The African National Congress (ANC) says it wants small business people to advise government on the effective implementation of the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). The BBBEE policy has been criticised as a scheme that only empowers only politically-connected.
The governing party introduced the empowerment model in the early 1990s as a form of deracialising the economy, but its detractors say the policy is open to abuse through fronting and corruption in tenders.
ANC Head of Economic Transformation Sub-Committee Enoch Godongwane says BEE beneficiaries including emerging enterpreneurs should say what form the economic empowerment model should take.
“We would like to have ideas from the public because we are not going to have space for people who do not know the unintended. You see, when you implement a policy, there are unintended consequences which we don’t know. For instance, one of those unintended consequences has been funding. But unless somebody brings that to the attention of the government nobody would know,” says Godongwane.
