No reason to throw out BEE while majority lives in poverty

It was former American president Bill Clinton's campaign strategist, James Carville, who coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" in 1992, which has come to sum up, in many instances, what politics is mainly or should be about.

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We might be judged for stretching it in some quarters, but the Struggle would have been in vain if, in the end, it was relegated to the pursuit of political power and neglected economic emancipation.

It was with this in mind that, after capturing political power, there was a need to turn the focus on economic freedom for Africans, which centuries of colonialism and apartheid had denied them.

Thus, the idea of black economic empowerment (BEE) to grant Africans meaningful participation in the economy was born.

The intention of BEE cannot be scoffed at, yet BEE has had no shortage of detractors right from the onset, with the likes of the former opposition party - now sitting comfortably in President Cyril Ramaphosa's coalition government - the DA.