Even before this eventful week, the handwringing was getting more palpable. Announcing one’s return to traditional religion has become almost commonplace.  ‘Where will this lead…?’ or ‘How could it have come to this…?’ But when things are entangled, we can’t really say whether an election or some other event will deliver good or bad, ultimately. In the same vein, we can’t really pin the blame on anything. Systemic entanglement is not a new thing. If we paid more attention to the past, we would know more about it.

Africa’s longest defence against colonialism was fought by the Eastern Cape Xhosa against the British Empire. Despite vastly inferior war tech, they resisted the British for 100 years in a series of brutal frontier wars that ended in the late 1800s.

A young Xhosa girl named Nongqawuse was orphaned during the Eighth Frontier War, and went to live with her uncle Mhlakaza, a diviner. When she was 15, she and a friend went to chase birds from the crops, and claimed to see the spirits of the ancestors. Returning home, Nongqawuse told her uncle what the spirits had told her.

To win the war, the people should destroy all their crops and slaughter every head of cattle (the source of wealth as well as food). In return, the spirits promised to sweep the European settlers into the sea. Granaries would be replenished, and the cattle would be replaced with healthier herds.

For her uncle, just enough of her story rung true. The cattle were plagued by a lung disease that had arrived with the European livestock. He took the prophecy to the Xhosa king, who issued a command. A millenarian movement erupted across the nation and in a frenzy 400,000 head of cattle were slaughtered and acres of crops were burnt.

Tens of thousands starved or were felled by disease that emanated from the rotting carcasses. By 1879, the long-running resistance to British rule collapsed and the British colonial authorities expropriated Xhosa land.

Every South African child is told the tragic story of Nongqawuse. Some say it shows the danger of primitive beliefs in prophecies or the idea that we can foretell the future.

But the deeper lessons lie between the lines. They lie in the fact that 100 years of colonial war had deeply disrupted Xhosa society, including cultural practices that were seen to bring a return to ‘order’. When disruption becomes systemic, blame flies every which way.

• For more than a year, the failure of Nongqawuse’s prophecy was blamed on those who resisted the call, dubbed the amagogotya (‘those who refused to believe or obey a prophet’).
• Oral traditions attributed blame to Nongqawuse herself.
• Feminist historians blamed her uncle and the chief for taking her visions out of context.
• The liberals blamed backward thinking, and offered Nongqawuse shelter.
• The Marxists saw it as a plot by British colonial governor and arch-tactician Sir George Grey to manipulate the situation.
• Writing in 1888, Gqoba, a linguist with a vernacular understanding of the era, blamed the Christian influence on Nongqawuse’s uncle.
• Nongqawuse herself had equated Governor Grey with Satan.

In their paper on Nongqawuse, economic historians Helen Bradford and Msokoli Qotole acknowledge the futility of blame in the context of a peasant world view disintegrating in the face of a capitalising colonial order.

More than a century on, does something feel familiar? When disruption becomes systemic, it is no longer possible to ascertain root cause; and we can assume very little about what will happen next. Things have moved beyond the known order and nonlinear dynamics take centre stage.

When spirits wake up, deeper patterns are in play.

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Source: Helen Bradford and Msokoli Qotole. 2008. Ingxoxo enkulu ngoNongqawuse (a great debate about Nongqawuse’s era). Kronos vol.34 n.1 Cape Town Nov. 2008.

Image of Nongqawuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse

Working with Incite has deepened my knowledge of Shared Value conceptually, but more importantly has allowed me the space to understand my role and contribution within the company.
Kathleen Ebersohn-Khuvutlu | Senior Sustainability Specialist, Discovery                                                                                                                                                                   Systemic coaching seeks to reveal and align the untapped potential of individuals or teams. In the sustainability space, we specifically work with organisational leaders or teams tasked with – or passionate about – addressing societal challenges.                                                                                                                                                                                                    “I found Incite’s coaching invaluable. Nicola supported me in my wish to hand over the organisation to new leadership with as little disruption as possible.”    Lisa Garson | Founder, Action Volunteers Africa                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Drawing on local indigenous practices, as well as insights from Bert Hellinger and Peter Hawkins, Incite’s systemic coaching uses cognitive, wilderness and embodied techniques in pursuit of connected leadership. Please contact Nicola at nicola@incite.co.za. (Photo by Victor Hernandez on Unsplash)

Since its establishment as a small canning company on the west coast of South Africa one hundred years ago, Oceana has grown into the continent’s largest fishing group, involved in mid-water trawling (horse mackerel), deep-sea trawling (hake), and inshore fishing for pelagic fish. In support of their stated core purpose of “efficiently converting global fishing resources into shared value”, Incite has been providing advisory services to the Group since 2013, helping with their award-winning integrated reporting activities, as well as with elements of their sustainability communication and performance.

