LETTER: BEE the vilest of SA laws

David Gant’s plea “for the broader SA civil society, not just business, to mobilise as one and impress upon government that they will no longer tolerate faction-induced and confused ideology within the ANC” is problematic (“Presidential prevarication”, September 2).

He forgets that South Africans mobilised to ratify the Bill of Rights to freedom, equality, dignity and trade in the early 1990s. At one time or another all 18 ministers in the economic cluster will have discredited these principles. Trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel heads the charge, but the courts, not civil society, must be shown what employees lost.

The vilest constitutional inequity must be the BEE regulations. The president promoted and captured billions. As chair of the BEE Commission, he told the trade & industry portfolio committee meeting on September 13 2000 that: “My experiences in business and the phenomenon of companies on journeys of self-discovery with employment equity legislation are learning how they have wasted resources and ignored the need to uplift the disadvantaged.” He stated that the parameters in the act would give guidance to people to pull up their socks and join the new SA.

He is now on his knees hoping for the private sector to pull something out of the hat. What will his defence be if charged that BEE broke up hundreds of thousands of Caucasian families? And what excuses will his lawyers have about ANC ideologies that have made SA the third most miserable economy in the world, worse than Zimbabwe? And for violating section 25 of the constitution by not making land accessible?

Peter Meakin
Claremont

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