By Akani Nkuna
ANC leader and South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has doubled down on the need for race-based economic transformation, saying it is the next critical phase in the country’s democratic progress.
Ramaphosa said that since 1994, the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act and the Employment Equity Act had helped drive progress in ownership, management representation, and enterprise development.
“Despite this progress, the average income of white households is still nearly five times higher than that of black African households. That is why we need to intensify our drive for inclusive growth through infrastructure development, industrial policy, land redistribution, and black economic empowerment,” Ramaphosa said.
He was speaking at the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg on Tuesday night, where the party is holding its National General Council (NGC).
He said the ANC had resolved that “rapid, inclusive economic growth is necessary to generate employment and business opportunities, and is essential to advance empowerment and redress”.
“We do not agree with the suggestion that we must make a choice between growth and transformation,” he said.
“Economic growth without transformation entrenches exclusion, and transformation without growth is unsustainable.”
B-BBE is a contested policy. The Democratic Alliance, one of the ANC’s main rivals and a key member of the Government of National Unity, has said that B-BBE has become a vehicle for elite enrichment and should be replaced with race-neutral, poverty-focused measures.
Other critics, including the Institute of Race Relations, say BEE has entrenched rent-seeking and amplified barriers to investment and employment, benefiting a relatively small politically connected class, instead of the black majority.
Ramaphosa’s remarks come as the ANC is trying to project a renewal agenda amid a severely denuded voter base and anger from citizens because of corruption, unemployment, slow growth, and poor or no services.
The NGC, which started on Monday and ends on Thursday, intends to assess, among other issues, if the “National Democratic Revolution” is still on course. It is also being used to reconnect the ANC’s modern strategies to the founding ideals of the Freedom Charter.
Ramaphosa linked the charter to the ANC’s liberation-era policy tradition, saying it still offers a practical guide for building a non-racial, non-sexist, developmental state.
He said South Africa should be proud that for “the last three decades we have consistently held free and fair elections,” but added that democracy required an active citizenry, beyond periodic voting.
Ramaphosa told delegates to use the Freedom Charter as the yardstick for measuring the ANC’s achievements.
He said they should ask if the party has remained faithful to its mandate to build a society in which vulnerable and previously excluded citizens share in the economy’s benefits.
Moving to the issue of land, he said, historical dispossession was a continuing economic injustice.
The ANC was implementing “an accelerated land reform programme to provide land to those who work it and who need it, including young people and women,” he said.
The return of land should be matched by support for beneficiaries to sustain growth and food security.
He highlighted social gains made since 1994, saying South Africa had expanded access to electricity, water, sanitation and housing.
“More than 88 percent of households today live in formal houses,” he said.
Social grants had lifted millions out of absolute poverty, he said, but acknowledged that many communities still experience ongoing service delivery failures and rising costs of living.
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