BEE is same tool apartheid used to empower Afrikaners

Blacks have not figured out how to use state power

- By Mzwandile kaBizokwakhe

Recently, black economic empowerment has come under scrutiny, with the DA releasing a statement calling for its scrapping, but it’s not the first time such a programme has been implemented in South Africa.

Experts agree that the apartheid government implemented a programme not dissimilar to BEE but designed to empower Afrikaners.

Dr Adri du Plessis, senior lecturer in the University of Free State department of public law, said the National Party, which won the 1948 elections, did not only implement its system of racial segregation but also programmes of economic empowerment for Afrikaners.

“It implemented a full complement of policies, programmes, and legislation, for example, job reservation, especially in the public sector - in government and state-owned enterprises.

“Other methods of empowerment included access to quality education, creating a vastly unequal education system, and providing access to finance through financial institutions such as Volkskas [bank],” she said.

Access to land and unequal service delivery were other examples of this empowerment.

She said “Afrikaner empowerment was exclusionary, systematic and a legislative-backed process aimed at dispossessing the majority of the population, advancing a small minority and maintaining dominance.