BEE 'a huge fraud'

2005-11-14 10:12

Someone recently took me to task for being an acid critic of black economic empowerment, claiming there once was a time when I staunchly defended the thing, and wondered why I was now singing a different tune.

I have never defended black economic empowerment (BEE), because it is a huge fraud. But what I do defend and support is the principle and policy of affirmative action (AA).

There is a world of difference between BEE and AA, though to those who may be out to score cheap points there is no difference between the two.

My standpoint is simple really: Where wrongs were committed against an individual or group of people solely on the grounds of their race, gender, physical state, colour, language, religion and so on, then such wrongs must be redressed immediately and without further negotiation.

If people were, say, barred from certain jobs because they were black and/or Africans, there was absolutely nothing they could do to change the fact.

Punishing them for what God created was patently unfair, and as soon as the laws of the land permitted it, then the wrong previously perpetrated against such people must be righted.

Tradition and the laws of the apartheid era discriminated very viciously against women (of all colours) and people with disabilities. Women could never walk out of their gender, any more than paraplegics and the blind from their disabilities.

Affirmative action

My qualifier for implementing affirmative action is that it immediately corrects past injustices and allow the victims of an unjust setup to assert themselves as equals with others of the same capabilities, and at the same time they get the space to develop to their full potential.

But I have a little warning to sound: AA must never be about "blackening" the situation, because this is mischievously or ignorantly equated with blacks taking from whites what "belonged" to whites. AA must be about righting past wrongs.

However, where I have a serious problem with affirmative action is where incompetents are drafted into positions for which they do not qualify or are ill-prepared. Equally, I have a major problem with white whingers who always see nothing good in blacks and are always moaning about "dropping standards" when blacks are appointed to manage certain positions.

Affirmative action is working - we have, for example, a marvellous crop of women judges in the country, the recently much publicised complaints of Western Cape judge president John Hlophe notwithstanding.

I also do not buy into the common laments of many white people that AA means doom for young white males. That statement is racist rubbish which must never be seriously entertained.

Black economic empowerment

But BEE is another matter altogether, and I will not say one word to give gloss to this policy, because it is a policy that is hugely flawed and is, in fact, crony capitalism in the way it is has being applied in this country.

Some might say I am against BEE because I am not one of the recipients of millions and billions for which the recipients never did a day's work, and I will dismiss this as a rubbish argument.

At any rate, such a statement would unwittingly support my views against BEE, which is a policy that does not set out to better the lives of all blacks but only those of a very tiny minority who have solid connections to those in the seat of political power.

An example of this crony capitalism is clear in the recent uproar involving the Brian Molefe led public investment commissioners, which oversees billions in state pensions and other funds, as it warehoused shares for the Elephant Consortium because its members did not have the requisite capital to buy out Telkom's international partners.

Warehousing the shares earned huge interest which enabled the deal to finally go through, and as a result new multi-millionaires were instantly created.

Is it any coincidence that these people are very cosy with the ruling party, whose chief spokesperson, himself has made several millions for having "facilitated" the negotiations, and who famously stated "I did not join the struggle to be poor?"

One bank has now opened its shareholding to its black customers by offering them one free share for every three they buy, up to a certain limit.

That appears sensible and fair, instead of those banks which have sought out the already wealthy BEE darkies and given them billions and have at the same time bought the influence of the ruling party hacks to secure them government business. Affirmative action and economic empowerment of certain blacks are not the same thing, and cannot be compared.

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

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