This strategy session is perhaps among the most consequential in the short history of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Commission. The policy of economic empowerment is under attack.

The Commission is perceived as Accused No 1 for promoting racism and a so-called ‘race to the bottom’, for worsening inequality, for undermining economic growth, and for encouraging corruption. 

I was wondering, personally, whether to respond positively to the invitation because the judges, juries and executioners have made their findings; and one would have expected law enforcement agencies to be at your door, serving papers that should result in long jail terms, and arraigning any associates for common purpose. 

From the chambers of parliament to billboards meant to welcome G20 Summit visitors, to meetings and selfies in the White House, and celebrated think tanks in the most powerful country in the world, the battle has been joined.

And so, because ‘bad, bad things are happening in South Africa’, we are all expected to cower in terror; beg for forgiveness and mend our ways. 

Whence does this inversion of narratives find its genesis; from which well do these campaigners imbibe their warped logic; and what do they hope to achieve? 

• Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; and… 
• Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person. 

In 2020, the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) published a book, Beyond Tenderpreneurship: Rethinking Black Business and Economic Empowerment. When the research was conducted, there were serious concerns about a form of ‘empowerment’ that, at its zenith, had spawned state capture. 

And so, in this book, MISTRA set out to trace the history of black entrepreneurship and the legal and extra-legal measures, under apartheid colonialism, to suppress the entrepreneurial impulse among black people. The book deliberately seeks to remove the oog-klappies (blinkers) of cynicism about economic empowerment; dispassionately to critique the praxis in relation to good intentions, and to propose measures that can help improve the policy’s impact. 

The book examines the endeavours of black entrepreneurs before the formalisation of the South African nation-state at the turn of the last century.

It argues that the core essence of attacks they faced was the expropriation of land which made the native ‘not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his [sic] birth’ to quote Sol Plaatjie; and South Africa ‘by law ceased to be the home of any of her native children’ (Jaffer & Tshabalala: 2021). 

Full speech attached.