The Sunday Times’ list of richest South Africans illustrates how some shrewd individuals are coining it in spite of a sluggish economy.
Conspicuously, three amongst the list are mining bosses – Glencore ‘s Ivan Glasenberg, the wealthiest with a net worth of about R60bn; followed by Patrice Motsepe who is worth more than R18.4bn and Des Sacco, from Assore Limited at R13.5bn.
From a transformation perspective, the list shows how far Historically Disadvantages Individuals (HDIs) are still from accumulating massive wealth to pull their lot from the peripheral of economic activity. Only 14 of the top 100 are black.
With regards to women empowerment the results are less inspiring. There are only three women on the list – Tracey Wardle King in 36th place; Judy Dlamini in 50th and Sharon Wapnick in 74th place.
One of the reasons why our economy is as stagnant as it is is that we think we should all be billionaires. Maybe we should all give up, add up the “riches” in the country and divide it by the number of people living here so we can all be equally poor.
Why is there the obsession with blacks “accumulating massive wealth”? What we are seeing is that rich blacks behave no differently to rich whites once they acquire wealth and power. For a more sustainable and equitable future, should the emphasis not rather be about creating oopportunities for more marginalised people to enter the mainstream economy?