President Thabo Mbeki’s younger brother Moeletsi slammed black economic empowerment in its current form on Wednesday, saying only a few people were being enriched.
He said empowerment merely amounted to the transfer of assets to individuals with good political connections.
”We are not creating entrepreneurs,” Mbeki told a seminar at the University of Pretoria.
”We are taking political leaders and politically-connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage.”
The exercise was undermining value to the economy instead of adding anything.
Mbeki, a former journalist, is deputy chairman of the SA Institute for International Affairs at the University of Witwatersrand.
The current formula of empowerment was invented by conglomerates to create what Mbeki described as a black buffer to protect the interest of big business.
”The South African state has now internalised this model created by big conglomerates,” he said.
”The transfer of white-owned or state assets will not build the economy.”
Mbeki said those who received some assets from big companies now wanted everything.
”We are now seeing the mining charter … and all sorts of other charters. But charters won’t create entrepreneurs for South Africa.”
If one wanted to be a mining engineer or a geologist, one had to study first. Taking shares from a big mining group would not turn one into a mine entrepreneur.
The current formula of empowerment had also created a culture of entitlement, Mbeki said.
Black South Africans should, instead, be encouraged and supported to build their own assets from the ground.
They should also be made to realise that not all South Africans could be capitalists or billionaires.
”Yes, we have to raise standards of living, education and health for the people as a whole,” Mbeki said.
”But the political leadership has to educate their people that not everybody can be a billionaire.”
Mbeki said he knew of former trade unionists who were now millionaires.
”I am always being left out this,” he quipped. ”Maybe I should stop talking to the University of Pretoria so that I can also become empowered.”
Some of his former colleagues in the African National Congress now owned private villas on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and travelled in chauffeur-driven cars.
”So, it definitely works. Black economic empowerment works for the few individuals who act as a buffer,” Mbeki said. – Sapa