IRR polling… found that most South Africans reject not only the claim of BEE success, but the underpinning principles of the policy as well.
16 September 2025
Deputy President Paul Mashatile recently told the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) that Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has been a “great success,” that it must be implemented more rigorously, and that to abandon it would be akin to “going back to apartheid.”
In response to his claims, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has written to the Deputy President, articulating that all available evidence demonstrates the failure of BEE, and that it has entrenched unemployment, widened inequality, deterred investment, and left the vast majority of South Africans poorer. See the letter here.
Unemployment is worse today than before BEE became law. The strict unemployment rate now stands at 33.2%, compared with 22.6% in 2003, prior to the coming into force of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act. Black unemployment, which BEE was explicitly meant to reduce, is higher now than before the policy was introduced. If this is “success,” then it is a success the majority of South Africans beyond the reach of elite empowerment deals have been evidently and viciously excluded from.
IRR polling in a nationally representative opinion survey in 2025 found that most South Africans reject not only the claim of BEE success, but the underpinning principles of the policy as well.
● 84% of South Africans favour merit-based hiring over the race-based practices demanded by BEE,
● 82% demand value-for-money procurement over the inflated and wasteful cost of BEE-based procurement, and
● 76% prefer voucher-based empowerment over affirmative action and BEE.
These views are even shared by a majority of ANC voters:
● 73% prefer merit over quotas,
● 65% favour value over race in procurement, and
● 77% say vouchers would do more to help them advance than BEE.
In other words, the very people in whose name BEE is defended do not regard it as empowerment. This dissatisfaction with policies that have failed presents the most credible explanation for the catastrophic reduction of the ANC’s popular support from 2004, when it won close to 70% of the vote, to 40% and the loss of its majority in 2024.
Inequality among black South Africans has grown worse over the last two decades. A small, politically connected elite has amassed extraordinary wealth from ownership deals and procurement contracts, while the poor majority remain locked out. The gap between the richest and poorest black South Africans is wider today than even in the 1990s, clear proof that BEE has enriched elites rather than empowered the disadvantaged.
Economic stagnation has further undermined any claim of empowerment. GDP per capita has been flat or falling since 2008, leaving South Africans on average poorer than they were 15 years ago. Mining investment has been strangled by ownership requirements and shifting charters, with South Africa ranked 68th of 82 jurisdictions in the Fraser Institute’s mining index, far behind peers such as Botswana and Zambia.
Ending BEE is not ‘going back to apartheid’ Against this evidence, the claim that abandoning BEE would be akin to “going back to apartheid” is not only wrong, it is insulting to the people of South Africa and to the ANC’s diminishing legacy. Apartheid was a system of racial dehumanisation, oppression, and violence, marked by racial classification, division, and favouritism. To equate scrapping a failed race-based economic policy with apartheid is to trivialise its horrors while denying South Africans the debate they deserve about credible alternatives.
The IRR has advanced such an alternative:
Economic Empowerment for the Disadvantaged (EED). EED is non-racial, pro-growth, and outcome-based. It rewards firms for doing what BEE has failed to achieve: creating jobs, building skills, investing in communities, and driving innovation.
Unlike BEE, it targets disadvantage directly, rather than race, and would deliver empowerment that is broad-based and real. And unlike BEE, it rejects in totality the lingering justification of the racial categories created by the repealed Population Registration Act of 1950.
The IRR therefore calls on the Deputy President to urgently provide verifiable, data-backed evidence of the “great success” you attribute to BEE. South Africa urgently requires real empowerment: policies that deliver work, opportunity, and growth. The IRR stands ready to present its internationally recognised Blueprint for Growth proposals to your office in pursuit of this goal.
Ends.
Media enquiries:
Anneke Burns
IRR Public Relations
+27 71 423 0079
anneke@abpr.co.za