I was pleased to see Andile Ntingi’s article (“Is BEE here to stay or is it facing its demise?”, January 23). This needs to be talked about for the benefit of SA, and the debate cannot be led by the DA.
BEE should be scrapped immediately and completely. There are many sides to this debate, but I prefer to remove the ideological, historical and emotional elements and concentrate as I’m an emergency room doctor and the patient is the SA economy.
We need to remove any impediment to investors and businesses getting stuck into the ripe opportunity that is SA. BEE is simply an impediment. It is not the only policy impediment in place, but it is symbolically significant.
A bold move by the government to remove BEE will send such a strong message that SA is open and desperate to do good business that I believe investment will surge. That, in addition to crippling the way BEE is used by the patronage machine, if we really are serious about fixing Eskom.
There are far more talented black people in SA than all the other groups put together, so any growth will overwhelmingly benefit black people. The irony is BEE is doing the opposite.
Affirmative action policies can work. They make sense when a minority (both numerically and in a political sense) is unfairly marginalised by a complacent business community. That is not the case in SA in January 2023; we are hanging in there.
Ben Cockram
Via email
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