SA DEMOCRACY
‘Is there someone who has seen
massive factories, established solely by
BEE tycoons, employing thousands of
black workers in South Africa? If the
answer is yes, we would say that BEE
indeed has a productive character.’
As Anthony Edward Rupert and his fellow Afrikaner
billionaires flew higher, they did not forget to lift the “masses of
their Afrikaner people”, to borrow language from the ANC.
Upon its unbanning, the ANC was well aware of its historic
responsibility, as a majority-black-supported party.
From the beginning, the ANC viewed itself as the party
to lead the economic empowerment of Black people, a nation
impoverished and ignored by both the English and Afrikaner
economic empowerment schemes.
In its Ready to Govern document, adopted in 1992, the ANC
vowed to “Eliminating the poverty and the extreme inequalities
generated by the apartheid system”.
Black Economic Empowerment should, therefore, be assessed
with this aim in mind: to eliminate poverty and inequality
affecting Black people.
The queerness of BEE is that, instead of Blacks acting to create
their own independent space in the economy (as EEE and AEE
did), BEE tycoons volunteered to be co-opted into white-owned
companies as minority shareholders.
By so doing, these black tycoons essentially locked themselves
into white companies, leaving no room to distinguish themselves
as creators of new industries in the economy.
We can say with certitude that modern mining in South Africa
has been developed by the English as part of their EEE.
We can also say, supported by evidence, that commercial
agriculture and manufacturing in South Africa have been
developed predominantly by Afrikaners as part of their AEE
programme.
Twenty years into a black-run government, which sector of the
economy can we say was developed by BEE tycoons, supported
by the black government?
We pose this question because it is true that a few black
billionaires have been produced since 1994.
Cecil John Rhodes held the collective hand of his English
people and flew with them high into the economic sky. Anthony
Edward Rupert did the same to his Afrikaner people.
Have Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, the politically
connected poster boys of Black Economic Empowerment, lifted
their black people out of poverty?
We observed earlier that both EEE and AEE banished poverty
and unemployment amongst the English and Afrikaners through
productive work and education. What of BEE?
Is there someone