Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition Ebrahim Patel has accused opponents of BEE of pursuing ‘a dangerous strategy’ that ‘will ultimately undermine the social stability that democracy rests upon’.
He singled out ‘legal challenges’ against so-called broad-based black economic empowerment which had ‘sought to stall through litigation and aggressive posturing the necessary journey of transforming the economy. It is a dangerous strategy that will fail. It will ultimately undermine the social stability that democracy rests upon,” Patel said.
According to News24, Patel said resistance to B-BBEE undermined other policies the government had introduced to broaden economic participation.
Challenging the government’s race-based empowerment policies was short-sighted and undermined hopes of growing the economy sustainably.
Patel was speaking at an online empowerment conference on Friday.
News24 noted that the backdrop to the event was ‘a month of turbulence’ over the status of the government’s guidelines for public procurement under the Preferential Public Procurement Framework Act (PPPFA). In February, the Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal by the minister of finance against a Supreme Court ruling which invalidated the 2017 iteration of the PPPFA regulations, in favour of Afribusiness NPC’s challenge of the guidelines.
Patel said: ‘The focus of empowerment has expanded over time. Over the last few decades, the first part of empowerment was about shareholding to help capital accumulation in the hands of black South Africans.
‘Then it shifted to consortiums and industrial management and finally the expansion of ownership by employees of a company.
‘Legal challenges against B-BBEE policies have sought to stall through litigation and aggressive posturing the necessary journey of transforming the economy. It is a dangerous strategy that will fail. It will ultimately undermine the social stability that democracy rests upon.’
Last month, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) welcomed the Treasury’s announcement that it had granted exemptions from race-based procurement tests for new contracts offered by Eskom and Transnet – but warned that the relief would be short-lived if the Employment Equity Amendment Bill (EEB) was allowed to become law.
The IRR has urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to exercise his veto and send the draft bill back to Parliament for a re-think.
In a statement, the IRR said that while it welcomed this week’s announcement by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana – which followed the February ruling of the Constitutional Court, striking down regulations that disqualified companies from bidding for government contracts on the basis of race – the EEB ‘will resurrect the pre-disqualification criteria that were just struck down as unconstitutional’.
The IRR said: ‘Minister Godongwana is well justified to exempt SOEs from “pencil-test procurement” procedures that insult the dignity of black people. Surveys commissioned by the IRR consistently show that roughly 80% of South Africans, including 80% of black South Africans, would prefer job-seekers to be appointed by merit, a better alternative to perpetuating the ignoble idea that some people are inadequate because of their appearance.’
Details of the IRR petition to President Ramaphosa are available here.
[Image: Eric Miller, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22590639]