19/07/2021
Which type of BEE deserves your support?
19th July 2021
Recent events – since the Police went in and got former President (and now convicted criminal) Jacob Zuma to ‘hand himself over’ - have been challenging. In just 10 days South Africa went through a series of ‘watershed moments’ which could have tipped the country into disaster. Instead, South Africa appears to have emerged stronger.
At the time of writing, less than a fortnight after Jacob Zumas’ incarceration, it’s clear that South Africans have withstood the first gusts of the storm, and that those who planned and executed the violence, the burning and the looting may well have underestimated the resilience and determination of most South Africans to avoid what the insurrectionists sought to achieve. Instead of falling into the criminals’ traps, the majority of South Africans united against them, refusing to be divided and angered by each other.
This is hard because division feels inevitable. South Africa is a land of horrific historical injustices, and her people are among the most unequal (as measured by wealth and income distribution) in the world. This division remains racially skewed too. But that’s not all - by some measures over 50% of our working population, particularly in the youth, are unemployed. Their frustrations must be immense and are perhaps easily played upon by the rise of populism and populist politicians.
These massive problems have to be fixed.
We are trying to be part of the solution: Tusker uses finance as a tool to help fix social problems (BEE and increasingly climate change). BEE has so much negativity that sometimes it’s really depressing. The negativity almost always comes down to perceptions that BEE is somehow unconstitutional (it’s not), unfair, or, more generally, that BEE is simply a vector for politically connected elites to get wealthy for little (if any) effort at the expense of everyone else. The taxpayers (indeed, every South African) should get far more services for their money. Instead the poor get shafted by a new class of elite and don’t see much real improvement in their lives.
Positive stories are there but good news doesn’t sell. They are also a trickle compared to the deluge of information, so necessary but overwhelming in scale and complexity of corruption, cadre deployment, unfairness and increasing inequality. The Zondo commission has exposed so much, yet it only skims the surface of the rot.
With each new story of corruption, fewer companies are inclined to do BEE deals (having got this far without one). This doesn’t make Tusker’s business any easier. There is no doubt that corruption has been the biggest disservice to BEE, and for BEE to work and be supported the corruption has to be rooted out and heavily penalised.
But what have the events of the last week showed?
It’s here that things get interesting. BEE is at a crossroads. There are two stories that we can tell.
The one story is how the supporters of Jacob Zuma, with their patriarch jailed and the noose of law tightening around their corrupt and criminal enterprises, planned and led a treasonous insurrection against the State, using as always, the victim card. The attacks were directed at ‘white monopoly capital’ and the Indian communities of KZN. The voices calling for an uprising on social media were appears to have included Jacob Zuma’s twins. This is the BEE that so many hate…Corrupt. Cadre. Incompetent. Flashy. Simply leaching on society without achieving real redistribution, which doesn’t build, can’t build, only intent on tearing apart and consuming, apparently content to rule over the ashes.
But the other story is the one that shone through. It’s the one worth supporting.
This is the story of how local communities, long abandoned by the SAPS and knowing that the SANDF weren’t coming, stood together against repeated attack by mobs intent on looting and burning everything in their path (except Bargain Books apparently!). These communities of all ages and all races came together under our most pressing times to protect South Africa from the continued oppression of Jacob Zuma acolytes. They had to, and they did. They included small business owners and traders, BEE businesses, used to fighting each day for their customers and now having to fight at night for their lives. They were joined too, in the most surprising twist by the taxi associations – who realised that if malls and shops and businesses were burnt down then they would have no people to transport, no market for their vital service. In many places, this made all the difference. These too are BEE businesses. Late in the week, a huge shipment of bread and other staples was sent down the freshly opened N3 from the Muslim community of Joburg to those in need in KZN. Thousands of people volunteered to clean up the mess. The SANDF were finally able to relieve community security efforts. It had been the most trying time imaginable.
In a way, what last week came down to was one form of BEE attacking and losing to another form. A more fragmented but also more inclusive, in touch, slice of the business community who declared that enough was enough, and with that the populist movement didn’t spread to other provinces.
South Africa still has the problems of inequality and economic growth to solve. Recent events have highlighted and reinforced the need for economic empowerment of all South Africans. Covid is compounding these issues, but proper BEE has to remain. We know which version of BEE gets our support.
If you’d like to get your BEE ownership sorted and make sure the ‘right’ kind of BEE is done then please be in touch. And stay safe people, we still have a long path to walk but we’re strangely a lot more confident that it can be done that only a few weeks ago…
