LETTER: Macozoma symbol of BEE failure - Business Day

Your feature on Saki Macozoma and BEE read more like a tribute than a critical assessment of one of SA’s most contentious policies (“Saki Macozoma and the redemption of BEE”, August 1).

Macozoma’s satisfaction with BEE is understandable — he is among its chief beneficiaries. But the very fact that a small group of politically connected individuals such as Macozoma, President Cyril Ramaphosa and Patrice Motsepe became dollar millionaires through racial preferment is not a mark of success. It is evidence of failure.

BEE has delivered fake transformation. It has not broadened opportunity, lifted the poor or grown the economy. It has done the opposite. Since 1994 unemployment has worsened, especially among black South Africans. Inequality remains among the highest in the world. Millions are trapped in poverty and depend on welfare. Growth has flatlined.

These are not incidental outcomes. They stem from a toxic policy mix, with BEE at its core: a system that deters investment, empowers insiders and punishes merit.

Macozoma may call it a success, but for most South Africans it has been a disaster. It is easy to be misled by visible wealth at the top. What goes unseen are the millions out of work, with falling incomes and rising costs. That is the true cost of BEE: opportunity foregone for the many so that wealth may be concentrated among the few.

Real transformation will come not from entrenching racial preferment but from creating the conditions for inclusive growth: high fixed investment, rising productivity, plummeting unemployment and expanding opportunity.

The Institute of Race Relations’ (IRR’s) Blueprint for Growth papers outline a practical path to achieve that. Until we embrace genuine reform we will remain trapped in a cycle of elite enrichment and mass immiseration.

John Endres
CEO, IRR

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2025-08-05-letter-macozoma-symbol-of-bee-failure/