Comment by mad_tortoise | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mad_tortoise | Hacker News Reader

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You are totally wrong as another commentator pointed out. Mckinsey knowingly incited and spread racial hatred for their personal gain, and pushed the idea of "white monopoly capital" so that the ANC could leverage that as a political point. The result being highly inflamed racial tensions on their part, not only this but they were paid by Gupta linked companies and organisations. The Gupta's, an Indian billionaire family, have been responsible for corruption of the previous president Zuma, and even had a term 'state-capture' defined to explain what they have done. Through corruption they have literally come to own large state entities, however this was stopped and they and former president are being charged with corruption.

Mckinsey was pivotal in enciting racial tensions, among many other things, to try to obfuscate what the president and Gupta's were responsible for in terms of corrupting the state, by blaming other parties namely "White captial".

The "white monopoly capital" was not incited by McKinsey, though.

What happened was that the Gupta brothers and the president received a lot of negative media attention for a series of very serious corruption allegations, so they hired UK-based PR firm Bell Pottinger.

Bell Pottinger spun a story that they were victims of rich white people who spread these stories because their wealth was being threatened. They also hired mobs for protests and ran twitter campaigns.

This did agitate some racial tensions, but fortunately they weren't successful thanks to the dedication of investigative journalists and some heroic whistle blowers.

Here are two relevant links: * https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-06-scorpio-a... * https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-07-10-analysis-...

Yes - to add, McKinsey does not do corporate communications.

I know some McKinsey types and they are the last people on earth to really grasp populism, field marketing, branding, perception etc..

You don't hire McKinsey to do 'online twitter / Instagram' campaigns.

You're going to have to link to something if we're to have any idea what you're talking about. The only thing in TFA that seems remotely related to this racial stuff is this:

They were part of a notably diverse group. Given South Africa’s historic battle against apartheid, it was a point of pride at McKinsey that more than 60 percent of the office’s 250 employees were black South Africans.

This doesn't seem like a bad thing? Should they not have hired so many non-whites? It seems unlikely that ANC would have needed to hire management consultants to identify racial inequality as a political issue.

>It seems unlikely that ANC would have needed to hire management consultants to identify racial inequality as a political issue

But a great way to convince white people that it's an issue

"Mckinsey knowingly incited and spread racial hatred for their personal gain, and pushed the idea of "white monopoly capital" so that the ANC could leverage that as a political point."

I'm sorry I don't agree.

I don't see the evidence for this - marketing, PR, communications is not something McKinsey has any core competencies in - moreover, in the long run it works fundamentally agains their interests, after all they basically represent the interests of highly vested, oligarchic, Western interests.

"have been responsible for corruption of the previous president Zuma"

Fully disagree.

---> Zuma is responsible for Zuma's corruption

And Gupta is a party to that.

McKinsey is the most peripherial player, and it seems they got kind of duped and eventually bailed.

If S. Africa wasn't so corrupt, they simply would not have paid McKinsey.

This is is the story of a corrupt and dysfunctional region - not a story about McKinsey.

Any organization at any scale doing business in such a place will get caught in these tentacles.

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