Yesterday, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) released a press statement slamming President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comments made earlier this week on 2021 being a ‘game changer for BEE’. The IRR called on the President to stop “Blatant Elite Enrichment” (BEE) and implement the IRR’s alternative policy of Economic Empowerment for the Disadvantaged (EED) instead.
On Tuesday, at an event hosted by the Progressive Business Forum, an organisation aligned to the African National Congress (ANC), Ramaphosa said: “Sometimes we talk in broad terms about the economy. We now need to go deeper into exactly what makes the economy work and function, and the participation of black people in all areas of economic activity. We will then see how best we can get black people to participate. This is the year that we should be able to do that and move the needle of economic empowerment for women, young people and black people broadly. We need to be able to say in a few years’ time that the empowerment of our people is now becoming a reality.”
However, the IRR argues that BEE does not assist those in need but only those who are politically connected. The IRR proposes an alternative policy, namely, EED. This would empower all those who need assistance instead of only assisting people of a certain race. The statement said: “Where convoluted BEE measures rely on race as a proxy for disadvantage – by which, absurdly, President Ramaphosa is a disadvantaged billionaire – EED would deal directly and honestly with disadvantage itself. This would finally scrap Apartheid-era racial classification, and end the cronyism that has had the effect of robbing from the poor to give to the powerful.”
The IRR’s policy of EED, which was developed by its Head of Policy Research, Dr. Anthea Jeffery, has long been one of the policy proposals of the IRR. The policy would not focus on filling racial quotas but would instead focus on providing the inputs needed to empower South Africans.
Commenting on this the IRR’s Head of Strategic Initiatives, Hermann Pretorius, said “President Ramaphosa and his ANC colleagues have done very nicely from the empowerment framework they created – not so much the rest of our people. The president’s reference to a ‘game changer’ must be seen in the context of a game that the political elites have rigged in their favour. Rather than a game changer, South Africans need the ANC to stop playing games. Scrap blatant elite enrichment and give real empowerment policy a chance.”
You can read the full press release by clicking this link.