Letter: The BEE smokescreen

Glynn Williams of Brettenwood writes:

Reporting back to the nation on the latest ANC NEC meeting, Ace Magashule advised that after due deliberation the ANC leadership have concluded that the catastrophic failures in the state-owned enterprises and virtually every public institution in the country are the result of incompetent management.

Clearly a light bulb moment for the ANC (per kind favour of Eskom perhaps) but not so for most Grade 10 pupils who have known this since Grade 5.

In effect what we are now hearing straight from the horse’s mouth is that, notwithstanding trying for 25 years, the ANC still remain unable to find black South Africans competent enough to effectively manage the country’s public institutions.

The ANC offer no explanation as to why this is so which leaves us to ponder the only two possibilities.

Either there simply are no black South Africans capable of competent management or alternatively there are black South Africans out there who are capable and competent but who are not available for appointment either because they have no appetite for public service or because they have already left the country.

It is most likely that the latter is the case but that is irrelevant anyway simply because those who have left will never find reason to return to a failed state and those without an appetite for public service are unlikely to all of a sudden gain an appetite for a rotten lemon.

So, for so long as a significant percentage of the population are excluded because they are not considered black, incompetent management will prevail and the carnage will continue.

There can be no disputing the honourable intentions of BEE but when circumstances are such that its application becomes the single greatest threat to the future of an entire nation, most of whom are already living in abject poverty, then one would like to think that sense would prevail.

Within the next couple of months, it will become clearer whether BEE will be relaxed in the interest of the future of the country. If it is not, which it appears it won’t be if the reaction to the appointment of a white to head up Eskom is anything to go by, then those who have always contended that BEE is nothing more than a guise used to further the interests of racial bigots, will be vindicated.

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