picture: Sim Tshabalala, managing director, Africa at the KwaZulu-Natal Premier Service Excellence Awards.
Sim Tshabalala, managing director, Africa at the KwaZulu-Natal Premier Service Excellence Awards.

Our public affairs division is responsible for establishing and maintaining effective relationships with various Standard Bank stakeholders. This team of specialists ensures better communication and understanding between our group and our stakeholders. The division is also mandated to monitor the social strategy policy and legislative environment and to foster good relationships between the private and public sectors (public-private partnerships) in support of good corporate citizenship.

The total public affairs spend for 2004 was R18,1 million which was 39% of total CSR spend for the year. The activities of the public affairs division are focused in five areas:

public sector training;
Premier Service Excellence Awards;
public interest projects;
corporate subscriptions; and
election funding.

Public sector training

We underscore our commitment to good corporate governance by sustaining our public-sector capacity-building programme. This programme’s strategic objective is to provide leadership and financial skills training to political decision-makers and government officials at national, provincial and local government levels who work in a financial environment. We spent R2,4 million in 2004 on this programme.

Premier Service Excellence Awards

The Premier Service Excellence Awards is a partnership between six provincial governments in South Africa (Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape) and Standard Bank. The awards are aimed at promoting excellence in service delivery in the public sector and recognising those public servants who have gone beyond the call of duty to provide services effectively and efficiently in pursuit of the Batho Pele principles (putting people first). The bank has spent more than R4 million on the awards since its inception in 2000.

Public interest projects

The public affairs division, in pursuit of enhancing our bank’s public image, supports a range of initiatives and projects that focus on issues of public interest, including black economic empowerment (BEE), small and medium enterprise (SME) development, the strengthening of civil societies and promoting democracy. In 2004, we spent R7,4 million on a range of public interest initiatives and projects.

Some of the major projects supported in 2004 included the Gauteng and Northern Cape Premiers’ inauguration celebrations, development summits in the North West and Northern Cape and various conferences (African Renaissance, Coega International and Association of Public Accounts Committee).

Corporate subscriptions

In our efforts to build strong relationships with key stakeholders in South Africa, Africa and around the world, Standard Bank retains membership of several organisations and institutions, such as the Banking Council of South Africa and the Black Management Forum. We contributed R1,6 million in membership subscriptions to these organisations.

Election funding

In March 2004, we announced a departure from our lon`g-held policy of not making political donations and, in recognition of the country’s tenth anniversary of democracy, we donated R4,9 million to funding the national election. The allocation of the money was based on the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) formula of funding parties in proportion to their representation in South Africa’s National Parliament. 50% of the donation was distributed to political parties according to their representation in Parliament prior to South Africa’s general election. The remaining 50% was distributed according to the same formula, based on the representation post the April 2004 election.