BEE must stay – but with ethics

Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is not popular with many people and, with her uncompromising stance that there will be more, not less, B-BBEE (broad-based black economic empowerment), she’s not going to win many friends among minority groups in the country.

Yet she does put her finger on the nub of the problem when she says that the paradox of a “rich Africa, but poor Africans” must be dealt with.

It goes without saying that, on a continent blessed with vast natural resources, its people should not live in poverty and there should be far more progress than there has been in the 60 years since the decolonisation process began.

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Where she shows that she and our ANC rulers are still living in the cloud-cuckoo-land of the past – with its imperative to blame everyone except themselves – is when she attributes our unequal society solely to “the economically dominant group”, which “held on to almost all social, cultural, economic power” after 1994.

That was, she told a meeting on transformation hosted by Deloitte South Africa, in addition to the fact that black South Africans “were enslaved right here in our country”.

The reality Dlamini-Zuma is ignoring, of course, is that the ANC has been in charge since 1994 and while it will take time to reverse the influence of 350-plus years of white rule, the party’s policies have failed to bring about its vaunted “better life for all”.

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B-BBEE has led to the empowerment of a small elite and very little economic benefit has trickled down to the masses. In reality, the policy has been a breeding ground for corruption and neocolonialism.

Should it be done away with? No – not while the playing fields still have to be levelled. But it must be done efficiently and ethically. Is the ANC capable of that, though?