Gabriel Crouse’s recent response to my article is a case study in how ideological tunnel vision continues to obscure the true structural drivers of SA’s unemployment crisis (“This is how BEE has worsened joblessness,” May 27).
By framing black economic empowerment (BEE) as the prime suspect in the doubling of black unemployment since 2008, Crouse not only misreads the data but ignores the material conditions that have kept millions structurally excluded despite the appearance of reform.
What Crouse offers is a theory of causality without cause, a critique that names BEE as a central economic disruptor while refusing to engage the core question: who benefits from the economy as it is currently structured?
The mining sector, the historical driver of the SA economy and still a central pillar of the current economy, provides a clear and measurable example of this structural failure.
In 1980, SA’s mining sector generated about R5bn in profits. By 2023 that figure had surged to about R270bn, marking a more than 50-fold increase (4,900%) in nominal terms. Despite this enormous growth in profitability, employment in the sector has steadily declined, from over 760,000 workers in the mid-1980s to under 480,000 today (a 36.8% decrease).
This glaring contradiction exposes a structural reality of the SA economy that prioritises corporate profits over the wellbeing of society. The increased profitability in the mining sector has not translated into broader economic inclusion or job creation, but instead reveals an economy geared toward value extraction for shareholders and elites, while offloading social and environmental costs onto workers and communities.
Our recently released report, Looted Promises, documents that in many mining-affected communities unemployment exceeds 70%, and youth unemployment breaches 80%. These are not communities with bloated transformation bureaucracies. These are communities where mining companies, and their politically connected enablers, have evaded accountability and siphoned off value with impunity. BEE did not destroy jobs in these communities; corporate-driven underdevelopment did.
Crouse laments the inefficiencies of BEE while ignoring a far larger and more corrosive fiscal story: SA’s mining sector pays an effective corporate tax rate of just 5%, far below the statutory 27%. If companies were prevented from exploiting tax holidays, transfer pricing and capital allowances, R30bn–50bn more could be collected annually. This isn’t speculation; this is a matter of public finance arithmetic.
Imagine what that could mean for mining-affected communities if that money were ring-fenced for local economic development, infrastructure and community ownership rather than boardroom dividends. That would be true empowerment.
Crouse argues that BEE has failed because corruption flourished in its name. We agree, and said so clearly in “Looted Promises”. But abuse of a policy does not invalidate the purpose of that policy. If anything, the capture of BEE by elite interests only strengthens the argument that redress must be rooted in grassroots accountability, not abandoned altogether.
Moreover, Crouse fails to engage the real burden of apartheid’s economic legacy. He dismisses the entrenched exclusion of millions of black South Africans as a backdrop rather than a starting point. He never asks why communities sitting on top of mineral wealth are drowning in poverty.
He doesn’t ask why 60% of households in these communities rely on social grants to survive, or why social & labour plan (SLP) compliance is a national farce. Instead, he offers court cases and polling data, useful in debate club, but wholly insufficient to explain systemic underdevelopment.
The push to reform BEE and employment equity should be rooted in evidence, not grievance. If we want a policy environment that promotes real economic inclusion, we must demand:
- Transparent and enforceable community-benefit mechanisms;
- Mandatory ring-fencing of extractive revenues for local development;
- Public audits of tax compliance and profit repatriation; and
- A transformation agenda led not by elites, but by those most affected.
SA’s crisis is not a result of “too much redress”. It is the result of redress captured, redistribution deferred and wealth still locked in colonial and corporate hands.
Crouse’s logic demands that we judge BEE solely by its failures while judging corporate capital by its intent. That’s not just inconsistent, it’s dangerous. It enables the rollback of equity under the false banner of efficiency. It allows the defenders of structural inequality to posture as reformers while the communities demanding justice are once again told to wait.
We don’t need to dismantle transformation; we need to rescue it from the hands of those who have looted it, and use it to finally build an economy that works for the many, not the few.
• Rutledge is executive director at Mining Affected Communities United in Action.
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