The shenanigans that are currently playing themselves out at Alexander Forbes have left me baffled. My view is that Sello Moloko, and anyone who agrees with his appointment as non-executive chairman, are out of order, and are creating divisions in black business circles. Unity among black business professionals is needed now more than ever in the light of slow transformation.

The shenanigans that are currently playing themselves out at Alexander Forbes have left me baffled. My view is that Sello Moloko, and anyone who agrees with his appointment as non-executive chairman, are out of order, and are creating divisions in black business circles. Unity among black business professionals is needed now more than ever in the light of slow transformation.

South Africans cannot afford a situation where the BMF and Absip are at loggerheads over racial transformation in the financial services sector, particularly in the higher echelons of power.

This is the second time that we are witnessing public disagreements on matters of transformation. The first was when presidents of these two organisations presented different views on the progress of transformation in relation to the Financial Services Charter, which they are both signatories of.

We had the BMF president saying that the charter should be scrapped, while the Absip president presented a tangent view. While I respect that these are two autonomous organisations with slightly different constituencies, it is important that they speak to one another and agree on matters of principle.

Black people cannot be comfortable with the role of chairmen while their white counterparts are chief executives. A chairman's role is merely ceremonial, after all.

Ike Kekana, Polokwane