The harmful effects of BEE
John Kane Berman addresses the trade union Solidarity about their legal struggles against Black Economic Empowerment. John Kane Berman is CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations. The institute has a solid history of liberal opposition to Apartheid as well as liberal opposition to the ANC. In this piece Berman is guided by Moeletsi Mbeki’s Architects of Poverty – see my review here. Kane Berman’s article/speech is well worth a read. He is particularly persuasive about BEE being injurious to those it is supposed to benefit; that black people become dependent on the state while white people, previous beneficiaries of Apartheid, are forced to fend for themselves and thereby develop their own creativity and entrepreneurship. I am not sure I buy his dismissal of the whole edifice of redress, but this is feisty and iconoclastic, and therefore interesting. (click on headline for original article).
Nic Borain 