South Africa

Ferial Haffajee is a journalist that I have a lot of respect for. As Editor of the M&G she consistently delivers the goods with easily the best paper in SA. However, her latest Comment and Analysis piece on BEE left me a bit on disappointed. While I did agree with some of the things she wrote, on other counts I thought she was off the mark.   

 

BEE is spoken of in a language of limitation and of failure, instead of potential and success. The currency of this debate has quickly become that of “usual suspects”; “waBenzi” and “elite”. It is particularly galling because the commentators are usually privileged (white) people who live in leafy suburbs and who choose not to drive Mercs: in other words, elites themselves but with different motoring habits and of liberal and left politics.

Even if their modes of transport are beat up Jettas and their dress of choice scruffy Levi’s (or Fairtrade denims), they have had the benefits of inter-generational wealth transfer and the comfort of bequests and annuities that allow for good education for their children and ensure comfortable golden years. This inter-generational wealth and dignity is so taken for granted that many of these commentators are blinded to the fact that for many of the compatriots they so label, the goals are just the same; I am, for example, the first generation in my family to have a retirement annuity. For many of my cousins and I, we are the first generation (most of us beneficiaries of employment equity) who will bequeath to our children.

 

Now to me most of the negative characterisations of BEE have arisen recently because many have started to believe that the promised mass based program has been hijacked by the politically well connected who have changed a well meaning program into a get super-rich Casino. The words that Haffajee chooses  “usual suspects”; “waBenzi” and “elite” shows this, if people were truly against BEE they would use different, much harsher adjectives to vent their rejection of BEE. The motoring habits comment I just find bizarre and I think Haffajee misses the point. Again, the way BEE was sold to South Africa was as a means to empower and enable the majority through providing them with the tools to succeed. I do not remember reading in the BEE charter a section that recipients should be filthy rich and engage in as much conspicuos consumption as possible! The "annuity" aside is just a lowblow meant to reinforce Haffajee's perception that the White Liberal Middle class has no right to complain about any part of BEE, as if it makes any difference -- valid criticism is valid criticism no matter who makes it. Would it make any difference if it was someone in the townships making the same comments (as many do).  

 

Of course, like all rapid wealth creation, and especially that which is so aggressively state-assisted, BEE is swashbuckling with all the elements of frontier capitalism.

 

It is replete with quick fortunes, backbiting, shady characters and eyebrow-raising business habits, many of which we cover in the Mail & Guardian. It is a capitalist process, after all. Established business in South Africa has always had such eyebrow-raising habits: cartels are commonplace; corporate governance is new and not terribly well entrenched; there are few links between performance and pay and, until the era of unbundling, the usual suspects owned everything. Apart from a few laudable exceptions, the coverage of these practices by analysts and journalists was nowhere near as robust as that of BEE.

 

Double standards?

 

BEE is many things but is most definitely NOT capitalism. It is much closer to a form of hybrid socialism, which is another reason why the obscene fortunes made by so many BEE Kings is all the more depressing. Is the coverage a double standard? Of course it is! Capital in SA has got away with too much for too long, but if we work from this precept then why shouldn't BEE deals be held up to higher scrutiny? Aren't you Ferial, falling into the same trap of "BEE [being] spoken of in a language of limitation and of failure". Instead why don't we raise the scrutiny of ALL Capital rather than reduce our focus on BEE, now we are talking in the language of "potential and success"

 

Yet to label and malign the whole process, does not allow for a textured and nuanced debate the era requires. Of course, the accumulation of connection as symbolised by the former director general of communications, Andile Ngcaba, whose stake in Telkom earned him more than R800-million is ripe for criticism.

He bought a stake from the Thintana consortium, a Malaysian-American joint venture, to which he had initially sold a stake in Telkom as the director general of communications. Ngcaba has gone on to erect an empire of IT interests; he is there in every big deal.

 

That is the smoking gun for BEE in its present form and I agree with Haffajee wholeheartedly on this count. The entire BEE process is not a failure and there are a number of noticeable successes, however we still have a very long way to go before we can consider the program a success that all South Africans can be proud of.