South African Chamber of Business past president Hans Middleman said at a special TRC hearing in Johannesburg on business's role in apartheid: "Perhaps we did not do enough. Perhaps we acquiesced and did not expel those of our members who did not sign the charter of change... Maybe we should have done more."
Former Barlow Rand president Mike Rosholt said socio-economically, there was no doubt a great deal more should have been attempted and achieved as this would have made all South Africans better off.
Rosholt said business did not win or lose financially under apartheid.
"Certainly it benefited in the short term from the closed and uncompetitive economy, an inevitable outcome of international sanctions, and to an extent from the absence of wage pressures early on by unorganised labour."
But in the longer term business suffered from the lack of competition, which made it globally uncompetitive in many areas. Low productivity, a result of low skill levels caused by apartheid education and training systems, also dealt business a blow.
The role taken by business on political issues was complex and paradoxical. But business did in many instances act indirectly against the injustices of apartheid, both through its collective institutions and through individual company efforts.
These included public statements and calls on government to remove legislation governing segregation, release black leaders from prison and introduce meaningful powersharing with blacks.
"I don't think we made an impression on the government... Did business do enough? In hindsight I think not," Rosholt said.
Sacob director-general Raymond Parsons said the apartheid system was an intolerable one that was destined to fail. It was because of this realisation that his organisation strove to undermine it.
"We believed that apartheid was a violation of human rights and was economically unsustainable. The human and economic costs of apartheid were unacceptably high, and it is for that reason that we embarked on a policy of constructive engagement to eradicate it."
He said National Party government legislation had impacted negatively on business, instead of propping it up.
"While it would be disingenuous to claim that not a single business benefited under apartheid, this perception is misplaced to the extent that it fails to take into account the real costs imposed on commerce and industry because of the legislation and the sanctions that followed it."
Parsons and Rosholt said because the business community was not monolithic, businesses approached the shortcomings brought about by the contradictions in the apartheid system differently.
Parsons said with the benefit of hindsight, his organisation should have done more, and given stronger responses on "certain key issues".
"It is impossible... as some might try to do, to apportion a collective culpability on the sector."
University of Stellenbosch professor Sampie Terreblanche said apartheid could not have been maintained until the 1990s without the explicit support given to the National Party government by the white business community.
Although white supremacy had ended, a large part of the structures of racial capitalism were still very much in place.
"The tranformation process will remain incomplete as long as the economic power and wealth that was accumulated through the racial structures remain undisturbed in white hands... This is a legacy of apartheid that we cannot afford to condone."
Terreblanche said a satisfactory degree of systematic justice could be attained by imposing a wealth tax of, for example, 0,5 percent annually for 10 or 20 years, on all persons with net assets of more than R2 million, and to use the yield for the upliftment of the poor.
Rosholt was of the opinion that businesses should pay their taxes and government had to distribute those funds.
"I don't see justification for a special tax," he said, adding it would be difficult to set a definition of "victim".
Another former Sacob president, Philip Krawitz, said the present high level of taxation was the price South African businesses were paying for the sins of the past.
Sacob would oppose a form of special taxation for reparation, he said.
Truth Commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in his opening remarks: "It will be wonderful to have someone here saying `we did this and we did that'... and we want to rub some oil on the wounds, here is R10 million for the President's Fund."
It would go a long way if people who could afford it said they wanted to be part of the country's healing, Tutu said.