How BEE is being dismantled by its opponents and its custodians

BLACK economic empowerment in South Africa is not collapsing by accident. It is being dismantled deliberately, but from two different ends of the political spectrum.

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From above, through constitutional litigation framed as “non-racialism”, but designed to protect historic advantage. And from below, through state incompetence, elite capture and patronage networks that hollowed out BEE’s purpose until the public could no longer recognise justice in its name.

This is not policy failure - it is political sabotage.

When the DA challenges BEE in court, it does so under the language of fairness, equality and constitutionalism, but the effect of its strategy is not neutral. It is racially restorative for those who already sit atop the economic ladder. Removing remedial measures in a society where ownership, capital and opportunity are still overwhelmingly racialised does not return us to a level playing field — it locks in the old one.

A colour-blind legal framework inside a structurally racial economy is not fairness — it is the legal preservation of inherited inequality.

The DA's litigation is premised on intention, but equality in South African law is judged by effect. Substantive equality, not formal parity, is the constitutional standard. Without conscious correction of structural injustice, we do not achieve democracy — we merely stabilise its hierarchies.

But the DA’s offensive does not succeed in isolation. It succeeds because the ANC long ago forfeited the moral credibility to defend BEE.

A governing party entrusted with widening participation instead narrowed it, treating empowerment as patronage currency and political insurance rather than as an instrument of structural change.