THE PREMIER'S ADDRESS
Master of Ceremonies,
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Allow me to quote Robert and Anne Seidman on post-colonial Africa.
" 'At the end of World War II, everyone knew what caused third world poverty and oppression: colonialism. Then, the empire crumbled. Hope blossomed everywhere. New technologies held the promise of plenty for all.
Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, preached a text for the third world's new leaders: 'seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else will follow'.
Outside the wall, trumpets sounded glad tidings of political
freedom and material comfort.
Thirty years later, across the third world, nationals had taken over the
political kingdom.
Yet not the walls., but hope itself had tumbled. Nearly every third world country lay burdened by accumulated debt,mounting unemployment and falling real incomes. War and famine forced millions into squalid refugee camps.
Repeated crises tore at the third world's social fabric, in some countries, it all but unravelled. Instead of development for the many, there came riches and power for a greedy few.
Gaining State power whether through elections, coups or prolonged military struggle proved no magic detour around the rocky obstacles strewn along the development road. Why did the longed for nationalist capture of State power now appear so futile?"
Many of us may not agree with this depiction of all of Africa and the third world as having failed the masses. However, there are important lessons that we can draw from the above.
Maybe we should consider ourselves fortunate that we are engaged in this challenge of economic empowerment at a time when many lessons have occurred in our continent.
Even if the above were to be a true representation of the story of the majority of postcolonial societies, we are better placed to deal with the great challenges that this would pose. This must encourages us.
Chairperson, I am also encouraged by the fact that debates about black economic empowerment and affirmative action are beginning to leave the boardrooms for the public domain.
In this regard, I think it is imperative that we shape the agenda on these matters and together chart a way forward in all our areas of work and engagement. We must redefine the terms of the debate and of our participation in the mainstream of our economy. This must be at the centre of our agenda for transformation.
For the past few days we have been involved in report-backs to the people who elected us into government. In the true tradition of accountability as taught to us by those who came before us in the African National Congress we went to the people of Mahushu, Salubindza, Nyongane, Mshadza, Mganduzweni and Kiepersol in the Hazyview Region to tell them what we have done in our first three months in government.
We did this because of our firm belief that government can only succeed in partnership with the people. We knew then - as we know now - that we have to be a government that is in daily and respectful contact with the people; a government that listens and learns from the people.
Master of ceremonies, we will in the next few weeks visit every region in this province to report-back because we are indeed a province at work for a better life.
Our visits to these areas have brought us face to face with the grinding poverty and squalor the majority of our people find themselves in. The poverty trap, in villages like Mathanjana, Msogwaba and other rural areas has reached unprecedented and dangerous levels.
We can only ignore this reality at our own peril. For as long as there is abject poverty and the majority of people still eke a living in the dumps of our province, we would not have fulfilled the mandate given to us by the people in 1994 and on June 2 this year.
There will be no better life if the fruits of a blossoming economy are enjoyed by a few and the rest become slaves to the advancement of the already wealthy.
Master of ceremonies, we will always have sleepless nights if the majority are still bondage to humiliating poverty and their existence has been reduced to television images of hungry children in the hands of their famished and lifeless mothers. Some of us here wallowed in poverty yesterday before we became successful business people. We therefore understand poverty.
Is it therefore imperative that we, as leaders in the business community, as humans, should give the economy a moral culture; a culture of people-centredness; a culture that says we are not empowered if the majority still worry about just getting a job? Worry about where their next meal is going to come from?
Ladies and gentlemen, I raise these issues not to spoil you year-end function and the dinner that will go with it, but to remind all of us about the realities of our province and our country.
We say these things so that when we call on all of us to work together in partnership as government and business in addressing the challenge of poverty we understand where we come from.
In 1994 and again on June 2, 1999 when we went to the polls we sought to replace a society which, in many instances, has been and continue to be brutal and brutish in the extreme.
Over the centuries this society has condemned millions to a catastrophic loss of national identity and human dignity, land dispossession, classification and denigration as sub-humans and the systematic destruction of families and communities.
The society we sought to replace - and still seek to replace - was, to a very significant degree, built on the law of the jungle - the survival of the fittest.
Accordingly, the weakest who were denied access to power became the landless, the unemployed, the uneducated, the surplus people deported to the so-called homelands, the victims of abject poverty.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is therefore a need for the reconstruction and development of our society into one which guarantees human dignity. It is a huge task. For this reason this is not a task that can be carried out by the government alone. This challenge faces the entirety of our people.
