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‘Failure to transform is hampering growth’

The black majority, particularly Africans, should never be apologetic in their quest to own and control South Africa’s wealth and economy in a manner that is proportionate to their size, “if not more”.

The chairperson of the portfolio committee on trade and industry, Joan Fubbs, an ANC MP, made these remarks at the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals summit held in Cape Town this week.

“South Africa does need a frank discussion on this. It doesn’t need dialogue. It needs a conversation. Our economy is long overdue for change. It’s been more than 23 years since the end of legislated racism and economic exclusion of the black majority that came about because of the colonial conquest. Racial economic legislation has not actually ended,” said Fubbs.

Another cause for concern, she said, was white monopoly capital.

“We need to guard against white monopoly capital. There is no good monopoly capital, it is not good black … it is not good white. What we are opposed to as government, as parliamentarians from the ANC, is white monopoly capital,” she said.

She said the reality was that, when there was competition, “you bring out the best in people – not monopolies”.

She said the financial services sector remained one of the most untransformed sectors in the country. In spite of this, she said the sector had massively increased its contribution to GDP since 1994.

However, general issues affecting transformation in the sector ranged from government and its entities’ lack of implementation of legislation and the abuse of BBBEE arrangements and concepts in the implantation process to access to funding, as it remained a challenge for “black people”.

She said the failure to radically transform the economy has hampered growth, increased inequality, and excluded and marginalised many black people from the economy.

She also said the JSE was “the most untransformed institution”.

“It [the JSE] is largely untransformed, but that doesn’t mean to say it will remain untransformed. When you look at all the large investment at the JSE when it comes to black-owned shares the majority black-owned is small.

“That’s a reality – it doesn’t matter which way we want to paint it,” she said.

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