LETTER: Will the state dissolve private firms to ensure achievement of empowerment?

Duma Gqubule’s most recent column — (“Time for quotas to chisel away rock of institutional racism,” September 20) was useful in two respects

Firstly, it may prove prescient in describing the nature of the final inevitable phase of the government’s race-based empowerment policy efforts. This phase is likely to see racial quotas for both the management and ownership of large companies, with threats of company dissolution and share expropriation where the quotas are unmet.

The second is that he conveys well the insincerity of SA corporations in living up to the requirements of the racial empowerment policies they have repeatedly and loudly committed to.

Years ago, a junior colleague remarked, after accompanying me to several meetings, that “the size of the empowerment certificate in the foyer seems to be inversely proportional to the number of black people in the boardroom”.

That this remains largely true is central to understanding how the final phase of empowerment policy may evolve to a point where the government will have to dissolve private companies to ensure that empowerment is achieved.

Frans Cronje
Institute of Race Relations

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