More than half of South Africans want a key policy aimed at addressing racial inequality scrapped and hiring and promotions to be merit-based, according to the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR).
The South African Reconciliation Barometer found that 54% of the country’s inhabitants agree that the so-called broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) rules should be phased out, the Cape Town-based institute said in a report published on its website.
Two-thirds of South Africans think that the use of racial categories does more harm than good, the Cape Town-based IJR said.
Mounting scrutiny of the empowerment policy within South Africa is partly due to US President Donald Trump’s drive to end affirmative action and government diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in America, the IJR said.
Pretoria-born billionaire Elon Musk, who is seeking to start operating his Starlink internet service in South Africa, has said the laws are racist and unfairly prejudice white citizens.
South Africa introduced empowerment policies after the end of apartheid, compelling companies in industries including banking, mining and telecommunications to sell stakes to black people who were systematically excluded from the economy during white-minority rule.
Three decades after the end of apartheid, black South Africans, who account for more than 80% of the country’s 63 million people, face a far higher unemployment rate than their white counterparts – 35.8% compared with 8.1%, according to Statistics South Africa.
White households on average also earn almost five times more than black families.
Almost 30 million black South Africans live in poverty, according to the Democratic Alliance, which opposes the government’s empowerment policy, arguing that it has “entrenched a millionaire class of politically connected insiders”.
The party found that R1 trillion has been transferred to less than 100 people since apartheid ended in 1994, according to its website.
The IJR study showed that an overwhelming majority of South Africans agree that a racially representative workforce should be a national priority.
“This was relatively consistent among people of different races, although slightly lower among white South Africans,” it said.
Support among white South Africans for a racially representative workforce was 77%, compared with at least 82% for black, Indian and mixed-race South Africans, the IJR noted.
BLOOMBERG