Dear Editor
The ANC’s tepid response to the DA’s plan to turbocharge the economy, responding only with a mild defence of BEE, shows that the BEE edifice can and must be dismantled.
Laughably, the ANC called on beneficiaries of BEE to defend the system. The reality is that there are millions of unemployed South Africans who will never benefit from the system as it was never meant to benefit the majority, only a small politically connected elite.
So presumably the ANC has called on the ANC to defend BEE, as not many outside of that closed circle have been able to build a better life.
The ANC failed to criticise the DA’s six fundamental reforms to roadblocks that we have identified as standing in the way of growing South Africa’s economy and creating jobs, because it is self-evident that these areas need rapid reform.
Anything less than urgent and deep-seated reforms will not get our country out of stagnation and an eventual downward spiral.
The most damaging economic roadblock of these is the ANC and old big business’s stitch up policy of BEE. We now need to bin it.
The ANC’s statement, while doubling down on BEE policy, offered up no meaningful defence, as it is not possible to defend the indefensible.
Professor William Gumede has calculated that the effects of BEE have been 100 politically connected cronies receiving R1-trillion through BEE. That could have been R50 000 in small business development and startup grants to 20 million South Africans instead.
The reality is that there is now a clear public view that BEE has failed and it’s time for the ANC to read the room and help dismantle this failed approach.
South Africa is running out of time to replace pitiful policy with inclusive systems that target poverty as a means test to uplift poor people who have been left behind.
It is time to end the scammy scheme of BEE.
Regards
Dr Mark Burke MP
DA Spokesperson on Finance