Unicorn Sightings: The Corporate Moral Apology in South Africa

Apologies by corporations tend to evoke a sense of unease: a feeling that the apology is inadequate, evasive or cowardly. South Africa’s recent past is littered with corporate scandals and disasters, in each of which those responsible have failed to apologise categorically to those they have harmed. This chapter discusses failed apologies in relation to some of the post-apartheid era’s worst corporate tragedies and fiascos, including the massacre of striking Lonmin workers at Marikana, the Tiger Brands listeriosis crisis, the implosion of Steinhoff, Tongaat Hulett’s fraudulent accounting, and KPMG’s complicity in “state capture”. It also proposes that in order to make sense of these failed apologies, it is necessary to understand corporate South Africa’s complicity in apartheid, and how it navigated its way into the new democratic era.