STEVEN SWINDELLS, Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH Africa’s top black businessman, Cyril Ramaphosa, has urged the government to implement new legislation to boost black economic empowerment, warning of a possible backlash if black South Africans are unable to enjoy the economic fruits of democracy.
Ramaphosa, who was chief negotiator for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) at pre-1994 negotiations to end apartheid rule, said the state had to spread wealth still mainly in the hands of the country’s minority whites.
“If we do not do so, this country in 10 years time is likely to be a country where there will be a backlash,” said Ramaphosa, speaking as chairman of the Black Economic Empowerment Commission.
“We do not want to end up like the Zimbabwe type of situation where 20 years [after independence] we say ‘if only we had done this and this at an earlier stage’,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa’s commission has completed a report urging President Thabo Mbeki to introduce a bill called the Black Economic Empowerment Act to make up for the shortcomings of the market economy and to entrench the country’s infant democracy.
South Africa’s income disparity is still largely based on race lines and the gulf between the haves and have-nots is only wider in Brazil, according to the World Bank.
A study by the University of South Africa (Unisa) this month showed that, seven years after the end of white minority rule, South African blacks’ income had jumped but still lagged behind whites, who comprise about 11% of the population.
The country’s 4.4 million whites earn 44% of the country’s net income of R603.6bn. Black ownership on the Johannesburg stock exchange is estimated at less than 2%, while unemployment among young black South Africans is estimated at as high as 40%.
Ramaphosa, who has been tipped by some political analysts as a potential South African president, said commercial banks were still operating as they did under apartheid by being unwilling to lend money to black business.
“The economy today is largely owned by white people, it’s managed by white people, it’s controlled by white people and even the way the market operates is more orientated to satisfying the needs of the minority,” Ramaphosa said.
The Unisa study concluded that black South Africans last year earned an average of R14.90 for every R100 earned by whites. – Reuters
ZA*NOW:
SAs wealth still in white hands March 19, 2001