The government’s black economic empowerment policies were not responsible for the enrichment of a few individuals in the private sector, President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday night.
”All the big names that you know, who are cited [as] the big black economic empowerment actors, none of them have got to that position as a result of government intervention,” he said in an interview on Metro FM.
”These are private arrangements.”
A lot of the discussion around BEE was not based on a proper assessment of what was happening.
”Government is very much involved in this matter of BEE, and that BEE is predicated on empowerment that has to expand the economy, empowerment that has to increase wealth.
”And so you would see in the government interventions that we are supporting this notion of broad-based empowerment.”
The discussion, however, tended to focus on people who had taken private initiatives. If one looked at what the government had been trying to do, there was no such thing as enrichment of the few, he said.
”What’s happening in the private sector is what’s happening in the private sector,” he said. – Sapa