By Stephen Sadie, CGISA CEO
Corporate governance has traditionally been viewed as something that happens behind closed boardroom doors. It is discussed by directors, executives, company secretaries, governance professionals, regulators and shareholders.
But governance does not only affect the people sitting around the boardroom table.
When governance fails, ordinary South Africans feel the consequences. They experience it when water does not come out of a tap, when infrastructure deteriorates, when public money is wasted, when an organisation finds itself in crisis or when those entrusted with leadership are not held accountable.
In those moments, governance moves very quickly from the boardroom into the public domain.
This is why it is important for CGISA to be part of the public conversation around governance.
Over the past year, we have deliberately increased our presence across television, radio, print and digital media, contributing to conversations on some of the most important governance issues facing South Africa.
Our objective is not simply to see the CGISA name in the news. Media engagement is an important part of our broader responsibility to advocate for good governance, raise the profile of our members and the profession, promote the CGISA qualification and introduce more people to governance as a potential career.
Giving governance a voice
CGISA’s vision is to be a leader in the practice of governance in Southern Africa. We cannot achieve that by speaking only to ourselves.
When a governance failure makes the headlines, there is an important role for an independent professional body such as CGISA to explain what good governance should look like.
Over the past year, CGISA has increasingly been called upon to provide that perspective.
Municipal governance has been one particularly important area. We have contributed extensively to conversations about the financial and governance challenges facing the City of Johannesburg, including its deteriorating infrastructure and service delivery challenges. We have zoomed in on the very boards of the 13 municipal entities that were supposed to be responsible for governance. This has seen CGISA providing commentary across prominent national media platforms, including SABC News, Newzroom Afrika and CNBC Africa.
The significance of those conversations goes beyond the circumstances of one municipality. They allow us to ask the governance questions behind the headlines. Who is accountable? Do those charged with oversight have the appropriate skills and experience? Are governance structures functioning effectively? Are leaders being held accountable for performance? And what happens when sound governance frameworks exist on paper but are not translated into practice?
We also took this conversation into print. Earlier this year, our opinion piece, South Africa doesn’t have a governance framework problem. It has a people problem, explored the uncomfortable reality that South Africa already has sophisticated governance frameworks such as the King Code, but that those frameworks are only as effective as the people entrusted with implementing them.
Lifestyle audits have provided another opportunity to demonstrate how governance tools can respond to real-world challenges. Through interviews with CapeTalk, Power Talk and Newzroom Afrika, we explored lifestyle audits as a mechanism for identifying unexplained wealth, mitigating corruption risk and strengthening accountability, while also emphasising that lifestyle audits seemed to have no follow up or consequence. Government departments seemed to pay lip service to lifestyle audits.
The governance turmoil at the Public Investment Corporation, Africa’s largest asset manager, again demonstrated why informed governance voices are necessary when complex institutional issues enter the public arena. Through engagements including Kaya FM and Channel Africa, we were able to look beyond the personalities involved and consider the wider questions of board independence, political interference, due process, accountability, institutional stability and public trust.
The issues change. The underlying governance questions often do not.
Our role is not simply to criticise when things go wrong. It is to help people understand why they went wrong, which governance mechanisms should have been in place, where accountability sits and what could be done differently.
Governance can sometimes appear abstract. Terms such as accountability, fiduciary responsibility, ethical leadership, oversight and transparency are familiar to those working within the profession, but their importance becomes much clearer when they are connected to events affecting people’s everyday lives.
The media allows us to make those connections.
Raising the profile of the profession
There is another important reason why CGISA needs to be visible. We need more people to understand what company secretaries and governance professionals actually do.
Despite the increasing complexity of governance, the company secretary is sometimes still misunderstood as an administrative position concerned primarily with agendas, minutes and statutory requirements. Our members know that the reality is very different.
Today’s company secretary and governance professional operates at the heart of organisational decisionmaking. They advise boards, interpret governance frameworks, navigate regulatory requirements, support ethical leadership, identify governance risks and, at times, have to ask difficult questions when others would prefer not to.
Our media activity has therefore also deliberately created opportunities to talk about the profession itself. We joined SAfm’s The Full Circle to discuss the role of the company secretary and why this position is so important to effective governance. Radio Veritas’ Business 360 similarly provided an opportunity to discuss corporate governance within SMEs and the role of the company secretary and governance professional.
