The redistribution of posts to black people was a dangerous model of transformation, as it pitted blacks against whites and entrenched racial divisions, businessman and political gadfly Moeletsi Mbeki (right) argued this week.
Mbeki, the brother of President Thabo Mbeki, has repeatedly raised eyebrows through his criticism of government policies and actions, notably on Zimbabwe. In his speech recently, at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (Wiser), he wryly remarked that comments he had made on black economic empowerment (BEE) and the University of Pretoria had earned him “the hatred of South Africa’s BEE tycoons”.
His speech formed part of a series of addresses by prominent commentators on race and transformation organised by Wiser at Wits.
Mbeki said attempts to promote black advancement by reserving jobs for black people were fraught with difficulties, including who should receive them, when, and to what degree.
South Africa should leave the “consumption model of transformation” — exemplified by the practice of handing out shares to black beneficiaries — and adopt Asia’s productive approach.
“The black upper middle class dominates the country’s political life today. This class, however, plays next to no role in the ownership and control of the productive economy of South Africa. Their key role in the economy is one of overseeing redistribution of wealth towards consumption,” Mbeki argued in his paper, Concepts of Transformation and the Social Structure of South Africa.
A third of the 600 000 university graduates turned out by China each year were engineers, he added.
Mbeki said that with its rich endowment of mineral resources, South Africa had generated a unique form of capitalism marked in the modern era by a partnership between the politically dominant black middle classes on the one hand, and an economic oligarchy that owned and controlled the “mineral-energy complex” on the other.
This new ruling class determined what passed for transformation.
Vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa agreed, saying that the country’s transformatiom model was inadequate. “The problem is that when you are redistributing and not growing you will reach a point where there is nothing to distribute any more,” he argued.