Somewhere in the frenzy of attacks on Tony Leon and Resolve Communications, the idea took hold that any business engaging with the government is automatically up to something sinister.Communications and public affairs work is not a dark art practised in smoke-filled rooms, as some would suggest. It is not an episode of House of Cards or The Fixer as depicted by Hollywood. Instead, at its best, it is a public good, largely unremarkable and unglamorous.The government cannot regulate, tax, or legislate effectively if it does not understand the practical consequences of its decisions on the people and businesses that those decisions affect. Advocacy is simply the mechanism by which the governed communicate their needs to those who govern. Every functioning democracy relies on it, and many make use of it, from trade unions and community organisations to homeowners’ associations, industry bodies and individual businesses. Countless firms in South Africa and myriad such practitioners worldwide help people understand government processes and then make their case to the government. Ironically, some individuals associated with such firms are now leading the charge against Resolve, when they do the same kind of legitimate work. They know, as we do, that removing that channel will not make the government more independent but rather more uninformed by removing a critical bridge of understanding between the public and private sectors.Resolve exists to do that work for legitimate, lawful businesses operating in one of the world’s most complex regulatory and political environments. South African companies must navigate ever-changing market access rules, logistics and port constraints, tax and excise policy, myriad regulations, BEE requirements, import duties, licensing regimes, an often-dysfunctional state apparatus, and a political culture that, too often, treats business itself with suspicion rather than as a partner in growth and employment. Resolve exists to do that work for legitimate, lawful businesses operating in one of the world’s most complex regulatory and political environments. That suspicion is not imagined: it shows up in policy drafted without consultation, in regulations that ignore operational realities, and in a public discourse in which “business” is frequently used as a synonym for something undesirable, rather than for a way to generate desperately needed jobs, investment, and tax revenue. When our clients, or the countless clients of firms like ours, raise concerns about a tariff change, a licensing delay, or a piece of draft legislation that will cost jobs, they are neither conspiring against nor capturing the state. They are doing what any affected party is entitled to do: making their case to the people responsible for the decision. It is, of course, always up to those in power to make the final determination, free from inducement or coercion. If the latter occurs, it constitutes state capture, and bears no resemblance to the work our firm does, or to that of the many similar firms in the country.We have been doing this work on behalf of a range of clients for 13 years, helping them engage across every sphere of government and every point on the political spectrum. We have helped our clients write to ministers from almost every party that has held office in that time. When our clients, or the countless clients of firms like ours, raise concerns about a tariff change, a licensing delay, or a piece of draft legislation that will cost jobs, they are neither conspiring against nor capturing the state. Over the years, we have produced hundreds of statements, opinion pieces, submissions, and letters on behalf of clients in numerous sectors, such as agriculture, manufacturing, retail, finance, energy and beyond. Most of this advocacy is conducted through media communications and formal correspondence to officeholders — all of which are, by definition, transparent and the opposite of capture.We also make no bones about what we do: we lobby on behalf of our clients, though this is a small part of the work we do, which is overwhelmingly communications-focused. By definition, we use our professional networks, built up over years, to help lawful and legitimate businesses make their voice heard. This is true of just about every profession. We do not work on a success fee basis, and we are not shy about saying that we lose far more often than we win. Meetings we request on behalf of clients are turned down; submissions we help draft go unanswered. Legislation and regulations we help our clients argue against often pass, unchanged. That is not a flaw in the system; it is the system working as it should. The elected and appointed representatives of the people are the ones constitutionally entitled to make those decisions, and they are the ones who must live with the consequences, good or bad.Our job is to help make sure the case is heard clearly, and theirs is to decide. Conflating advocacy with an outcome of itself, treating every letter we write for a client as though it were an instruction rather than a submission, and treating every meeting set up as some form of coercion misunderstand how the relationship works.None of this is to say that regulation of the industry, or a public register of lobbying activity, are illegitimate topics. They are worth discussing, and we, with all industry players, would engage constructively with any serious proposal. But it is worth asking why, in a country where so much economic and political life still operates on a wild-west basis — where enforcement against actual corruption, actual capture, and actual violence around tenders remains patchy at best — the instinct of some is to tighten the net first around the well-intentioned professionals who help their clients publish their arguments and engage government legitimately. That seems, at minimum, a strange place to start.No state captureTo suggest that lawful, disclosed advocacy on behalf of paying clients is comparable to state capture is not a serious argument. State capture, as South Africans learnt at enormous cost, involved the wholesale redirection of state power and public procurement to benefit a small network of politically connected individuals and companies — hundreds of billions of rand, entire state-owned enterprises, and years of investigation to unpick. It is, frankly, absurd to place a 10-person communications and advisory firm in the same category. It is more absurd still in a country where tenders, contracts and appointments have in living memory been bought with bags of cash or secured through violence and intimidation. Against that backdrop, treating written submissions, lawful outreach and public commentary as the greater threat to the state is wrong and a distraction from the forms of capture that actually cost this country money and lives.For the record: in 13 years of operation, Resolve has never received a single state tender. Our business model is advice, communication services and advocacy for private clients, and there is no procurement relationship to investigate because none exists.What does appear to be happening, in our case for obviously political reasons, is the attempted use of state resources and processes to pursue partisan party-political objectives, dressed up as accountability. Relentlessly hunting for perceived infractions in lawful advocacy work is not oversight. When state power is turned towards settling scores, attacking political opponents, or intimidating legitimate critics and advisers rather than pursuing genuine wrongdoing, it is a potential abuse of process, and it should concern anyone who cares about the rule of law — regardless of what they think of Tony Leon, Resolve, our clients, or the causes we help advocate for. That being said, we will always comply with any lawful investigation, confident that the rule of law will prevail.Business is entitled to a voice in its own governance. So is everyone else, and confusing that voice with corruption does not clean up politics. It simply makes it harder for government to hear from the people it governs.• Boughey is CEO of Resolve Communications.