What doth it profit a man

I had dinner last night with Lynette, who is my primary colleague on the project I'm working on here, and her friend Sandy, who had been the curator of the District Six museum here and was advising us on fundraising.

Sandy and Lynette are both old lefties, as many who were part of the anti-apartheid struggle here are. They don't believe in unfettered capitalism; they believe it leaves behind too many people and that that creates simmering tensions that will eventually explode into social chaos. It's easy to criticize that from an American perspective, but Africa is not America, and not everything translates flawlessly.

At one point Sandy was saying, wide-eyed, in a tone of hushed disbelief, "You won't believe it but all they care about is money!" I giggled, y'all. I did. It was almost cute. I explained that in America, corporations can actually be sued if they act in opposition to the shareholders' interests. It is not moral or immoral; it is amoral.

But I have been thinking about it more and more. What if we were more shocked that corporations only cared about making money? What if we believed that the shareholders' best interests were served not only by a fatter portfolio but in a healthier planet, a more peaceful world and a more stable population? What if we said amoral is not good enough?

My dad sent me a piece the other day called "Why I Am A Republican," which I could just as easily have renamed "Why I Am Not A Republican." But one of the things that caught my eye was that the writer of the piece said he'd started his own business at 24 and was willing to work 60, 70, 80 hour weeks in order to give his family a better life.

What that really means is "to give my family more stuff." Because that's usually what we mean by a better life: more and cooler stuff. 80 hours a week is almost 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Who really believes his family was better off being essentially fatherless and husbandless? Who really believes his kids might not rather have had him at their swim meets and spelling bees than have him just be the signature on the checks that paid for their lifestyle?

South Africa is challenging companies here to have three priorities: profit, people and planet. It wants them to consider investing in its people and its ecology as important as third-quarter earnings.

It's a radical idea but it may be no less true for that.