Since its inception, B-BBEE has been a Trojan horse intended incrementally to attain total black control of the economy. But having stalled at enriching only fifteen percent of the black population and with impatience increasing, it would appear that the ANC’s 1985 Lusaka conference goal of nationalization is now being considered (Business Report, August 25).
What is missing from Nomvula Mabuza’s promotion of nationalization of the economy is awareness of the history of its failure in Africa, Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela. If Mabuza scratched the surface of the consequences of nationalization, she would note it delivers impoverishment and social dystopia – not the justice and dignity to which she aspires.
Her carping about the inability of B-BBEE to generate grassroots benefit is unworthy of sympathy because elitism is the guaranteed progeny of the Byzantine structure of B-BBEE. It institutionalizes an “I’m alright, Jack” attitude among those that have been able to clamber aboard the B-BBEE train.
The most jaundiced aspect of Mabuza’s vision is that it is moored in the thinking and circumstances of 1985. It ignores the fact that the majority of the current black population was born since 1980. Thus, exposure to apartheid was limited to the early teens for the oldest of the 1980 vintage.
Why should they be owed a different dispensation from those born during that same period and since 1994 who are not classified as black? Based on that and the inexorable passage of time, B-BBEE totally contradicts the sentiments expressed in the preamble of the Constitution regarding the embrace of diversity in the quest to build a united country.
If the likes of Mabuza can set aside their Lusaka 1985 mindset, they might appreciate that B-BBEE’s demand of 30% stake in a business purely to address a receding racial legacy has no precedent in the world of entrepreneurial endeavour. In short, it is legalized extortion.
The promotion of B-BBEE ironically also contradicts the anti-apartheid narrative because it weaponises race in its bid to abolish racism. Its consequences are already acute because by negating skills on the basis of race, it is promoting their emigration while denying those with potential the opportunity to develop skills. The net result is that we are all poorer, a reality evidenced by the parlous state of our infrastructure and governance, which begs the question: what is more important: the diverse robustness of the economy or its blackness?
Successful economies are built on merit – not on race or equity. They are also the product of an enabling environment, not one that imposes a discredited ideology and which targets minorities with sanctions.
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