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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The politics of black economic empowerment in South Africa
Authors:Tangri, RogerISNI
Southall, RogerISNI
Year:2008
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:34
Issue:3
Pages:699-716
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:Blacks
empowerment
government policy
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070802295856
Abstract:Since 1994, South Africa's black majority African National Congress (ANC) government has pursued several important goals at the same time, sometimes emphasizing equity and redistribution of wealth, and sometimes advocating rapid economic growth and corporate investment. These goals have been difficult to reconcile with each other. They have led the government to fluctuate in its black economic empowerment (BEE) policies, shifting between a moderate and radical redistribution of assets. Generally, however, the government has been cautious in implementing BEE, provoking a controversy around it, partly because it has benefited mainly politically-connected individuals rather than the mass of the previously disadvantaged, and partly because South Africa's corporate sector continues to be dominated - managed and owned - by the minority whites. ANC leaders have feared the consequences for economic growth and investment if white business is obliged to relinquish large ownership levels to black investors. The government has cooperated with corporate capital and set empowerment targets acceptable to local industry and foreign companies. Labour and black business have been peripheral to the empowerment process. Black business has expressed criticism at the slow pace of reducing white domination of the corporate world, while labour has criticized BEE deals for enriching a small number of senior ANC figures. But reconciling populist goals with capitalist-led economic growth remains problematic for ANC rulers. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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