Mashatile says B-BBEE will be tightened so ‘black people don’t have 10% of a Van der Merwe business’

Deputy President Paul Mashatile. Picture: X / @ParliamentofRSA Deputy President Paul Mashatile told parliament on Thursday that South Africa will not abandon the controversial broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) policy, and that new measures will be introduced to ensure it is fully implemented. Mashatile’s remarks come at a time whenSouth Africa and the US government are at loggerheadsover a number of transformation laws, including B-BBEE.

“We will look at some of the issues that come out of the B-BBEE commission, but we must be able to emphasise that we must expand the measures that we are putting in place, but not end up focusing too much on compliance, but also on implementation, getting this business to be able to work and ensure that they have real projects. “We definitely need to expand to do much more, thatB-BBEE is really implementedin a real way, it’s not just a paper thing. We need to go out there and see that these people are involved in real businesses and they must be visible those businesses.

That will give us a sense of the progress that we are making,” he said. The deputy president said government also aims to deal with the issue of fronting, where black people are offered some shares in companies that are owned by white people. “Black people in this country must build enterprises, not be happy that they have 10% of a Van der Merwe business.

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We want to see black people building factories and not be happy with some 10% here and 20% there,” he said. Mashatile says black people who are just shareholders in white companies are not entrepreneurs unless they are fully active in the business. Mashatile said government will ensure that institutions, such as the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC), funds more black companies to ensure the B-BBEE policy is more effective.

“We have to fund unlisted business, most of them emerging, most of them involved in infrastructure. If South Africa wants to drive growth through infrastructure, then resources must also go to companies that are not listed on the stock exchange. “We need to tighten the regulations of these institutions,” he said.

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