DA national spokesman Solly Malatsi’s attempt to defend his party’s B-BBEE policy (Business Day, February 15) fails to discredit the assertion made by Frans Cronje of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) that there is little to distinguish between the DA and the ANC on B-BBEE.
Although Malatsi is at pains to point out that the DA favours a bottom-up approach to B-BBEE rather than the ANC’s top-down one, the fact remains that while the DA may have different means, the end objective is no different, namely “to grow black equity.”
Equity has no place in the hierarchy of competence. Thus the unadulterated emphasis on a particular population group is blatantly at odds with the DA’s motto of “freedom, fairness and opportunity.” It is also at odds with its election slogan to” build one South Africa for all” when one considers who is being left out of the building process.
By unpacking the details of the DA’s B-BBEE, Malatsi amply vindicates the IRR’s assertion that the ideology of race has become the premise of the DA. That is obvious from how the DA would implement its B-BBEE policy. Blacks would be the beneficiaries of mentoring, internships, training and bursaries; black entrepreneurship would be identified, incubated, financed and nurtured.
After 25 years it is unacceptable that other population groups are denied such benefits. Never slow to condemn the job reservation of apartheid, B-BBEE is no different. Thus, Malatsi’s claim that the DA’s version of B-BBEE is a “credible alternative” to that of the ANC is nonsense. It’s merely a fine-tuned variation of the same thing that is discriminatory in the extreme.
Sent into The Business Day and published, 22 February 2019.
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