False promises of ‘economic inclusion’

EVERY morning on South Africa's shop floors, in hospitals, schools and municipalities, workers wake up to the same reality: they labour hard, but the fruits of their work are eaten elsewhere. I have walked those floors, listened to those voices, and seen how the promises of 1994 have been quietly buried beneath the rubble of greed and betrayal.

- TAHIR MAEPA

Power and wealth remain locked in the same hands that held them before democracy. The faces on the posters have changed, but the structures of ownership have not. So when the Democratic Alliance (DA) tells us that the real problem is Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) and not the system of racial capitalism it was meant to dismantle, we must call it what it is: a carefully crafted declaration of war against Black economic emancipation.

Betrayal of the liberation promise

We, the workers and the poor, are under no illusions about the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC has betrayed the principles of B-BBEE. They handed it over to a parasitic elite their friends, families, and cronies who turned empowerment into a personal wealth scheme. A handful of politically connected individuals became billionaires while millions of workers remain in shacks, debt and unemployment.

This is not transformation; it is capture in designer suits. The liberation promise has been traded for tender opportunities and boardroom seats. It is a profound betrayal of the millions who marched, bled, and died for true economic freedom.

But the solution cannot be to hand the country back to the architects of our dispossession.

The DA’s race-neutral fantasy

The DA’s “Economic Inclusion for All Bill” dresses up an old apartheid fantasy in new liberal language.

By replacing “race” with “poverty,” it pretends that inequality is an accident of the market rather than a legacy of history.

Let us be clear: South Africa's economy has a colour, and that colour remains white.

Let’s look at the facts:

* Over 70% of JSE-listed company ownership remains in white hands.