BLACK economic empowerment (BEE) has been South Africa’s tool to rectify an exclusionary past and has given the face of business some colour, but experts say the policy model had damaging unintended consequences and left 42% of black people jobless.Due to affirmative action policies, South Africa has managed about 21% black ownership of the top 100 listed companies, building a black middle class with spending power of about R400bn, compared to the white middle class that has R80bn less to spend, and about 40% of university degrees are now held by black graduates.The problem is that the larger majority of black South Africans still live in abject poverty, while BEE has led to unintended consequences, like fronting and a brain drain of many specialised skills out of the country.BEE and some labour laws have made it virtually impossible to get rid of non-productive or surplus employees, and made South Africa less attractive to foreign investors.According to RamsayMedia research head Al...
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