ANC-style BEE is not the only way to define black economic empowerment
If no one can deliver a cogent argument proving that B-BBEE has worked, why should the DA not propose an alternative?
Last week, the DA’s head of policy, Gwen Ngwenya, announced that the party’s federal council had resolved to reject the ANC’s version of broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) and was working on designing an alternative policy framework for black economic empowerment (BEE) ahead of the 2019 election. Some of the reaction to her announcement was a reminder that large swathes of SA’s public discourse remain immature and intellectually constrained by ANC dominance. In her piece, published in Business Day ("B-BBEE proves that when one black person prospers, others do not necessarily benefit by proxy," August 4), Ngwenya outlined the B-BBEE policy’s dismal failure on most fronts, potently summarised by the statistic that "black South African households today, rand for rand, make less than they did relative to white South African households in 1996". She then went on to outline four principles that the party would focus on as part of its yet-to-be-finalised alternative economic e...
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