Bee: Helping or Hurting?. Anthea Jeffery
its productive assets.
Some of the looters are communists looking to confiscate property on behalf of the proletariat; others are so-called compradors interested only in enriching themselves. Either way, their influence can only spell disaster – particularly for black people who are desperate for jobs. ‘Decent work’ of the sort South Africans yearn for can only be created by economic expansion, but the ANC’s new plans annihilate any hope of that. Nobody in their right mind (and this applies to foreigners as well as South Africans, irrespective of race) will open new factories or expand production in a country where property rights are so shaky. And a great many will do the opposite – cut their losses and run the instant they get a whiff of what the ANC has in store for them.
This is normally the point where whites are drowned out by howls of rage from Africans who assume we’re conspiring to protect race and class privileges conferred on us by centuries of white supremacy. They are entitled to be suspicious. White South Africans are unfairly advantaged, in the sense that at least some of our gains are the fruit of laws that deliberately crippled black people’s ability to compete with us. If we are to escape from this death trap, we must be willing to admit this, because we ask something even more difficult of our black compatriots: to acknowledge that the ideologically driven laws described in this book have the capacity to destroy our society as surely as the Xhosa nation was destroyed by the Great Cattle Killing of 1856 to 1857.
So then. Pay careful attention. This is an important book. No matter what your politics, I doubt you will enjoy what Jeffery has to say, but we should nevertheless commend her for saying it. As my friend Sidley says, the ANC’s plan for radical transformation should have been the subject of an urgent national conversation for years already. Thanks to Anthea Jeffery, the great debate might at last be poised to start.
RIAN MALAN
Johannesburg
Malan is a renowned journalist and screenwriter. He is also the author of My Traitor’s Heart – recently republished as a Vintage Modern Classic – and Resident Alien.
Explanatory Notes and Common Abbreviations
My use of the term ‘African’ to mean ‘black African’ is not intended to imply that South Africans of other races have any less claim to being Africans. Since the term ‘non-white’ is still widely regarded as offensive, the book uses ‘black’ as the collective term for African, coloured and Indian people. Other authors sometimes use ‘black’ to refer to Africans only.
References to the Survey in the end notes are to the annual yearbook of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), a publication that has been in print since 1946.
References to Fast Facts are to the IRR’s monthly bulletin, which has been produced since 1991, while references to @Liberty are to the IRR’s policy bulletin, an occasional publication launched in February 2014.
The use of abbreviations has generally been avoided, except where the relevant acronyms are well known and the use of the full name would clutter the text.
Abbreviations and acronyms commonly used are:
| Amplats | Anglo American Platinum |
| AmSA | ArcelorMittal South Africa |
| Amcu | Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union |
| ANC | African National Congress |
| BEE | Black economic empowerment |
| BMF | Black Management Forum |
| CDE | Centre for Development and Enterprise |
| Cosatu | Congress of South African Trade Unions |
| CPSA | Communist Party of South Africa |
| DA | Democratic Alliance |
| DMR | Department of Mineral Resources |
| DoE | Department of Energy |
| DTI | Department of Trade and Industry |
| EAP | Economically active population |
| EFF | Economic Freedom Fighters |
| EU | European Union |
| GDP | Gross Domestic Product |
| HSRC | Human Sciences Research Council |
| IRR | Institute of Race Relations |
| JSE | Johannesburg Stock Exchange |
| Nafcoc | National African Chamber of Commerce and Industry |
| NDR | National democratic revolution |
| Nedlac | National Economic Development and Labour Council |
| NUM | National Union of Mineworkers |
| PetroSA | Petroleum, Oil and Gas Corporation of South Africa Ltd |
| RDP | Reconstruction and Development Programme |
| SABC | South African Broadcasting Corporation |
| SACP | South African Communist Party |
| SCA | Supreme Court of Appeal |
| SME | Small and medium enterprise |
| UCT | University of Cape Town |
| Wits | University of the Witwatersrand |
At times, abbreviations have also been used for statutes that are frequently cited in the text. These abbreviations are:
| BEE Act | Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 |
| EE Act | Employment Equity Act of 1998 |
| MPRDA | Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002 |
| PP Act | Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act of 2000 |
Introduction
South Africa’s affirmative action and black economic empowerment (BEE) policies are probably the most wide-ranging and ambitious in the world. They can be traced back to the political transition in 1994, which brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power as part of a government of national unity committed to providing redress for more than four decades of racial discrimination under the National Party government.
Racial discrimination in the apartheid era permeated every nook and cranny of society, stunting the lives and betraying the hopes of millions of black people. The system was aptly summarised by John Kane-Berman, then a journalist on the Financial Mail, who wrote in 1974: ‘Discrimination … governs every facet of our lives from the cradle to the grave – and even beyond, since even our cemeteries are racially segregated. It is enforced where we live, where we work, where we play, where we learn, where we go when sick, and on the transport we use. Not only does the government condone it; it systematically pursues it, preaches it, practises it, and enforces it.’1
When negotiations for a ‘new’ South Africa began in 1993, all parties to the talks thus agreed that the country’s constitution must strictly prohibit racial discrimination and rigorously uphold the principle of equality before the law. However, it was also recognised by the National Party government, the ANC, and other parties to the talks that simply to repeal all remaining discriminatory laws would not suffice. Remedial measures would also be required to help overcome the legacy of past discrimination and open up opportunities for black citizens.
As in the United States (US), the analogy of the ‘shackled runner’ made sense to many South Africans. In his 1965 commencement address at Howard University, US President Lyndon B Johnson said:
Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with the others’, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates … We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.2
To help provide such opportunity, Johnson called for ‘an equal chance to learn’, for ‘decent homes in decent surroundings’, for ‘better care for the sick’, and for many more jobs to ‘bring the income which permits a man to provide for his family’. He also identified, as perhaps the ‘most important’ of the complex barriers to upward mobility, ‘the breakdown of the family structure’, which at the time saw ‘less than half’ of all African-Americans growing up ‘with both of their parents’. Added Johnson: ‘The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force, it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of