“What is it that this ANC-led government can do in a coalition with the DA that it couldn’t do with an absolute and unfettered majority for 30 years?”
At the recent Black Business Council (BBC) Summit, renowned business leader and academic Professor Bonang Mohale delivered as intense address, questioning the real progress made in transforming South Africa’s economy 31 years into democracy.
Speaking to an audience that included representatives from black business formations and senior political leaders, Prof. Mohale called out both the government and business for failing to fundamentally shift the economic power structure.
“It’s called a political economy because it doesn’t matter what we as the Black Business Council do,” Mohale asserted, “What government does has a disproportionate influence on everything that we do. And we are not doing much.”
He raised a bold question about the governing ANC’s record:
“What is it that this ANC-led government can do in a coalition with the DA that it couldn’t do with an absolute and unfettered majority for 30 years?”
Despite political power, he argued, economic exclusion persists, and the faces of poverty remain the same.
“Poverty still has primarily a black and feminine face,” he said, pointing to 15 years of economic stagnation, “The economy has not grown by more than 2%. Population growth has been above 1.5%, which means our discretionary power and disposable income buys us less today than it did 15 years ago.”
Even the country’s much-trumpeted reclaiming of its position as Africa’s biggest economy drew his skepticism.
“We celebrate the fact that we have reclaimed our position as the biggest economy in Africa, number one, but that’s $400 billion. It was the same in 2016.”
Mohale then turned to history to illustrate what purposeful economic transformation looks like, referencing the Afrikaner experience.
“The Afrikaners did not have a State of the Nation Address with 38 priorities. They had one problem to solve, the poor Afrikaner problem. By 1972, they’d eliminated it completely.”
“This is our government, a black government. And yet, in 31 years of democracy, the only three communities that made money are not you and I. It’s the Afrikaners, the Jewish people, and the Muslims, because they’ve got capital.”
He reminded the audience of how Afrikaner industrialist Hendrik van der Bijl created ESKOM, ISCOR, and the IDC, not because of brilliance, but because the state backed him.
“His government said, go and build it. They gave him systems, processes, money, and intelligence.”
In contrast, Mohale expressed frustration at how black business is expected to operate under far more difficult circumstances.
“Now we are told we must be conscientious business because we don’t have much. In 31 years, we should have more, because the power is in our hands.”
He criticized the government’s decision to host the B20 (Business 20) summit, part of South Africa’s G20 presidency, in the Western Cape.
“How did we allow B for Business 20 to be held in the Western Cape, a province not governed by the ANC, where black people are the minority?” he asked. “Gauteng contributes 36% to GDP, KwaZulu-Natal 60%, and the Western Cape only 14%. Who is telling our stories?”
Mohale noted that black business is being shut out of crucial international engagements:
“When we go and account to our master, Trump 2.0, the people who complained and saw the President of the United States, not once, but many times, were AfriForum, not the Black Business Council.”
Turning to the structural nature of black exclusion, he said:
“Black people are not poor because individually we are lazy. We are poor because it’s both systemic and systematic. It doesn’t matter what you do, there are people spending energy to keep you down.”
He used two corporate examples to underline the systemic bias:
“Capitec says it has 24 million customers, 99.8% are black. But 100% of their executives are white.”
“Checkers is now South Africa’s number one retailer. All their growth is in the townships, and all their customers are black, yet the leadership does not reflect that.”
“Great Britain gave South Africa to the white male Afrikaners on three pillars: cheap labour forever, mining rights for gold with first refusal, and diamond pricing under London control.”
In his closing, Prof. Mohale drew attention to the colonial economic model that still haunts South Africa:
“Our problem is that this system is still intact. Most black people, instead of changing it, ask, ‘How can I improve my personal condition within it?’”
With sharp insight and unapologetic honesty, Prof. Mohale’s address served as both a mirror and a call to action, reminding black South Africa that real transformation requires disrupting entrenched systems, not merely participating in them.
