and impactful socio-economic development. The question I leave you with today is to think and ponder how we can do this. In the meantime, let’s all get a copy of this so-called SOE ownership policy to study the content context in character with a view to seeing if ideas expressed herein can be inserted.

* Muthoni waKongola is a native of Kongola in the Zambezi Region primarily concerned with analysing society and offering ideas for a better Namibia. She is reachable at [email protected] or @wakongola on Twitter / X.