Our engagements have given us further opportunities to explain South Africa’s evolving governance landscape and the role governance professionals can and should play in helping organisations understand and apply sound governance principles.
When CGISA participates in these discussions, we are doing more than commenting on an individual story or development. We are demonstrating the relevance of the profession.
We are showing organisations why they need skilled governance professionals and why those professionals need to be properly qualified, empowered and respected.
Raising the profile of our members
We have seen our members contributing their expertise to the public conversation. Elsabé Kirsten, FCG, and Charmaine Mazini-Obe, ACG, for example, have participated in radio discussions on the role of governance professionals internationally. Karen Goldstone-Hoffman (FCG) provided commentary following the 16 Premier Corporate Governance Conference th on Newzroom Afrika.
We would like to see more of this.
CGISA has an extraordinary reservoir of governance knowledge within its membership. Daily, our company secretaries and governance professionals deal with board dynamics, regulatory requirements, ethics, risk, compliance, remuneration policy, sustainability, artificial intelligence and many of the issues that eventually find their way into the headlines.
When the media is looking for someone who can explain what is happening inside a boardroom, unpack a governance failure or provide perspective on an emerging governance issue, we want them to think of our members.
The more our members’ voices are heard, the stronger the profession becomes.
When employers, boards, executives and recruiters understand the complexity and importance of governance, they are better able to understand the value that a suitably qualified company secretary and governance professional brings to an organisation.
Our ACGs and FCGs should be recognised not simply as people who have completed a qualification, but as professionals who have demonstrated the knowledge, experience and commitment required to operate at a high level within organisations.
We would like organisations to understand why having the right governance expertise around the table matters. We would like boards to appreciate the value of an appropriately qualified company secretary. We would like recruiters to recognise CGISA designations. And we would like our members to increasingly be recognised as authoritative voices on governance issues.
Building that recognition takes time. It requires education, advocacy, thought leadership and consistent visibility. Media engagement is an important part of that work.
Creating the next generation of governance professionals
Perhaps one of the less obvious benefits of our growing media presence is its contribution to building the next generation of governance professionals.
Ask a young person to name ten careers, and they will probably mention professions such as law, accounting, medicine, engineering, marketing or technology long before they mention corporate governance.
Part of the challenge is simply awareness. You cannot choose a career you do not know exists. That is why promoting the CGISA qualification cannot be separated from promoting the profession itself.
When someone hears a CGISA representative discussing a governance crisis on the radio during their morning commute, sees us being interviewed on television, encounters our commentary in a newspaper or business publication, or reads our perspective online, they are also being introduced to the world of governance.
Some of those people may begin asking questions.
Who advises a board on these issues? What does a company secretary actually do? How do you become a governance professional? What do you study? What qualification do you need?
Those questions matter.
CGISA offers a professional corporate governance qualification that develops people capable of operating in increasingly complex governance environments. But before someone decides to study towards that qualification, they first need to see and understand the career that lies beyond it. Making governance visible helps make that career visible too.
More than media coverage
Artificial intelligence is changing the nature of board oversight. Cybersecurity presents increasingly complex risks. Sustainability and climate-related responsibilities are evolving. Infrastructure and municipal governance remain pressing national concerns. Corruption continues to test our institutions. King V™ is reshaping conversations around governance practice. Boards are facing growing expectations around accountability, transparency and ethical leadership.
Governance is no longer a specialist conversation taking place quietly behind boardroom doors. Increasingly, it is part of the national conversation.
CGISA needs to be there.
We need to continue explaining what good governance looks like. We need to challenge governance failures constructively. We need to help the public understand why governance matters. We need to showcase the expertise of our members and create opportunities for their voices to be heard.
And we need to ensure that the next generation sees governance not simply as something they read about when an organisation makes the headlines for the wrong reasons, but as a profession in which they can build a meaningful and increasingly important career.
Ultimately, raising the profile of CGISA is not an end in itself.
It is about raising the profile of the profession. It is about ensuring that organisations recognise the value of qualified company secretaries and governance professionals. It is about raising the profile of our members and their value and expertise. It is about encouraging the next generation to consider corporate governance as a career.
And, most importantly, it is about making the case for good governance beyond the boardroom.