We need to actively work in partnership in order to empower our communities to rise above grinding poverty. To empower them so they can emerge from hopelessness. Only then can we be able to say indeed we are our brothers keepers.
It is from this premise that we need to move in our understanding of empowerment. To us empowerment remains a product of the democratisation process. It remains a key aspect of the transition towards a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.
We all accept that genuine freedom and reconciliation could not be realised whilst power and resources remain in the hands of the white minority in our society.
Fundamentally, Black economic empowerment should be part of our efforts to forge a new path of economic development within the global economy.
For many years, but especially since the unbanning of the liberation movement, one has been disturbed by voices that seek to perpetuate the notion that black economic empowerment is about giving a black face to the ever white and unchanging business enterprises in our country.
Of late this to a greater extent been widened to mean the acquisition by a few individuals of equity in companies previously owned exclusively by whites.
We must therefore denounce the notion that economic empowerment is achieved when a few blacks are co-opted into what was previously a white boy's club.
What this notion suggests, is that blacks are used as fronts to legitimise the current skewed patterns of ownership, representivity and involvement by the black majority in economic activity.
If we allow this wrong theory, to gain ground and legitimacy, the rules of the economic game will remain fundamentally the same. If we leave it unchallenged, then we must know that we will have played a direct role towards sabotaging the process to transform the unequal patterns of ownership in our economy.
We will have missed an opportunity to take our rightful place in a society we helped create. Were this to happen, we must know that history and generations to come will judge us harshly.
It could therefore be argued that what threatens Black economic empowerment in South Africa is its current narrow focus and the opportunism of some of its participants.
The legitimacy of the democratic transition itself depends on the confidence that our people have on the ability of our government to effect meaningful social and economic transformation.
It is also critical that a working economy aimed at meeting the needs of all South Africans should be able to unleash the potential of all its citizens. An economy that leaves more than half of its people outside economic activity is doomed to fail.
Economic empowerment is part of a process of broadening both economic ownership and active participation in the economy by all South Africans. To us though, the empowerment of Blacks in general and of Africans in particular has always been at the centre of our struggle.
Affirmative Action and the economic empowerment of historically disadvantaged communities remain critical aspects of the restructuring and privatisation process.
Black economic empowerment should therefore be located within the broader context of the transformation of our economy and society as a whole. Without this critical location, empowerment has the potential of degenerating into what others call 'self-enrichment' and "rent-a-black.
For Black economic empowerment to succeed and enjoy the support of the majority of South Africans it must be part of the broader movement for transforming the economy, the workplace, skill development, employment creation and extending social services to our people.
It should not be positioned in such a manner that it is in conflict with these objectives.
A search for viable alternatives in economic ownership and economic activity, it could be argued should also be part of our understanding of black economic economic empowerment. It is not only about the acquisition of shares in existing enterprises.
It is therefore not about the replacement of white with black shareowners, without changing the operations of such entities, transforming the workplace, skill development and the way they do business.
As government, as a facilitator and coordinator of economic activity, we have a responsibility to monitor the direction of Black economic empowerment in our society, and even suggest different approaches. Government will contribute its own experiences to this on-going assessment.
Ladies and gentlemen, as government we believe that Black economic empowerment is a product of and in turn must contribute to the development and consolidation of the democratic breakthrough.
But government's role is also to use its key policy instrument, regulatory and financial tools in making sure this broad version of Black economic empowerment is realised.
Government is the central contributor in making empowerment a reality.
The state must harness its resources and capacity to ensure that economic participation is broadened.
We must all assert that Black economic empowerment is here to stay, because it is part of our accelerated programme of transformation and delivery. The challenge for us is to give it content and broaden its scope. Most importantly, BEE must be made the project of the overwhelming majority of South Africans for it to succeed.
In the past five years many deals and transactions were entered into in the name of Black economic empowerment, and we should admit however that some of these have not fully realised the goals that we set ourselves out to do.
It must be said that the accusations by our opponents and cynics should serve as an opportunity to look at ourselves, and whether or not we are doing things right.
Finally, I am sure by now many of you are asking why I started my speech by quoting Robert and Anne Seidman. I told you then - and I wish to repeat it again - our experience in post- colonial Africa provides us with valuable empirical lessons and things we need to avoid if we are to create this better life for all our people.
All of us here know more than anyone else about the problems of broken promises, corrupt elites and betrayal of the people's mandate.
