WHY WE HAVE TO CONFRONT RACIAL OWNERSHIP OF SARB
MANY of us argue – or are caught up arguing – that the shares of the South African Reserve Bank are worth almost nothing, or its dividends are a laughing stock.
Be that as it may, I want to advance a different argument: that the SARB carries the name of our country and is our national pride, and ought to be owned by South Africans, with blacks as the majority shareholders.
My point of view is that ownership is everything. Anyway, I should remind many that even if there is no monetary value, ownership itself is value, and it is for the same reason that whites are holding on to these “valueless” SARB shares.
Whites understand that ownership gives authenticity, and that which is authentic becomes superior.
There are three problems I have identified in relation to the ownership of the SARB. Firstly, the SARB is owned privately. Secondly, this ownership has foreigners. Thirdly, the ownership is white-dominated.
The private ownership of the SARB is problematic from an ideological, political and social perspective. The issue of national pride kicks in and should be protected.
The call for the privatisation of the SARB is motivated by a full understanding that there is a need for transfer of industry or commerce from private to state ownership or control. This need arises out of a history of exclusion whereby the citizens of our country were not active participants in the nation’s economy.
The wish and will of the majority might be disregarded by a few private shareholders posing as directors. In fact, the SARB, as an entity of the nation, should be treated the same way as water, air and roads. They should not and cannot be owned by a private individual or entity.
The foreign owner has an interest in and is loyal to his or her nation. So patriotism cannot be undermined and ignored in commerce.
The SARB is white-dominated. It is not a secret that white people and entities still hold the lion’s share in all forms of capital in South Africa.
Jessie Duarte, the deputy secretary-general of the ANC, argued this point last week, when she said that “the structure of our economy dictates that the same people who were there before 1990 are in fact the same people who have control and are in charge of the economy, and we do not have an inclusive economy”.
What we need to understand is that racial identity and property are deeply interrelated. Whiteness operates historically as property on the sideline of systems created to dominate blacks.
The system created racially contingent forms of property and property rights to exclude blacks as owners, shareholders and directors, while making whites the only owners and participants in the economy, and allocating them societal benefits that blacks would not have access to.
It is important that the racial ownership of the SARB be confronted as it is not accidental, but a design and legacy of apartheid.
The distributive justification and function of B-BBEE should be seen in action at the SARB as the fundamental and critical component of our South African economy that translates into a political tool and societal shaper.
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Racial identity and property are deeply
interrelated