President Thabo Mbeki on Friday slated South Africa’s leading petrochemical company, Sasol, for bad-mouthing black empowerment in a submission to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Writing in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress’s website, Mbeki said Sasol has presented black empowerment as a potential negative factor in terms of its performance as a publicly listed company.
The company has made a submission to the NYSE — when applying for a secondary listing — saying that there could be a risk to shareholders that value may not be achieved in the case of black economic empowerment equity transactions.
Mbeki said Sasol has presented empowerment as a potential negative factor to its performance.
”The obvious effect of this is that any potential investor through the NYSE would have to conclude that it may very well be unwise to buy Sasol shares, or otherwise invest in the South African economy, given the uncertainties that Sasol communicated in its submission to the NYSE,” Mbeki said.
Barloworld’s chief economist later spoke out in support of Sasol, saying: ”Empowerment has a negative impact on productivity, on the cost of business and, therefore on the competitiveness and profitably of companies.”
Mbeki said the message communicated is that black empowerment is bad for business.
”Accordingly, the message these sought to communicate to all business people, both domestic and foreign, is that they should view our efforts to address the legacy of racism in our economy as something inimical to good business.”
He warned that Sasol and other companies that have the same attitude will have to outgrow their outdated mindsets.
”In the end, they will have to understand that black economic empowerment is in their interest, in like manner as the white population in our country, in general, is beginning to understand that democracy and non-racism guarantee them life, liberty and happiness,” he said. — Sapa