The Relevance of the MBA: Is It Losing Its Magic? The MBA’S Importance to the South African Development Trajectory

The paper attempts to explore some salient issues concerning the Master of Business Administration Degree (MBA) with an emphasis on South Africa. It explores the relevance of the MBA degree to contemporary South Africa, after nearly 21 years of post – apartheid colonialism and, therefore, poses the question how will the MBA shape in 2015 and onwards as concerns South Africa and, is the MBA losing its magic. The paper argues against the latter proposition of the two questions posed, firstly from the viewpoint that the magic of the MBA may have been lost in the West given the sub – prime financial crisis that began in 2008, and continues even today, in a world that was rocked, shocked and devastated by unethical behaviour and, in the main this crisis was created in many ways, by MBA graduates in the United States of America and that too, graduates from the so – called ivy league business schools. In this sense the MBA has lost its magic particularly in the US and other European countries. On the other hand, when we analyze the situation in South Africa given the great apartheid divide, exacerbated by more than 300 years of colonialism, and the apartheid policies, we find that the human resources potential, financial know – how and management principles were denied to the majority black African citizenry in South Africa, which includes the African majority, and minority race groups classified as South African Indians and Coloureds. This is clearly seen by the reality that “more than 70 percent of management positions in South Africa are held by white South Africans and, the white corporations, institutions and businesses, who maintain this skewed distribution of the management skills base after nearly 21 years of democracy. This has impacted negatively upon the economy and the black population of the country in spite of attempts by the government to remedy the situation, but with very little success. In order to remedy and address this negative scenario the paper posits that the MBA degree is most relevant to the development of South Africa, in order to enhance the skills of blacks and to address the manifest problems that confront the country. The paper will explore some very important other issues that needs to be addressed also, that relate directly to access into higher institutions of learning. The paper therefore posits, given the crisis of access into higher education being experienced in the country, government must now engage the private higher education colleges and, form a compact with them, in the form of public – private partnerships, in order to deal with the vexing issue of access.