By Staff Reporter
The Congress of SA Trade Unions has hit out at the Free Market Foundation and Solidarity for their new report advocating for an end to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, saying it is underwhelmed by the research.
Cosatu parliamentary coordinator Matthew Parks said that the “The Costs of B-BBEE Compliance” research paper was little more than a collection of ideological grievances and random, but unrelated economic statistics.
“Despite its gotcha attempt at a title it does not provide a single instance of evidence to validate its thesis that B-BBEE is a financial burden to the state and a hindrance to economic growth and jobs,” he said in a statement.
“It provides no breakdown backed up by actual research as to any financial burden to the state nor how B-BBEE has been an obstacle to growing the economy and reducing unemployment.
“Strangely it cites statistics related to real and potential growth overall, but no evidence of the relationship between those and B-BBEE. It may as well have blamed constitutional democracy for our economic challenges.”
Solidarity CEO Dirk Hermann said on Thursday that South Africa’s three central challenges of inequality, unemployment and poverty were real and pressing. However, B-BBEE policy has become a harmful “medicine” that exacerbated these problems, rather than solving them.
Parks said an actual research paper would have analysed the impacts of the 2008 global economic crisis, the decade of state capture and corruption, loadshedding and under investments in state-owned enterprises, struggling public and municipal services, and the Covid-19 global pandemic.
He said the “FMF’s glossy 48-page pamphlet” did not cite any of these.
“No reference is made to the need to overcome our still prevalent racial divides as evidenced by countless employment equity studies confirming that most senior positions in the private sector are held by white males or that economic ownership, including shares on the JSE remain largely white held,” he said.
While B-BBEE was not perfect, its objectives remained sound if South Africa was to overcome its status as the world’s most unequal society, Park said.
He said the challenges to achieve the progressive objectives of B-BBEE did not negate its successes in nurturing a growing Black middle class or nascent Black industrialists. Like any policy, it needed to be adjusted periodically to address the various challenges.
Cosatu was disappointed that Solidarity has signed into this ideologically misguided attack on B-BBEE as its own members have been major beneficiaries of the Employees Shareholder Ownership Programme, which was one of the key pillars of B-BBEE targeted at workers of all demographic groups, with over 550,000 benefiting over the recent past.
Similarly, it was under B-BBEE as well as employment equity, that white women have been major beneficiaries of B-BBEE.
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