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Securing a bridgehead in corporate territory
MARK ASHURST looks at a high-level course for those marginalised by apartheid
THE biggest challenges facing corporate South Africa are the general shortage of skilled management and the economic empowerment of people marginalised by apartheid. The University of Cape Town is hoping to address these problems with the only full-time management course for people with limited formal education in South Africa, Associate in Management (Aim). "The whole mindset of the country is in the balance," says Nicola Coombe, Aim director at the Graduate School of Business. She denies that Aim is "an affirmative action course", describing it instead as "a bridge for people who in a normal society would have progressed beyond their current position". David Plane, managing director of Gray Security in South Africa, which has four employees on this year's course, says its chief merit is in boosting the ambitions of his most able security guards. "I could recruit white graduates from outside the company, but I have used Aim because I want managers who understand it from inside," he explains. Modelled on the school's formal MBA programme but with more emphasis on group and project work, applicants for Aim need no academic record and are not required to take psychometric tests. Most have completed minimum schooling, albeit interrupted in some cases by anti-apartheid school boycotts, while a few have experience of tertiary education. The majority join the course from a supervisory position within their sponsoring company. For many, Aim is a seminal experience. Patrick Mngadi, a former supervisor at paper and pulp producer Sappi, joined the course in 1995 after 16 years on the factory floor. Within weeks of returning to the group's Tugela Mill in KwaZulu-Natal, he had been assigned to develop new working practices in collaboration with a chartered accountant. "I had never been exposed to higher levels of my organisation," he recalls. "Now I am recognised as a trainee manager, they see me as a changed guy who can talk about ideas." The 10-month residential course combines the usual business school curriculum - accounting, information systems and finance - with national themes. "Nobody in South Africa is sitting with the answers as to how to manage the situation that we're in," says Coombe. "Everyone is talking about transformation, but we are not used to thinking about the role of a company in a political economy." It is a mark of the changing corporate culture that many of Aim"s most successful graduates have a trade union background. Welcome Ntshangase, a former leader of the Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers' Union, was given a scholarship by packaging group Nampak to take the course in 1994 and subsequently joined the company as "labour initiatives manager". He does not doubt his company's motives for funding the R50 000 programme. "I wouldn't run away from the word co-option. For the first time I realised how much more the union could have achieved if we had understood management principles." Despite its progressive entry criteria, Aim's greatest flaw is its elitism. With an annual intake of just 40, and a hefty price tag, Aim caters for only a fraction of those who could benefit from it. With this in mind, mining house JCI, which was one of the 10 local companies to sponsor the launch of Aim in 1991, this year diverted its support to cheaper, workplace courses available to more employees. "Its all a bit utopian. Aim is a fine start, but it's really a drop in the ocean," confesses one lecturer. "And that is absolutely cause for despair." - Financial Times
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