Mohai defends B-BBEE against the ‘false narrative’

Seiso Mohai, Deputy Minister in The Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. Photo by Gallo Images/Ziyaad Douglas The “false narrative” that broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) has only benefitted a small group of politically connected individuals “is an incomplete and often desperate distortion of reality”, says Seiso Mohai, Deputy Minister in The Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. “Yes, there have been instances where benefits were concentrated and where transactional empowerment failed the broad-based objective.

We must acknowledge that honestly,” he told a B-BBEE symposium at the University of Johannesburg on Tuesday. But Mohai said it is equally true that many of the most prominent black South Africans who have risen in business, industry, finance, media, technology and professional services through empowerment opportunities have had no relationship whatsoever with the ANC as a governing party. Mohai said many beneficiaries emerged through entrepreneurship, professional excellence, market competitiveness, strategic partnerships and access previously denied to black people under apartheid.

“Their success is not evidence of policy failure, it is evidence that barriers can be broken. Mohai said two other misleading narratives that dominate public discourse and must be confronted are that South Africa must choose between growth and transformation, and that because the implementation of B-BBEE has flaws, the principle itself should be discarded. He said transformation is not the enemy of growth but rather the unfinished foundation of sustainable growth, adding that no society can sustain growth where the majority are excluded from ownership, opportunity, skills development and wealth creation.

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He said implementation failures can never be used as an excuse to undermine or abandon justice, and that fronting must be prosecuted, rent-seeking must be stopped, where compliance is superficial government must enforce substance, and where benefits are too narrow government must broaden participation. Mohai said there is also a need to speak frankly about resistance to B-BBEE. “There are forces – domestic and international – that seek to portray all transformation as unfair, all redress as discrimination, and all empowerment as inefficiency. Mohai’s comments follow South African-born entrepreneur and businessman Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, alleging in a post on X on Sunday that Starlink, his satellite internet company, was given the opportunity to bribe its way to a telecoms licence in South Africa by pretending a black person ran the company’s local business, but he had refused to do so on principle.

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