Good governance is not code for neutralising redress. It is making redress work—with public proof, enforceable penalties, and relentless public scrutiny, writes Andile Nomlala
For many of us, B-BEE wasn’t policy on a page; it was the moment a corporate buyer finally signed a first purchase order, the first time our invoice was paid on thirty days instead of ninety, the first meeting where our voice counted because we were no longer “diversity décor” but decision-makers with mandate. Those small doors added up to something large: a visible black middle class and a cohort of black-owned firms with real customers, real payrolls, and real prospects. This change is quantifiable: the black middle class more than doubled from 1.7 million people in 2004 to 4.2 million in 2012 (UCT Unilever Institute, 2013), and by 2012, its size surpassed the number of white individuals in the same income bracket for the first time in modern history. That shift is not theoretical; you can hear it in the cadence of boardrooms that now sound like South Africa, and you can see it in supplier parks where black manufacturers aren’t guests, they’re anchors.
The basis of redress is simple and unapologetic. Apartheid engineered assetlessness and ring-fenced ownership, capital, networks, and high-value production behind laws and relationships that excluded black South Africans by design. B-BBEE was built to tilt those markets back toward justice and participation. Its architecture—ownership with real control, management with decision rights, accredited skills pathways that end in placement, enterprise and supplier development that pulls new firms into value chains—was never charity. It was deliberate rewiring of incentives so inclusion compounds into capability and competitiveness. The intent delivered: the black share of South Africa’s middle class rose from ~10.7 % in 1993 to over 41 % by 2012 (Stellenbosch University RESEP, 2013).
I will be the first to own where implementation faltered. Fronting distorted intent. Verification ballooned into bureaucracy. Box-ticking displaced capability-building; points were awarded for promises at bid stage rather than proof at close-out. These are design and enforcement failures—not arguments for dismantling a remedial purpose that still fits South Africa’s facts.
Which brings us to the Democratic Alliance’s Economic Inclusion for All Bill—a colour-blind repackaging that swaps structural change for neat metrics. The DA claims to seek clean governance and inclusive growth—goals we all share. But instead of targeting the fraud and weak enforcement that undermine B-BBEE, it strikes at equity itself.
In the Western Cape, the DA boasts that it “implements B-BBEE well”. If true, then strengthen the national framework to match that standard. If not, show the data—publish the contracts, the black suppliers moving from sub-contracting to prime, the ownership structures that carry real control. Don’t claim best practice in one breath and gut the very levers that make it possible in the next.
Here is the responsible fix—inside B-BBEE, not outside it:
- Tie recognition to verified delivery: real jobs, completed qualifications, supplier performance, repeated export orders.
- Digitise and simplify verification: one national template, one portal, one audit trail.
- Create a public impact register: track who promised what, who delivered, and what sanctions followed.
- Make consequences real: claw-backs, penalties, blacklisting for fronting and serial non- compliance.
That’s how you target gaming. Not equity.
To the DA and its advocates pushing an “outcomes-only” model as SME-friendly: be honest about capital inequality. White-owned firms still enjoy superior access to capital, networks, and preferential credit—even without a bank or VC—because collateral and social capital compound over generations. In that world, an outcomes-only model becomes a new paperwork ceiling. It rewards incumbents with pristine spreadsheets while market structure remains untouched.
Many white South Africans already understand this. They speak not just of acknowledgment, but of justice.
They know equity means transferring opportunity, capital, and control—not just signalling intent.
So we must ask: with this race-blind bill, who exactly is the DA speaking for? those prepared to finish the work of redress, or those comfortable with the old balance of power dressed up as “inclusion”?
Let us look at this bill in full context. While championing the so-called Economic Inclusion for All Bill, the DA is simultaneously contesting Employment Equity targets. These are not isolated policy tweaks—they are part of a coordinated shift. Two moves, one message: under-correct the very structural gaps that B-BBEE and EE were designed to close. That crosses a line. If you genuinely believe in clean governance, then help enforce the rules that punish gaming and reward delivery. But do not launder inequality through a race-blind points system in a country where access to capital, networks, and ownership still tracks race.
A Call to Black Professionals and Black Associations
A word to my peers, the managers in boardrooms, the founders with payrolls, the first generation of black professionals and business leaders to rise through doors that justice pried open. This is our fight. We benefited—not as fat cats on a party list, but as entrepreneurs, artisans, engineers, finance professionals, manufacturers—and we carry a duty to defend and improve this framework. If B-BBEE built your career, your firm, your balance sheet—stand up and be counted. Own it. Fix it. Fight for it.
Black associations and lobby groups must close ranks now. We must move past debate and table the concrete policy recommendations that will make B-BBEE work where it counts.
To our black professionals who support the DA: Review that support urgently. If the party is seeking to repeal the very levers that placed you in boardrooms and corner offices, it is undoing the structural equality we are still fighting for.
Good governance is not code for neutralising redress. It is making redress work—with public proof, enforceable penalties, and relentless public scrutiny. South Africa does not need a reset; it needs a tune-up. Cut the gaming, not the goals. Simplify the paperwork, not the purpose. Measure what matters—relentlessly and in public—so every rand of public spend compounds capability and dignity, not just compliance. We are living proof that B-BBEE moved the starting line. The task now is to accelerate, not reverse—and we, the beneficiaries, must lead that charge.
Andile Nomlala is a B-BBEE beneficiary who is not a fat cat from any political party.