Bill to replace B-BBEE flawed

The DA's Public Procurement Amendment Bill proposes replacing the black economic empowerment (BEE) framework with a nonracial, outcomes-based procurement model that measures inclusion through poverty, performance and social impact.

- Prof Joseph Sekhampu

It calls for a shift from identity-based policy to measurable developmental results, arguing that empowerment should be about poverty rather than race, about performance rather than participation.

The proposal speaks to growing public fatigue with policies seen as politicised or captured and to a desire for a system that rewards competence and delivery. Yet beneath its administrative logic lies a deeper question: can justice be pursued through neutrality, or must it remain anchored in the historical conditions that produced inequality in the first place?

For nearly three decades, B-BBEE has been the state's main instrument of economic redress, conceived as a moral response to centuries of exclusion from property, capital and opportunity. Its intent was restorative, linking justice to historical repair, but its implementation has often fallen short.