South Africa doesn’t need less transformation. It needs more intelligent transformation, writes Lee du Preez.
For nearly two decades, Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) has become both the symbol of redress and the scapegoat of dysfunction. If there’s a pothole in someone’s neighbourhood, they blame B-BBEE. If the sun doesn’t shine brightly enough, B-BBEE gets the side-eye.
But what most South Africans don’t realise is that their frustration often targets the wrong culprit.
There are countless examples of BEE working - transforming lives, opening doors and enabling businesses. But those stories don’t make headlines. They don’t sell newspapers. They’re not clickbait.
Meanwhile, B-BBEE’s failures - particularly those tied to the ANC’s mismanagement - are paraded as proof that the policy itself is broken. They’re not. The tool isn’t the problem. It’s the dirty fingers of cadres reaching into public procurement coffers and manipulating B-BBEE deals to fund patronage networks, that have tainted it. And this is not by design but by how it’s been co-opted.
READ | Jeremy Cronin: BEE - A necessary but flawed pathway to economic justice
Like many liberation movements globally, the ANC has outlived its capacity to govern effectively. History shows us that post-liberation parties often eat their own legacy - and South Africa has become a textbook case.
B-BBEE became a funding mechanism for the party, not a vehicle for structural change. But that doesn’t mean the whole baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Quite the opposite. It means we need to rescue the policy from political decay and implement it with integrity and competence.
And here’s the twist: the DA could do that better than the ANC ever has.
Now, I’m well aware of how provocative that statement is.
A strategic mirror
The DA has spent years positioning itself as an opponent of race-based policy - claiming that transformation entrenches division and perpetuates entitlement. But let’s be honest: the DA’s position on B-BBEE isn’t rooted in principle. It’s a strategic mirror to its voter base - predominantly white and upwardly mobile black South Africans, many of whom, particularly the younger generation, lack a lived understanding of how brutal apartheid truly was for the majority of the population.
Appeasing that discomfort earns votes. But it also costs the party something deeper: moral clarity and emotional resonance in a country still healing from structural trauma.
Because here’s the inconvenient truth - anyone who experienced apartheid or who grew up hearing their parents’ trauma knows that redress without race is revisionism. Apartheid wasn’t a class project. It was a race project. If race was used to construct exclusion, then race must be part of the blueprint for justice. Non-racialism without repair isn’t unity; it’s amnesia.
One of the strongest critiques of B-BBEE is that it has created a culture of entitlement. But that’s a shallow analysis. Entitlement didn’t begin with B-BBEE. White South Africans lived with structural entitlement for generations - it was just dressed as normality. B-BBEE didn’t invent dependency; it revealed how normalised privilege had become.
What critics call “black entitlement” is often just the uncomfortable sight of others finally accessing what used to be exclusively theirs.
And for the disillusioned young black South Africans who feel B-BBEE has failed them - look closer. You are often its quietest beneficiaries. The schools you attended, the scholarships, the business grants your uncle got, the HR policy that gave your mother her first managerial role - these weren’t accidents. They were architecture. This isn’t to deny how hard you’ve worked or to pretend that white South Africans didn’t also work hard under apartheid. The point is that hard work alone has never guaranteed a fair reward.
READ | Tony Leon: To BEE or not to BEE if there is no economic revolution
What transformation policies like B-BBEE do is shift the system so that effort has a better chance of being met with opportunity, regardless of race. Without that, the playing field stays rigged.
You have every right to demand more, but don’t dismantle the bridge just because the driver took a wrong turn. Fix the route. Build a better map.
So how do we fix it?
Start with precision. The current B-BBEE scorecard awards bonus points under the “New Entrants” indicator for black shareholders whose net asset value is under R50 million. That threshold is absurd.
In a country where the vast majority of citizens will never see even a fraction of that, we need to reset the bar. Lower it to R10 million. Add additional points for net asset value below that threshold – not those already sitting on generational wealth. And reduce scoring weight once a shareholder’s wealth surpasses R10 million. This doesn’t punish success - it prevents elite capture. B-BBEE should be a ladder, not a revolving door for the connected few.
Vilify the system
This is the kind of technocratic reform the DA claims to excel at. And yet, rather than improve the system, they’ve chosen to vilify it. But if the DA truly believes in clean governance, policy efficiency, and evidence-based decision-making, it should run towards B-BBEE - not away from it. Implement it better. Prove that it can work. Outdo the ANC at their own game.
Because here’s the irony: the DA stands to gain more by transforming its stance on transformation than it does from scapegoating it. If it wants to expand its voter base beyond enclaves of inherited comfort, this is its moment.
Supporting B-BBEE isn’t a betrayal of DA values. It’s a chance to show the country what fundamental, principled transformation could look like in capable hands.
The tragedy isn’t that B-BBEE failed. The tragedy is that no one powerful enough has tried to implement it with absolute integrity.
That’s not a policy problem. That’s a failure of political will.
And it’s one we can still correct if we have the courage to rewrite the story rather than erase it.
- Lee du Preez is a transformation strategist and B-BBEE advisory specialist.
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