Comrade G-Mazibuko

31 October 2025

Honourable Speaker,

The Democratic Alliance arrives here today draped in the blue flag of hypocrisy — peddling what they call a “non-racial economic inclusion bill” that deletes the word race and hopes that centuries of racial exclusion will politely disappear with it. What a marvel of political engineering — to think that 350 years of dispossession, slavery, suppression and job reservation can be undone by a legislative delete button.

South Africans did not wake up unequal by administrative error. Our inequality was designed, brick by brick, by colonial and apartheid architects who captured every inch of this economy — from the farms to the factories, from the stock exchange to the schooling system — and left black people chained to the margins. Three and a half centuries of racial plunder cannot be wished away by semantic trickery dressed up as “inclusion.”

The DA’s so-called Economic Inclusion for All Bill seeks to repeal race-based preferences in the Public Procurement Act of 2024, pretending that poverty is a colourless inconvenience. No, Honourable Members — poverty in South Africa has a name, a face, and a pigment. It is not colour-blind; it is colour-coded by history itself. Their bill is not “non-racial” — it is racial amnesia in policy form.

And then, with the arrogance of privilege, they tell us BBBEE “failed.” Failed whom? The same people who, for centuries, were denied entry to banks, boards, and business deals? The same people whose parents built the mines, cleaned the offices and tilled the fields but were forbidden by law to own the means of production?

Let me educate the DA: ownership and control in BBBEE does not come mahala. It is not a handout, not a lottery ticket, not some magical redistribution. People like President Cyril Ramaphosa, Irene Charnley, Eric Molobi and countless others raised loans — yes, actual loans — to buy their shares. Some made it. Others failed, as is the nature of business. But they tried, they risked, they participated in an economy that once declared them sub-human. To focus only on those who succeeded while ignoring the thousands who struggled is nothing short of emotional blackmail by a political party bankrupt on ideas and addicted to attacking the ANC instead of proposing nation-building policies.

Preferential procurement is also about marginalised groups being prioritised and not just mergers and acquisitions.

Their so-called “policy alternative” is a draconian fantasy that aims to restore white comfort zones under the banner of reform. They scream about “connected elites,” yet forget that the true elites are those who inherited land, infrastructure, and accumulated wealth through apartheid’s legalised theft. They whine about a few black shareholders while ignoring that 60% of corporate South Africa remains white-owned and white-controlled. The real imbalance is not that BEE went too far — it’s that it has not yet gone far enough.

The DA calls Employment Equity “quotas.” I call that progress with a measuring tape. They call set-asides “unfair advantage.” I call that justice with a budget code. If equality cannot be measured, it cannot be delivered.

And, Honourable Members, let us expose another lie: the notion that BBBEE excludes white people. Across every municipality and public entity — even in menial work — opportunities are open to all races. Pikitup, for example, has programmes open for white RCR employees. Not one came forward. They prefer management without sweat, profit without production, ownership without effort.

We cannot be emotionally blackmailed into preserving white superiority under the guise of fairness.

The DA’s obsession with labelling BBBEE as “elitist” is the final insult. We, the children of mine dormitories, townships and hostels, are told that empowerment is corruption — while they, the descendants of colonial wealth, pretend their inheritance was “merit.” If they want to talk about elites, let’s talk about the suburbs built with stolen land, the pensions funded by black labour, the infrastructure denied to the majority.

So, no — we will not apologise for BBBEE. We will not dilute Employment Equity. We will not abandon preferential procurement. Section 9(2) of our Constitution demands remedial measures for the victims of past discrimination, and Section 217 mandates a procurement framework that advances the previously disadvantaged. That is not racial discrimination; that is justice doing its job.

We will operate within the law, yes — but within that law we will bend the economic architecture toward equity until it reflects the demographics of this country. We are content to operate in the confines of legality, but we will never be confined by the comfort zones of white nostalgia.

Honourable Speaker, the DA’s “colour-blind inclusion” is nothing more of preserving apartheid’s economic DNA in a polite accent. South Africans must see it for what it is — a protection racket for privilege, a defence of the Aryan ideal in policy disguise.

Our message is simple: BBBEE is not charity — it is correction and redress. Employment Equity is not bias — it is balance. And the ANC’s transformation agenda is not vengeance — it is vindication for centuries of stolen humanity.

Let the DA squirm in their blue suits of moral bankruptcy. We will stay in the trenches of transformation, with the people, for the people, and in defence of the Constitution that they selectively quote but never truly believe in.

Because, Honourable Members, we are not race-obsessed — we are history-literate. And history has a long memory.

Instead of calling for an end to BBBEE, this Parliament should focus on the abuse of the BBBEE to prevent the transfer of ownership, as many companies have an impressive BEE rating, yet there is low black ownership. We support the call that BEE has become like an exam that is too easy to pass, and companies have found ways to game the system. The empowerment rules need to be rewritten, as Duma Gqubule correctly argues.

We must strengthen the system to realise true transformation and shifts in the ownership of the South African Economy.