WATCH | 90% of black South Africans excluded from economic control – Zungu

Business tycoonSandile Zungusays while control of the economy is firmly in the hands of a minority, 90% of black South Africans have no meaningful management or control of the economy. “It is a despicable situation. It is unacceptable.

It has got to be challenged,” Zungu saidin an interview with Sowetan editor Sibongakonke Shobafor the podcast showIn the Know. According to Zungu, whites make up 10% or less of the population — a figure he says is dwindling — yet control of the economy is firmly in their hands. “The other side of the coin is that 90% of black South Africans, that includes Indians and Coloured South Africans, have no control of the economy.

They have no meaningful management or control of the economy,” he said. Zungu was responding to questions on whether there should be changes to the government’s black economic empowerment policy. Zungusaid as long as the demographics of SA were not finding expression in the economy, both in management and ownership, that was something that needed to be challenged.

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On the economy and how it should be revived, Zungu said unemployment had nothing to do with empowerment. That the economy was not transforming enough and not creating enough opportunities for youth employment had nothing to do with empowerment or with the narrow nature of transformation. “It’s very important to state that categorically.

More often than not, out of desperate times, people eat this narrative hook, line and sinker that BEE has robbed the economy of an opportunity to create jobs. It’s a lie. It must be dismissed with the contempt that it deserves,” he said.

He said empowerment laws must be enacted with the sole intention of hastening black participation. READ|Sandile Zungu on how he almost joined Bucs as Khoza’s deputy “Tweak them with the sole intention to hasten black participation at a mass scale because our social order, our political order which is stable, is at risk if the margins of the economy are littered with black souls and the centre of the economy is lily white, which is the current situation. It is unacceptable.” Zungu also said the government needed to do better, to work faster and persuade corporate SA to embrace change.

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