Transformation on Trial – Part 5: Awakening the Subconscious

When I first began Transformation on Trial, I thought I was writing a one-off article—an observation, a reflection, a provocation. But soon after publishing the first piece, I received a phone call from someone in the corporate sector who said, “This can’t just be one article—you need to make it a series.” That phone call echoed what so many others were already thinking but had not voiced: transformation is not a side conversation anymore; it must be central.

What struck me early on was how many Black professionals responded with agreement—some even said relief. “You’re saying what I’ve been thinking for years,” many told me. These were people who had been walking around with unspoken truths, held in place by fear, institutional silence, or simply the fatigue of having the same conversation for decades. To them, the series wasn’t controversial—it was liberating.

But when I published Part Four—where I explored the uncomfortable idea that some of the corruption and dysfunction in CSI today is emerging from within Black leadership—I received a very different kind of feedback. This time, some of the same people who praised my earlier work said, “You’re promoting stereotypes. You’re feeding a narrative that harms us.”

And I understood their discomfort.

I wasn’t writing from a place of judgement. I was writing from a place of concern. My intention wasn’t to shame—it was to shine a light on how systems of oppression don’t just live outside of us, they begin to live inside us too. And unless we confront that, we cannot truly transform.

These aren’t new conversations. They’re buried conversations—lodged in the subconscious of a sector, a country, a generation.

Let me explain what I mean through a story.

Years ago, we launched the Masokhulu Indoor Toilet Project, inspired by a horrific incident: an 83-year-old woman in a rural village was raped late at night while walking to use her pit toilet. The man who attacked her—originally attempting to rob her—ended up raping her repeatedly. She passed away six months later.

We built her an indoor toilet, and then began building others. One was for a woman whose daughter is a prominent school principal in Johannesburg. When this principal heard that we had built a toilet for her mother back home, she phoned me. Her words still ring in my ears: “It never even crossed my mind to build one for her. That’s just how we grew up.”

This was a woman living a modern life, in a modern city, driving a luxury car. Yet, the reality of an outdoor toilet in her childhood home had never struck her as odd. It was normal. It was accepted. It was subconscious.

But once the indoor toilet was installed, everything shifted. She added a bath. Then she upgraded the kitchen. Then she installed running water. The change was rapid. Why? Because the awakening had occurred. The subconscious norm had been disrupted.

That’s what Transformation on Trial is really about: disrupting the subconscious. We’re saying to the CSI sector: let’s stop operating on autopilot. Let’s question the projects we fund, the people we support, the strategies we repeat year after year.

I recently received a call from Reana Rossouw who asked: “What’s the purpose of this series?” I told her plainly: the end goal is a collective call to action. It’s 50 by 50—a national objective to ensure that by 2050, at least 50% of CSI-funded supply chain initiatives are Black-led, women-led, disability-centred, and based in rural areas.

But we can’t reach 50 by 50 with surface-level commitments. We need to go deeper.

That means recognising that many of the decisions being made in CSI today—consciously or unconsciously—are still shaped by apartheid-era thinking. Most people in CSI leadership today, Black and white, have internalised the logic of a system built on exclusion. That’s not a moral failing. It’s a historical reality. But it does become a failing if we continue to operate without awareness.

Craig Wilson, who testified at the TRC, once said that everything from South Africa’s weapons and propaganda to its banking and education systems were upheld by private industry. White corporates weren’t just bystanders—they were beneficiaries and enablers of apartheid. To this day, many claim, “We didn’t benefit directly.” But that misses the point. The point is that Black people were denied the opportunity to even participate. That denial is still playing itself out today.

If we are to truly transform, we need to awaken—not just politically, but psychologically. We must stop assuming impact just because funding is disbursed. We must start asking harder questions: Who are we funding? Why? What outcomes are we chasing? Who gets to decide what counts as success?

Here at Simphiwe Mtetwa, we’ve chosen to act. No more CSI conferences without consequence. We’ve turned our focus to implementing practical programmes like the indoor toilets, and we’re building from there.

Now we ask CSI South Africa: Will you awaken with us?

In Part 6, we begin to chart that journey forward. Not in theory. In action.