Black Economic Empowerment gone awry

SOUTH Africa at 13 is the youngest African child whose destiny has important ramifications for the development of the continent’s brand. The country inherited a sophisticated economic base and hosts the largest white tribe of Africa.
The decolonisation project that started with Sudan in 1956 was an African project and the colonial system was largely oblivious to national boundaries in so far as the tentacles of business were concerned.
Africa is well endowed with natural resources and hence its attraction to imperialism and colonialism. The natives of Africa were not organised to offer any resistance to colonial penetration and control and have been less organised in the post colonial era in defining what they stand for, and what strategies and tactics ought to inform the pan-African democratic revolution.
Colonialism recognised race and the economic model that underpinned the colonial experience was a race-based capitalist system that had a zero tolerance for black capital formation.
The political kingdom is now firmly under the control of natives and after 50 years of independence, it is evident that a new movement is required to change the agenda for transformation and growth in Africa. Natives have taken over the control of political institutions while the economic mainstream is still controlled by non-natives.
The dual economic structures that Africa’s post colonial states inherited were an integral part of the colonial construction that saw in black labour a convenient and cheap source of capital to use in the productive processes. The challenge for Africa is not only to look back at what colonialism did or did not do but to look forward and create a new dispensation that is informed by the interests of all and not just the minority.
In developing a post-colonial empowerment strategy, it is evident that the South African settler community, out of fear, has responded with a framework that has now been adopted by the government to enable historically disadvantaged persons to fast track their entry into the capitalist system. A new vocabulary has now been introduced and accepted as a moral initiative under the name “black economic empowerment” (BEE) designed to redress the wrongs of the apartheid system.
In the decades before South Africa achieved democracy in 1994, the apartheid government systematically excluded African, Indian and coloured people - collectively known as "black people" - from meaningful participation in the country's economy. However, a myopic and self serving definition of black has been adopted as if to suggest that apartheid did not have non-South African black victims.
The role of South African-based companies in exploiting human and natural resources in the continent and feeding the apartheid system is well known and acknowledged and yet it has now been accepted by even blacks that a policy that seeks to divide African victims by place of birth and domicile of capital is in the interests of building a new African identity.
The pan-African brand ambassadors during the colonial era are no different from the contemporary ambassadors. For example, Cecil Rhodes was born in England and immigrated to South Africa but used the South African address to extend the tentacles of the British Empire. No one can argue that South Africa did not benefit from the exploits of Rhodes and his fellow settlers. If this is the case and can be proved empirically, then on what basis can BEE be exclusive to South African blacks?
On the BEE front there is no initiative at the pan-African stage to come up with a policy framework for the creation of business models that transcend national boundaries. The settlers who built Africa’s first economy as a preserve for whites were clear on who to exclude and made no exception as long as the person was not white. Under this framework, all whites were eligible to participate in the loot and yet when it comes to BEE, not all blacks are invited to the party.
South Africa is playing a critical role in the economic renaissance of Africa and yet the value system that informs its empowerment model is not portable in Africa. The distribution rights of most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are being allocated to South Africans to cover the whole continent.
The beneficiaries of such rights are largely white business groups who have no interest in accommodating blacks as shareholders outside the context of a national BEE policy framework. The democratisation of South Africa has also opened the window for South African settler capital to use its apartheid generated advantage to colonize the rest of the continent with little or no accommodation for natives in the host countries.
The dangers of a BEE policy that is nation-based are obvious and frightening. Being black is no longer sufficient to be African but a new requirement is that you must have been born before 1994 and should fit into a straight jacket created to allay the fears of white South Africans rather than promote the oneness of Africa.
Africa requires an economic model that can meet the needs of its entire economic citizens - its people and their enterprises - in a sustainable manner. This will only be possible if the economic model builds on the full potential of all persons and communities across the length and breadth of this continent.
Despite the 50 years of uhuru, Africa’s rich minerals continue to be exploited by non-natives with the exception of South Africa where natives are being accommodated largely as passengers in white economic vehicles. Minerals rights in South Africa now vests in the state and accessing the rights is now being used to redress the economic legacies of apartheid and yet if a small African country attempted to use mineral rights for empowerment, that would be classified as nationalistion.
The same South African mining houses who see no problem with BEE policies in the context of South Africa are often the champions of free enterprise in the continent. If Tokyo Setwale is good as a partner for Anglo why would President Kaunda for instance not be good in the Zambian copperbelt?
A prospect exists where South African so-called empowered blacks will be used as fronts to take advantage of poor African countries’ resources in the same manner Rhodes did thereby exacerbating the inequalities between South Africa and other African countries on the one hand and between rich and poor. Such inequalities will certainly have profound implications on Africa’s political stability. Africa needs pan-African brand ambassadors rather than nation specific ambassadors.
It is a truism that societies characterized by entrenched gender inequality or racially or ethnically defined wealth disparities are not likely to be socially and politically stable, particularly as economic growth can easily exacerbate these inequalities. No society or family can grow by excluding any part of its people or members, and equally an economy that is not growing cannot integrate all of its citizens in a meaningful way. In this vein, if BEE is good for South Africa it should be also good for the continent without favor or prejudice. For Africa to grow, develop and create its own brand ambassadors, a new BEE strategy is required.
There is a danger, recognised by all progressive Africans that the current BEE framework poses a strategic threat to the integration of Africa and the establishment of a common development protocol that can seamlessly be applied throughout the continent. We have to agree that black Africans have no other continent where they can dominate economically in as much as Asians and Europeans are relevant in their home countries as well as in host countries.
I am not confident that in my lifetime a black African investor will for example be welcome in China in as much as Africans welcome Chinese investors. If I have to do business in China, it is obvious that I will need a Chinese partner even though there may not be an explicit Chinese Economic Empowerment policy framework in form of legislation.
The South African BEE policy has the inherent danger of simply replacing the old elite with a new black one, leaving fundamental inequalities intact. Empowered blacks are being integrated on white terms and on white capital exposing them to white control and blackmail.
It should be our collective task to promote policies that attempt to situate black economic empowerment within the context of broader pan-African empowerment strategies that focus on creating a new African personality operating on a democratic and non-racial economic space.
We have no choice but to focus on ownership issues. We have to begin to ask critical questions about who owns and drives the African economic agenda. African governments that are supposedly owned by citizens have a role to play not only in terms of legislation but in terms of procurement policies.In the pre-colonial era, Africans were not allowed to supply to the colonial governments and yet post-colonial African governments have yet to come up with a protocol that is not only sensitive on paper but that actually enhances the contracting capability of the historically disadvantaged persons.
The law of gravity should ordinarily apply in the case of Africa in terms of positioning natives in the value chain of opportunities and yet it is the majority who need to be affirmed through empowerment policies. Why would any majority need legislative protection from the minority? It appears that our literacy levels on money and power is not as developed as it should be.
The Chinese and Indians have demonstrated that it is possible to have a development strategy that is global in outlook but anchored in local values and brands. When are we going to have our own Oppenheimers and Rhodes? Colonialism was underpinned by an Anglo-Saxon value system and an economic model that had champions. In Africa, we seem to have many political champions who have taken it upon themselves to thwart the progress of African entrepreneurship unlike the attitude of the colonial masters to European capitalist adventurism.
In trying to develop a new Africa not blinded by the past but challenged by the future, we need to locate the future of the continent in the hands of our generation so that through our actions today we can define and shape tomorrow. We have the power but lack the organisation. We do not need to look further than the actions of the colonial ambassadors and the kind of issues and interests that informed their choices to become African without losing their European heritage.