Thuli: BEE is a lost cause

EMPOWERMENT: CALLS FOR SA TO RELOOK AT MODEL

‘Policy, which aims to reverse past injustices, reinforced white supremacy.’

Former public protector Thuli Madonsela has indicated that the policy of black economic empowerment (BEE) had not benefited black-owned businesses in the way it had intended to.

Madonsela was addressing guests virtually at the 2021 Nadine Gordimer Lecture hosted by Wits University on Wednesday.

“I don’t think BEE was the right thing, I think BEE was a lost cause. BEE is corrosive to both black and white small businesses,” Madonsela said.

Madonsela said the policy, which aims to “reverse” past injustices, reinforced white supremacy, Jacaranda FM reported.

“I’m not saying there shouldn’t be remedial measures, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be restitutive measures; I’m saying the model must be based on what kind of society are you creating. In fact, it has reinforced white supremacy; instead of undermining it,” she said.

Civil rights group AfriForum deputy chief executive Ernst Roets, who attended a Black Management Forum forum discussion on BEE, also on Wednesday, slammed the policy, describing it as “a failure”.

“What struck me about last night’s discussion on BEE is that apparently everyone agreed that BEE is a failure. The proposed solution from many who were there was, however, that we simply need more BEE. What’s the saying? Real BEE has never been tried,” he said on Twitter.

AfriForum, alongside trade union Solidarity, has long been protesting against BEE policies, saying they are discriminatory against poor white people.

Meanwhile, Efficient Group economist Dawie Roodt highlighted that BEE had benefitted a select few black people and had only resulted in further inequality, while fuelling racial tensions.

Skills development focused on the youth was key to a more equal society, suggested Roodt as an alternative to BEE.

The BEE topic was also in the spotlight last year after the Supreme Court of Appeal declared the revised preferential procurement regulations that then finance minister Pravin Gordhan promulgated in 2017 – and their provisions for race-based “pre-qualification” criteria – invalid.

The regulations were declared invalid as a result of their inconsistency with the provisions of the procurement policy framework.

This was on the back of a legal battle waged by business organisation Sakeliga (formerly AfriBusiness), which said the regulations “heralded a new era in race-based procurement”. –

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