Together we must disarm those who seek to portray all black economic empowerment as a cosmetic attempt to dress up old apartheid structures of power and privilege by co-opting selected individuals. We should join hands and ensure that it is viewed as a programme to genuinely empower millions who have previously been disempowered.
All of us know that empowerment of the majority who have been economically dispossessed to participate meaningfully in the mainstream of the economy at all levels remains at the core of our agenda for transformation.
This poses a challenge to us to unleash the previously stifled human potential of the masses of South African people in ways, which benefit them and their communities.
The challenge lies with you therefore as Black business and us as government to create the infrastructure necessary for viable economic activity and robust productivity. This will also require the involvement of the people we seek to empower. Some have sought to project involvement of black business as relevant only in small business.
We are aware of the fact that in the recent past we have witnessed a spate of takeovers, deals and launches of new companies by black entrepreneurs. To the extent that this represents a challenge to the existing white monopolies, and a move into the direction of socially responsible business, the government is fully committed to such ventures.
We welcome it because we think it represents a move away from the traditional image and stereotype of black business being equated with only sectors like the taxi industry, shebeens, spaza shops and so on.
While these sectors remain important to our economy, I want to emphasise it unequivocally that I have no doubt that we are going to earn our respect in the mainstream economy by walking tall, by taking initiatives in ventures previously monopolised for the purposes of keeping all of us away from the means of production. It is us who have begun to challenge such boardroom conspiracies.
It is us who will introduce into the economy a culture of shared wealth and equity. It will not happen by chance or some goodwill from those who have had a firm grip on the structures of economic control.
The Mpumalanga Provincial Government is well aware of the difficulties and challenges, which confront Black Business. We are well aware that it is upon us also as the state to create necessary conditions, which in turn will open up the economy for the participation of black business.
While we must not equate black business with small business, we also should not be blind to the fact the majority of black businesses form a large part of the small business sector.
At the same time, I am aware that amongst you there are established business minds of profound credentials and to the extent that we as government must form strategic partnerships with those, we are fully committed. In numerous conferences we have tackled issues of skills development, training and capacity building. We have also repeatedly stated that business ventures are impossible if small businesses remain with no access to finance.
My appeal to you today is not to shy away from contentious issues like opening doors and treating women and the disabled as equal partners in business. We must be very clear that the problems of economic empowerment have to do with an economic agenda; they have to do with what investments serve to attain.
The challenge for all of us is how to translate our profits into meaningful economic empowerment for the majority of people.
While it is wrong to say that only black business should engage in social responsibility, I think that what should distinguish us from the rest of business, is our social duty to the historically disempowered.
Together we must take initiatives to empower all sections of our communities to start their business ventures. It is us who must show even those already established in the economic mainstream that we are committed to labour standards and basic rights of working people.
We must become the pioneers of new relationships in the workplace. Our responsibility lies with the full understanding that we have urban and rural poverty and that such social problems should be tackled by all of us as a patriotic partnership against socioeconomic maladies.
But it is also upon us to take the challenge of real economic empowerment with seriousness. It is upon us to ensure that we set the agenda for ourselves and pursue it with determination. It is therefore imperative that black business is united with purpose and must not allow agendas of self-interest and greed to overtake our noble course, for if this happens we are all doomed.
Many developing nations today are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. This has led to these nations producing at a fraction of their potential. It is this potential that we as business can help unlock by coming up with concrete and implementable proposals to end the scourge in partnership with government.
By being involved in the control of the spread of HIV/AIDS through supporting education programmes, we will be able to empower our people - especially the youth - to take charge of their own health and their own development. There can be no better way of empowering communities than to show them that their health is in their own hands.
Our lack of openness about HIV/AIDS can be likened to fighting an invisible enemy in the dark. In our quest to escape the reality about the disease and the gravity of the situation, we have developed euphemisms that we use when referring to people who suffer from or have died from AIDS.
In mainly black communities, people refer to it as "the three-letter" disease (amagama amathathu).
Ladies and Gentlemen, we will not succeed in fighting this disease for as long as we refuse to accept reality. We will continue to perish in even larger numbers. In many countries of the region there has been a tendency to treat the disease as foreign.
Controversies about possible vaccines have not brought us closer to the solutions. Vigorous research should be accompanied by drastic changes in our behaviour patterns.
As the disease continues to destroy many lives, we should graduate from awareness campaigns about AIDS to the implementation stage as a priority.
When we leave this gathering tonight ladies and gentlemen, let us get down to business and vow to do everything in our power to build a province and a country free from want, disease, hunger and poverty.
I Thank you.