LUCKY MATHEBULA | ANC, not swart, gevaar: the BEE of the party is not the BEE of the constitution

The Democratic Alliance has made Black Economic Empowerment an election issue. It has placed the government’s BEE policy at the centre of its campaign message. This matter has escalated to a point where it now defines the empowerment of black people as a strategic, existential issue for the DA as a political party. The DA has drawn the line.

BEE is an intervention policy aimed at addressing the systemic and state-sponsored exclusion of black people from participation in the economy. Though it was designed as a restitutive policy rather than a standalone doctrine of black empowerment, it serves as a systemic measure to confront the patterns of economic dominance in South Africa and holds significant moral and normative importance.

In a society where race and gender are persistent factors in all kinds of analysis and continue to shape access and opportunity, it is naïve to criticise affirmative action programmes such as BEE.

It is true, and arguably undeniable, that the post-apartheid state allowed most of its restitution policies to become a political elite project that confined its visible beneficiaries to unfortunate labels of crass materialism. The perception of patronage for those close to political power is real and cannot be dismissed.

Without vitiating the statistically justifiable claims that the implementation of the otherwise legal BEE policies, it is immoral to imagine South Africa as a society with the current access and opportunity demographics. The present reality is shameful. Economic participation in South Africa’s economy still relies on race as a factor and requires government-sponsored interventions aimed at addressing the marginalisation of targeted groups.

The foundation of South Africa as a constitutional democracy is the pursuit of human dignity, social and economic justice, and the fulfilment of the Bill of Human Rights in the constitution. It is therefore an obligation for anyone living under the legal framework of the constitutional order to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the liberation promise in the constitution. The country’s supreme law includes the supremacy of its restorative objectives, aptly captured in its opening two lines: “We the people of South Africa, recognise the injustices of our past”.

It is important for the opposition, which is a complex against the African National Congress as a political party that governed or misgoverned the country based on what the constitution provided, not to be equated with the constitution itself.

The ANC is not the constitution, nor is it the government. It is a constitutional obligation for everyone living in South Africa to recognise the injustices of the past and to work towards healing the divisions caused by history. To achieve this, all South Africans, including the DA, should demonstrate an unwavering and open commitment to building a society founded on democratic values, human dignity, social justice and fundamental human rights.

Once an injustice is dismissed as no longer an issue because we oppose efforts to achieve the justice it deserves, the campaign to address it might risk drifting into a special kind of hate speech.

Economic disempowerment is a recognised injustice of the past. It is morally justifiable to isolate it for state-sponsored interventions, and its eradication should involve legislative mechanisms that make economic empowerment enforceable by law. It must be illegal to systematically exclude black people in particular from meaningful participation. Lawfulness in South Africa is, or should be, incomplete if it does not address recognised injustice and heal the divisions of our past.

What might, and arguably, be plausible is the DA’s courage to point out that the otherwise constitutionally correct BEE policy might have been a victim of mismanagement by the ANC at some point during its three decades of governance. By its own admission, the ANC declares nine of its 30 years as wasted. This excludes the “singing with dololo capacity moments” and “being accused number one on the corruption dock”.

The unpalatable relationship with the truth, as highlighted by former president Thabo Mbeki, and a list of anti-constitution rhetoric from those in power wearing the “ANC T-Shirt”, as Mbeki has described some, should not cause BEE to become a casualty of incompetence. BEE is a policy that demands a competent, professional and merit-based state or public service to demonstrate that “we the people of South Africa, recognise the injustices of the past.” A past that the world has declared largely a crime against humanity.

South Africa cannot afford the polarisation of BEE. It should not be weaponised and lost in the realm of swaart gevaar when it is an incompetence to execute gevaar. It should not be about turning past injustices into political rallying cries.

Once an injustice is dismissed as no longer an issue because we oppose efforts to achieve the justice it deserves, the campaign to address it might risk drifting into a special kind of hate speech. Justice and injustice are context-dependent; they are experienced by those who have worn the shoes of disempowerment, whether as victims of past injustice or as a result of efforts to rectify disempowerment.

Instead of placing polarising billboards and conveniently excluding ourselves from the National Dialogue process, which might foster consensus on these issues, it would be wise to pause and remember that South Africa, including its economy, belongs to all its residents; we the people.