A healthy intersection between the government and business is necessary for the functioning and growth of a country’s economy. When this intersection is healthy, businesses make profits, invest more to expand their businesses and can, depending on production technology choices, create more jobs. They propel a country’s economic growth rate higher, generating more direct and indirect tax revenues. Such an intersection, which in South Africa is often referred to as the government-business partnership, has two broad paths: lobbying and what’s known as the “revolving doors” ― in and out of government and into the private sector and vice versa. Lobbying involves the exchange of information, which can be useful or harmful to public policy. This exchange can take place through meetings between individual business executives and government officials or political office-bearers. It can also happen through formalised structures such as the presidential business working groups. Of course there are parliamentary processes that enable this exchange of information. Trade union leaders and civil society groupings lobby too.The funding of political parties is another conduit. A donation of large sums of money at a crucial moment, for example, ahead of an election, could sway a party to push for certain policies favourable to its benefactor. More invisible lobbying involves public servants, the group that the late Pravin Gordhan often referred to, jokingly, as the permanent politicians. Public servants are often the source of many new policies or amendments. They succeed in pushing these through because they have what their political heads lack: technical expertise.The lobbying of public servants is direct and indirect. Public servants move in certain circles ― golf buddies, church congregations or social get-togethers ― in which discussions about public policy often take place. Direct lobbying of public servants can also happen through lunches, dinners and other engagements with business executives. These engagements can result in skewed public policies, especially when a public servant has his or her eye on a private sector job ― executive or a board position ― after government.So, without rules governing the workings of lobbying and “the revolving doors”, these two paths can create public policy problems. More specifically, they can result in skewed public policies and their implementation, caused by certain business interests seeking to make public policy favourable to their profitability. There’s nothing wrong with the profit motive. Businesses that don’t make money serve no-one’s interest ― neither their owners nor the greater public good. To paraphrase the late businessman Nthato Motlana, anyone who says their primary motive for going into business is to achieve a social good, such as creating jobs, is either a liar or a fool.Public policy ought to create an environment where businesses can make decent money but at the same time minimise the harms that the pursuit of the profit motive creates. In this regard, President Cyril Ramaphosa has often emphasised the importance of “a dynamic partnership between government and business to foster South Africa’s economic growth and social advancement”.A problem arises when some businesses want to “capture” public policy or its implementation to favour their profitability, obviously at the expense of other businesses and the public. The incentive to capture public policy is huge.Hence the need for rules governing lobbying and the flow of people through public and private sector revolving doors. Some of the rules used in this regard include “gardening leave”, whereby a government employee can’t take up a private sector job for at least six months after leaving his government job. • Sikhakhane, a former spokesperson for the finance minister, National Treasury and Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.Business Day