Black economic empowerment (BEE) ownership solutions company Tusker CEO Gareth Ochse told Polity on Wednesday that government has not been effectively proactive with BEE, urging government to incentivise black businesses to allow them to enter high-growth, high-value pockets of the economy.

Ochse unpacked Tusker’s latest study, ‘The elephant in the room: the BEE ownership landscape in 2025 (it’s not what you’ve been told)’, which debunks an increasingly prevalent narrative that “BEE ownership has only benefitted 100 black elite”.

Ochse stated that while government needed to do more on the policy, BEE was being tainted by corruption.

“The BEE policy is very well intended, that we have this need to address that years after apartheid, we still have a very inequitable economy. We're still grappling with these issues. The fundamental thing though is BEE is being tainted by corruption,” he pointed out.

While the country worked to address past injustices, he said corrupt individuals sought any chance or any form of legislation to use to their advantage.

“…but unfortunately, what happens is you have a corrupt semi mafia State starting to happen in South Africa, with very little legal action against it, very little consequence. And particularly anywhere where there's a pocket of money, you find people are registering a business that's got no expertise, no directors... getting a juicy tender. This puts the whole of BEE under scrutiny because it just becomes a real thorn in the side of people who legitimately do this and have the fees and costs associated with it,” he stated.

He said the fundamental thing to do to ensure BEE was a success was to stop corrupt individuals from taking advantage of the policy.

He noted that, through Tusker’s research, it had been established that there were more than 870 000 black shareholders, as a result of BEE.

The study found evidence that BEE targets directly affect BEE ownership totals in each business size bracket and that businesses have strongly responded to BEE ownership requirements in terms of Ownership and Procurement Scorecards.

“We then built highly conservative estimates of the number of shareholders for each business by size category and estimated that BEE ownership deals have benefitted at least 873 000 black persons directly (and many more families indirectly)”, the Tusker study said.

It believes the actual number is significantly higher.

“So the important thing about our research is that we think 873 000 is the floor, not the ceiling. We think there's many more black shareholders than that as a result of BEE. But what happened here is that there's this very popular narrative. And you see it increasingly in the press, especially in the sort of more right-leaning press, that only 100 people have really benefited from BEE,” Ochse said.

Read Tusker’s research paper here.