Key Person Risk

We live in a world where there aren’t enough jobs, and migration into rich countries is presented as a problem. This isn’t the way the world always is or was. Hut Taxes were introduced by British Colonialists as a way to force the required labourers into the monetary economy. Households had to send members to work for the colonialists in order to raise the cash to pay the tax. Liberia’s Hut Tax led to the Kru Revolt in 1915. The Bambatha Rebellion of 1906 pushed back on the British Employers in Natal (The Colony) when the Zulu people of the Mpanza Valley (now in KwaZulu-Natal) rose up. The challenge with a pass-the-parcel economy with globally stretched supply chains, and institutions (Nations and Companies) that have permanence and excess negotiating power is when a person’s “place in the chain” becomes redundant. Companies talk of “key person risk” but employees are the ones who live that risk. We live in a world where individuals don’t have the buffers of cash and capital of corporate balance sheets. Risk management starts from the bottom up.

Primary Zulu Language speech area (South African 2011 Census)