Rob Hersov BEE

You've been told that Black Economic Empowerment, BEE, was about justice, about transformation, about fairness, about fixing the past. But here's the truth they won't say out loud. BEE has created a new elite, fueled entitlement, and strangled productivity. It's been a huge fail. It was meant to build South Africa. Instead, it's breaking South Africa. So let's start with the promise. What we were told. In 1994, BEE sounded right. The goal: open the economy, give opportunity to those previously shut out by apartheid. Moral. Necessary. We all bought into it. But fast forward 30 years. And what do we have? Let's look at what the results have been. They've been a system that rewards the connected few while leaving millions behind. According to the World Bank, this is a 2023 article, South Africa remains the most unequal country on earth. Number one inequality. The top 10% hold more than 80% of all the wealth. So tell me, who exactly got empowered by BEE? Here are the hard facts. We like facts. Labour productivity has dropped nearly 20% since 2008. R&D investment is stuck at about 0.7% of GDP, which is less than half the world average. South Africa's share of global patents, less than 0.02%. Pathetic. Didn't used to be like that. And that's not empowerment. That's actually erosion. When advancement depends on a scorecard, not skill, you kill innovation. And that's what we've done in South Africa. You create bureaucrats, not builders, complainers, not creators, and people with their hands out. So let's be clear. The state knows this. The Black Industrialists Programme, worth over R55 billion, has produced barely a handful of sustainable firms. That's pretty pathetic. The rest, they survive on tenders. Without the state, they collapse. It's all about entitlement. It's the ANC mafia state. Government and gangsters are the same. ANC and gangsters, ANC and mafia, it's the same thing. And that's not empowerment, that's dependency. South Africa has developed and an entitlement culture like this. And here's the real cost, not just in rands, but in mindset. BEE has bred a culture of complete and utter entitlement. Too many now believe that opportunity is owed and not earned. And that's a terrible situation. Jobs, contracts, promotions are all filtered through race and regulation and racial lenses. And by the way, whites, Indians, coloureds don't bother applying. You can't build a high-performance society on low expectations. And the people it was meant to uplift, they're stuck. They're completely and utterly stuck. Youth unemployment sits around 45%. Highest in the world. The country's growth rate is below 1%, while population growth is at 1.5%. We're going backwards every single year. We're literally standing still while the world runs miles ahead of us. And investors see this. They're not stupid. They look at South Africa, they look at BE, and they look at it as a tax on entry. Foreign direct investment into South Africa has fallen from 42% of Africa's total in 2010 to under 20% today. Money is going elsewhere. Why? Because no one invests where ownership law changes every few years, where quotas trump competence, and where success is treated like theft. Investors don't fear transformation. They fear chaos. Investors fear rules written in political ink, and they take their capital with them and their jobs elsewhere. Why bother investing in South Africa? Meanwhile, we keep celebrating empowerment deals that enrich the same politically connected inner circle. The Black Enrichment Elite. We know who they are. Easy 100 names to write. And we've replaced apartheid privilege with ANC privilege, and we're calling that progress. So let's be honest. BEE was not evil in concept. It was right in spirit, but wrong in execution. True empowerment, true empowerment, It means skills, education, and ownership earned through excellence and through effort and through merit. It means competition, not protection. You can't redistribute productivity that doesn't exist. You can't legislate innovation. It's just simply not possible. And you cannot build dignity on dependency. John Adams said it best. It's a great quote. Facts are stubborn things. And the facts say this: South Africa's per capita income is back to 2007 levels. They're falling. That's nearly 2 lost decades. And those 2 lost decades coincide with Jacob the Gangster Zuma and Cyril Spineless Ramaphosa. So what's my sports analogy? It's like playing rugby with 14 men, celebrating possession while the scorecard bleeds points, kicking for 3 points when we need tries and conversions. That's what South Africa is doing right now. We talk transformation, but the economy keeps losing ground. If South Africa were a company, as my business analogy, BEE would be the unprofitable division draining cash and scaring people away. A competent CEO, a competent board would do one thing: restructure, cut loss-making units, empower operators, and link rewards to results. And this is how you turn decline into growth. But is Cyril going to ever do that? No chance. He wants to stick with BEE. So why don't you hear this message more often? Why aren't people calling it out? Because too many are cashing in. The consultants, the caders, the cronies, the real BEE, the Black Evil Elite, the Black Enriched Elite. BEE became an industry of illusion, not inclusion. But if we keep pretending that entitlement equals empowerment, South Africa is going to slide further. Into joblessness, brain drain, and further decay. And the victims won't be the wealthy. They'll be the next generation. They'll be your children, my children. Here's what must happen, and it must happen now. We need to replace race-based BEE with a class-based opportunity charter focused on education, entrepreneurship, and merit. We need to privatize failing state-owned enterprises, which is most of them. We need to end cadre deployment, and we need to protect property rights and get rid of EWC. We need to start rewarding performance, and that's how you build real empowerment. Through excellence, not excuses. And as Winston Churchill said, the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. South Africa deserves better. We all deserve better. And we need to build a nation where success is earned, not allocated. This is Rob Hersov at The Truth Report.