Let’s face the facts about both inequality and BEE
On February 2 1990, FW de Klerk made his famous speech in which the release of Nelson Mandela and other Struggle leaders was announced and in which the prohibition of the ANC and other communist-aligned movements was rescinded – signaling the end of the white minority government.
One would hope that more than 30 years later, we would have found ourselves moving away from racially exclusive policies towards a better, more peaceful future in which different communities live in mutual recognition and respect of each other. Yet, it seems that the further we move away from the past, the more frequently we are reminded of it and the more aggressive the reminders become.
On February 2 2021, Sandile Zungu, president of the Black Business Forum attacked AfriForum and Solidarity in an opinion piece in Sowetan for undermining the ANC government’s transformation agenda by opposing exclusionary race-based policies. Zungu strangely argues that it isn’t racist to exclude people based solely on the colour of their skin, but that it is indeed racist to oppose such racially exclusive policies. He then concluded that “until we all share common facts about where our economy is today, we will continue to have the likes of AfriForum and Solidarity making us believe there is no need for transformation and diversity”.
Zungu is correct that we need to face the brutal facts about SA’s economy, that it is indeed one that is disturbingly unequal; that – if you want to look at it through a racial lens – it is also one in which white people are on average significantly wealthier than black people; but also, that the attempts to do something about the situation has achieved nothing other than to enrich politically connected elites.
If we are not only truthful about the state of the economy, but also the state and consequences of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), no reasonable person can conclude that BEE is a policy worth pursuing. The policy should not be opposed because it seeks to uplift black people, it should be opposed precisely for the fact that it doesn’t uplift black people.
The most elementary economic theory teaches that to determine whether an idea is good from an economic perspective, one shouldn’t simply evaluate what it is intended to achieve, nor what the immediate consequences are, but what the impact of the policy is in the long run. Also, as SA has proven, these government-driven redistribution policies with the aim of reducing inequality do not work.
This isn’t because they are good ideas that are simply not implemented effectively, but because they are bad ideas that haven’t worked anywhere in the world. Furthermore, BEE isn’t only fertile ground for corruption, the policy is arguably the most significant contribution to corruption that this country has ever seen. I don’t think that it is necessary to prove this with evidence, given that the evidence is all around us. Not a day goes by where we don’t read in the papers about some new corruption scandal that transpired during some BEE process. Also, and this should be obvious, BEE is everything but actual “black empowerment”.
You don’t empower people by making them dependent on the government. The most significant achievement of the ANC government is the flabbergasting extent to which it has succeeded in enforcing its policies to make black people dependent on the government.
The not working class are made dependent through social grants, the middle class through affirmative action policies and the wealthy through BEE policies. This is the opposite of empowerment. It says to black people that, unlike those whites over there, they cannot make it on their own. In order to achieve equality, it is argued, that the government needs to hold back the whites while pushing on the blacks. This idea is racist to the core. It is what has been aptly described as “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.
The fact is that black people are, just like white people, perfectly capable of succeeding on their own. But the more people are made dependent on the government, the less empowered they are and thus also the less prone to succeed on their own merit. The consequence is a strengthening of racist stereotypes among both white and black people.
It’s perfectly fair to call on each other to face the facts about the economy and inequality. It’s equally fair to expect of each other to face the facts about the state and consequences of policy ideas such as BEE.
• Roets is head of policy at AfriForum
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