Scrap BEE? Not while poverty, joblessness and inequality still devastate black South Africans

ONE shudders in disbelief at efforts to scrap black economic empowerment (BEE).

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If truth be told, BEE never started the full journey but they now say it must be scrapped. This begs the question: Are blacks the children of a lesser God".In May 1998 the Black Business Council (BBC) urgently appointed then former ANC secretary general and now president, Cyril Ramaphosa, to chair a BEE Commission as acceptance and implementation of BEE were erratic. From this BBC intervention, and further toing and froing, the Department of Trade and Industry, now Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) ultimately came with Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment legislation in 2003.

There is no doubt that there has been some action and major achievements but the ultimate barometer is poverty, unemployment and inequality (PUI). To add to this is the sustainability of black firms, more so small one. Here are the facts.

According to Stats SA 23.2 million live below R1,415 per person per month. Talk in the townships, villages and informal settlements is that in some families adults take turns eating so that the children have something. Ai, and to add to this, in some instances take their school feeding packs home so the family eats.

Inequality continues to be a huge problem and ours is the highest in the world with the gini-coefficient at .63 to .67 and with 10% of population owning 80% of total wealth. Worse still, inequality within the black community, estimated at close to .6, is on the gallop. The latest unemployment figures, released last Monday, show that unemployment is at a staggering 31.4%. Over 12 million South Africans are jobless.