Our decade-long partnership with Pick n Pay spans strategy, training, reporting and employee engagement. We continue to engage with key practitioners and managers, as well as assisting with their sustainability reporting process. We were delighted when Incite intern Zandile Nkala was offered a job as Sustainability Manager at Pick n Pay in 2013. PnP executives and staff support Incite by providing interviews and insights for our research.

Philanthropic investment achieves more when it coordinates with the broader spectrum of ESG impact delivery. We assisted German development agency GIZ (SA) and the Raith Foundation with market analysis and stakeholder engagement to strengthen cooperation with the private sector. We’ve helped Corporate Foundations strategise their social investment and measure their impact effectively. Our systemic coaches help Foundation teams leverage their collective passion in situations where for-profit mindsets predominate. (Photo credit: Tayla Kohler on Unsplash)

With the publication of Porter and Kramer’s 2011 Creating Shared Value, CEO Adrian Gore found a name for Discovery’s disruptive approach to insurance. With recognised global leadership in Shared Value Insurance, we shifted a seven-year advisory partnership into coaching mode. Agile, on-demand team and individual sessions provide a thinking space to work on what is needed: the relationship between Shared Value and sustainability; tweaks in the operating system to activate the sustainability culture; and personal support for practitioners guiding the journey.

Peter Drucker’s Culture eats strategy for breakfast is profoundly relevant in the sustainability space. Culture is how we do things. It is governed by explicit and implicit constraints that shape our thinking and action. If we neglect to make these explicit, our best sustainability efforts will be compromised. If we opt to work with them, we access a set of influences we never knew we had. Our work in this space is exploratory. We begin with where we are now and agreement on which way is forward. We progress slowly in tweaks and nudges rather than grand ‘change processes’. If you are ready to take your ESG integration to the next level, we look forward to supporting you.  Contact Nicola at nicola@incite.co.za.

Incite’s relationship with the Ayala Corporation began with an invitation to address their executives and provide practitioner training in Shared Value in 2014. The organisation embraced the concept, and Incite returned to facilitate an in-depth Shared Value Innovator process for the Ayala retail banking operation, BPI. A year later, a follow-up process included additional corporates, such as Nestlé Philippines, tussling to share new insights through Shared Value Innovator. Later that year, chairman and CEO of the Ayala Corporation, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, addressed the annual Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York.

Michael Porter and Mark Kramer published their seminal article Creating Shared Value in 2011. Incite’s master-class was launched the following year and has evolved along with shared value theory, debates and application over time. Delegates reflect on fundamental concepts (the shift from shareholder to stakeholder value, shared value business models). They explore how operating models can evolve to make the transition happen more quickly. Innovation requires diverse perspectives. With this in mind, delegates undergo a crash course in Shared Value innovation by applying Shared Value Archetypes, backed by case studies from across the world, to the value chain of their own organisation.

Our strategic partnership with TFG has supported the sustainability team’s thinking and action since 2011. We helped them expand their strategic focus beyond managing ESG risks to exploring profit-led social impact. In 2017, TFG opened their quick response manufacturing facility in Caledon, delivering on their Shared Value commitment to local supply chain development. “Putting Shared Value into practice helped TFG boost speed-to-market and capacity, while creating jobs in a rural area and the economy as a whole.” Graham Choice, Head of Design, TFG Manufacturing and Prestige Clothing. Our current engagement provides an agile thinking partnership, supporting the sustainability team in strategy, metrics and disclosure.

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A five-year strategic partnership with Distell has introduced the Incite team to several functional and operational areas across the group. In 2021, a thinking partnership helped the Growth & Innovation team to position and focus the group’s Shared Value strategy.

“Your passion for creating Shared Value is infectious. Having access to your knowledge and experience has boosted my own learning, and made crafting our roadmap much clearer.”
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GIZ operates a powerful network fostering development cooperation in Africa and across the globe. The Competence Center for Cooperation with the Private Sector (SA) applies particularly innovative approaches to driving positive impact. Incite supported GIZ with Shared Value training (piloted in Berlin). Further engagement involved market analysis and stakeholder engagement to strengthen cooperation with the private sector in South Africa.

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Between 2005 and 2010, Incite was commissioned to undertaken various projects for UNEP’s Paris-based Industry and Environment Centre. These included contributing to panel discussions and initiatives on corporate sustainability reporting, undertaking a comprehensive global study on the development of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) indicators, and completing a review on Industry Sectoral Approaches and Climate Action in the run-up to the COP-15 Copenhagen Climate Summit.

Established in Mauritius 180 years ago, Terra is one of the major players in the country’s sugar cane sector, with related activities in energy production, alcohol distillation and distribution, and property and leisure development. Following a training and materiality process with their executive team, Incite was appointed to assist Terra in producing their first integrated report, one of the first such reports in Mauritius. We are currently working with Terra on their stakeholder engagement activities.