A business friend tells the story of the white chair of a large company who, on hearing a remuneration committee recommendation for a R1m bonus voted for a black female executive, gasped and almost unconsciously asked: “What’s she going to do with all that money?” Now there exactly lies the problem with many white people.
The past weeks have seen a concerted attack on broad-based BEE. Someone called it a total onslaught. It has been more like certain white people declaring war on black people, with some help from a few misguided black people.
The white brigade has been led by the oddly named Institute of Race Relations, the Free Market Foundation (FMF), Solidarity, AfriForum and other so-called liberals of the same hue. The thrust of their attack has been that BEE has led to increased poverty, unemployment and inequality, that it has been an elitist policy benefiting a few, that it has put off investors and that it has led to losses for business.
For the party of white privilege, the DA, BEE remains the vital weapon to fight black people. The battle against BEE has been waged even offshore, with right-wing organisations appealing to their white supremacist brethren such as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, impugning the dignity and sovereignty of South Africa in the process. Peter Bruce, with his penchant for hyperbole, wrote that BEE is a cruel joke on the poor. To a man, the refrain is: away with BEE!
William Gumede wrote recently that R1-trillion has moved between 100 politically connected individuals since 1994. I am not sure from which hat he pulled those numbers but, like some white people, h seems to have a problem with black people becoming rich.
Then there’s Moeletsi Mbeki, who boasts a hefty political pedigree. At a recent panel interview, the scion of Govan Mbeki stated that black people are not interested in land restitution because they are incapable of farming. The less said about this the better.
Fortunately, there has been a reaction, albeit muted, to this war on black people. Former Sowetan editor John Dludlu wrote about the need, if anything, to strengthen BEE and that “the policy cannot be blamed for South Africa’s worsening poverty, inequality and joblessness”.
And Elias Monage, president of the Black Business Council, condemned a report by the Solidarity Research Institute and the FMF, “The Cost of BEE Compliance”, as “rubbish, not backed by empirical evidence in any form or shape”. Monage added: “We are sitting on a ticking time bomb…. The have-nots would not sit by and watch the well-to-do eating prawns.”
The fight against redress is tantamount to apartheid denialism, which should be punishable in law
Economist Duma Gqubule called the report “fake news on steroids”.
Busisiwe Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership South Africa, said business had not fully embraced transformation and economic inclusion, and had cynically budgeted for penalties for noncompliance. “Having more black people participating in the economy is a key factor to economic growth.”
How and why did we come to this point? A very brief history may help. When we sat as a group of black business people and professionals, we defined BEE as follows: “It is an integrated and coherent social economic process ... located within the context of the national transformation programme.
“It is aimed at redressing the imbalances of the past by seeking to substantially and equitably transfer and confer ownership, management and control of South Africa’s financial and economic resources to the majority of its citizens.
“It seeks to ensure broader and meaningful participation in the economy by black people to achieve sustainable development and prosperity.”
That simple.
We further agreed that “BEE must be a people-centred strategy, in word and in deed. BEE must impact the life of a woman running a spaza shop in an outlying rural area, a worker in a factory in Germiston and the black manager in the corporate head office in Sandton.”
We set targets to be achieved in 10 years, for example, at least 40% of non-executive and executive directors of JSE-listed companies should be black, at least 30% of private sector companies should be black-owned, and so on. None of these targets have been achieved.
After sitting for three years the BEE Commission handed the report to the government. The then minister of trade & industry, Alec Erwin, reduced this to a three-page BEE Act! This turned out to be the original sin of the ANC government’s inept implementation of BEE.
Millions of black South Africans are still waiting for the implementation of true BEE, not its aberrations such as fronting, tenderpreneurship, cadre employment and so on. Might I also add that corruption is not BEE.
Now what really galls blacks is that the war against their advancement is fought by a privileged minority who enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. As someone once wrote, blacks want equality, not revenge for the horrors inflicted upon them by white people. Could this new height of national polarisation be themed “white greed and individualism vs ubuntu”?
Only white people have benefited from the reconciliation dividend initiated by president Nelson Mandela. They have also harvested from the sunset clauses of Joe Slovo. Now imagine, in response, if black people were to review all the reconciliation dividends such as forgiveness, dual citizenship and the constitution. What if blacks were to say no more Springboks, no Reconciliation Day (Dingaan’s Day), no Heritage Day (Shaka’s Day) and no Human Rights Day (Sharpeville Day)? What if blacks were to cancel all those Truth & Reconciliation Commission amnesties? That would not be ubuntu.
So what’s to be done? In 1973 the UN declared apartheid a crime against humanity. The democratic South African constitution mandates redress for past injustices. In my view, the fight against redress is tantamount to apartheid denialism, which should be punishable in law.
• Vundla is a retired businessman and former member of the BEE Commission
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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