We have been engaging in a stylised debate over the future of BEE involving parliament and Luthuli House and extending even to the US.
The DA is, of course, correct that BEE as practised by the ANC has enriched a phalanx of ANC cadres and done nothing for the poor. And since gross material inequality in SA is undeniable, of course the ANC would say that we need more — not less — BEE to achieve “redress”.
It is all a futile dirge — juxtaposed choirs, frozen in political stasis, singing past each other. How then do we energise our polity and break out of this ritual dance?
We do this by applying our minds and abjuring bare slogans such as “BEE equals corruption, equals waste, equals bad” or ”BEE equals wealth transfer, equals redress, equals good”.
We have simply refused to comprehend what wealth is. We need to understand wealth before we can figure out ways to extend it. Wealth is not money, not big fancy houses, not luxury vehicles, and least of all gobs of cash extracted from empowerment tenders.
Wealth originates in the human mind. Houses, cars, piles of cash and the like are only the physical manifestation of the application of knowledge and labour in the global market.
True wealth rests on inborn potential (distributed across all ethnicities); maturation of this potential through education; and annealment in the competitive global market.
BEE negates this. It is a zero-sum game, a safe zone for shifting money around, achieving nothing apart from the enrichment of the few. Only competition in the unforgiving market can develop and perfect the skills and qualities that have for so long been denied to the majority.
BEE thus exacerbates inequality. Our safe zones infuse a slow poison that curtails development. Instead the minority, forced to take their struggle outside the empowerment walls, build more wealth.
BEE does not reduce, but widens our societal divides. Purported BEE beneficiaries, protected as they are from the discipline of the market, become ever poorer. The minority become ever richer. Their skills, applied outside the toxicity of the safe zone, are honed in the global marketplace.
Therefore, scrapping enforced BEE targets will — contrary to the siren song of the ANC — enhance majority skills, and material rewards will follow.
Let us break down the BEE walls and set the majority free.
Willem Cronje
Cape Town
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