In this episode, we discuss some of the topics that have become the staple of this podcast, now.

We investigate how Africans can organise their societies using their value systems to reimagine different aspects of their existence.

This is a discussion very close to H's heart as you would have heard in the previous recordings. But personally, I find the arguments to be bordering on polylogisms, for the most part, which is essentially an idea that different racial and cultural groups and societies reason in fundamentally different ways or put differently, that different groups of people have different logic.

We can always expand on this discussion in the future recordings but for now, you can make up your mind on the debate we had with H on this topic in this episode.

And then something very interesting happened in South Africa two weeks or so after the recording of this episode, the Dischem scandal. For those who are not familiar with this controversy, I will give you a quick synopsis.

An internal staff communication leaked on social media on which the powers that be at Dischem declared a moratorium on the employment and promotion of white people in the company because they felt that they were not achieving their BEE targets in terms of the ratio of black people and the whites within the organisation quick enough.

This obviously sparked great contention, the nature of which would be difficult to summarise here.

But some of the discussions were around the diversity in the workplace, and how corporate South Africa has not transformed over time.

In this episode, GT introduced us to a study that was done by Deloitte which found that lack of diversity is one of the top reasons professionals leave their employment. We unpack this topic and I share with you my experience working at a black firm in Johannesburg, while on the other hand, H is deeply troubled by the adoption of the American concepts such as diversity to describe challenges that we face as a country that is a majority black country.

As the Dischem scandal unfolded, especially on social media, some white people announced and threatened to boycott and sell their shares at Dischem, and of course, black twitter being black twitter, a smalernyana campaign erupted in which every black person was encouraged to purchase these shares as the share price dropped obviously from this scandal and as some people disposed of their shares. And ladies and gentlemen, as I am speaking to you today, Dischem is now a black majority owned business! Of course I am kidding, there is no such.

But imagine it was, would that change anything about Dischem as we know it today? Will it really matter? And that is where the discussions on our podcast takes this question a step further.

To what end do we want this so-called diversity and inclusion so badly if a Dischem is going to just be a dischem as we know it today whether it is under black or white ownership and senior management.

Hence H believes that the barometer should be set a bit higher for a business to call itself a black business. Being a black business cannot be just a matter of pigmentation of those in governance and ownership of the business, it should be way more than that. To find out what H means here, stick around for the rest of the episode. Do you agree with his sentiments? Well, I don’t entirely agree with him as you will be able to tell, but this is much further in the episode.

At the beginning, as has become tradition by now, we start off the episode by discussing our respective weekends. And for the first time ever in months, GT spent the weekend doing some of his academic work for the PHD that he is doing, for a change, well done to him.

This conversation quickly takes a different turn, and it becomes about Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, the VC down there at UCT, where GT happens to be doing his PHD. These and other topics.