BEE is a form of race discrimination, but can the DA do better?
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It has taken decades for political parties opposing the ANC to come up with a defensible alternative policy that meets the challenges of our times.
The past weekend saw the DA offer its considered counter to the ANC, but the policy’s birth has not been without considerable controversy. It followed in the wake of the departure from the party over recent months of important major black leaders in the party — Mmusi Maimane, Herman Mashaba and John Moodey — who distanced themselves from the prevailing thinking in the upper echelons of the party.
The crux of the argument is whether race should be used as a proxy for disadvantage. Maimane, Mashaba and Moodey all believed it should be, but current leadership — John Steenhuisen, Helen Zille and Gwen Ngwenya (backed now by the delegates at the party’s first policy conference this past weekend) — have voted to eradicate race from the equation and opt for complete non-racialism.
Proponents of the change believe it is a matter of principle that the party must adopt, and that it will not dent support for the party among black voters. Support for the disadvantaged in society would be provided for in other aspects of policy and would not be assessed on a racial measure. It would do away with the ANC’s abuse of the BEE policy, which has been used to establish a new black economic elite without aiding the bulk of the poor in any way.
The abuse of the BEE policy by the ANC is there for all to see — so many of its leaders are now fat-cat examples of BEE.
Since the removal of apartheid in the 1990s the ANC has aimed to realise the goals of its hugely idealistic and impractical Freedom Charter, adopted a generation earlier. It has stepped back from applying aspects of that policy, for practical reasons, without abandoning or amending them.
The charter set out to establish a society in which the banks and mines would be nationalised and land given to all landless people, the national wealth would be restored to the people, and all would have the right to occupy land “wherever they choose”.
All people would have the right to be decently housed, slums would be demolished and new suburbs built where all would have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, crèches and social centres.
A quarter of a century after the ANC ...
The past weekend saw the DA offer its considered counter to the ANC, but the policy’s birth has not been without considerable controversy. It followed in the wake of the departure from the party over recent months of important major black leaders in the party — Mmusi Maimane, Herman Mashaba and John Moodey — who distanced themselves from the prevailing thinking in the upper echelons of the party.
The crux of the argument is whether race should be used as a proxy for disadvantage. Maimane, Mashaba and Moodey all believed it should be, but current leadership — John Steenhuisen, Helen Zille and Gwen Ngwenya (backed now by the delegates at the party’s first policy conference this past weekend) — have voted to eradicate race from the equation and opt for complete non-racialism.
Proponents of the change believe it is a matter of principle that the party must adopt, and that it will not dent support for the party among black voters. Support for the disadvantaged in society would be provided for in other aspects of policy and would not be assessed on a racial measure. It would do away with the ANC’s abuse of the BEE policy, which has been used to establish a new black economic elite without aiding the bulk of the poor in any way.
The abuse of the BEE policy by the ANC is there for all to see — so many of its leaders are now fat-cat examples of BEE.
Since the removal of apartheid in the 1990s the ANC has aimed to realise the goals of its hugely idealistic and impractical Freedom Charter, adopted a generation earlier. It has stepped back from applying aspects of that policy, for practical reasons, without abandoning or amending them.
The charter set out to establish a society in which the banks and mines would be nationalised and land given to all landless people, the national wealth would be restored to the people, and all would have the right to occupy land “wherever they choose”.
All people would have the right to be decently housed, slums would be demolished and new suburbs built where all would have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, crèches and social centres.
A quarter of a century after the ANC ...