South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa defended laws aimed at uplifting the country’s Black majority and said he is “baffled” by suggestions that they are stifling economic growth.
The so-called empowerment laws have been central to a fallout between Ramaphosa and his US counterpart Donald Trump and his Pretoria-born billionaire backer Elon Musk, who say they are racist and unfairly prejudice White citizens. They have also spread the false conspiracy theory that White Afrikaner farmers have been subjected to a genocide — an allegation South Africa says is totally unfounded.
“I find it very worrying that we continue to have this notion that broad-based Black economic empowerment” is holding the economy back, Ramaphosa said in response to a lawmaker’s’ question in Cape Town on Tuesday. “It is the partial and exclusive ownership of the means of production in our country that is keeping this economy from growing.”
More than 30 years after the end of apartheid rule, which saw Black citizens excluded from the mainstream economy, official data shows that White families on average earn almost five times more than their Black counterparts.
Ramaphosa referred to World Bank and International Monetary Fund studies, which he said found a disproportionate share of the economy remains in the hands of a privileged minority.
“What do you want to see happening? Do you want to see black people continuing to play the role of labourers, drawers of water, hewers of wood and consumers only?” he asked. “Black people must play a productive role as well” and should be able to become rich, he said.
The president is himself a beneficiary of South Africa’s empowerment policies — he became one of the nation’s richest Black men during a stint in business during which he acquired stakes in a number of companies whose predominately White owners were trying to diversify their shareholder bases.
