The politics of forgetting

ProfessorJoseph Sekhampu 

THE Democratic Alliance’s Public Procurement Amendment Bill proposes replacing the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) framework with a non-racial, outcomes-based procurement model that measures inclusion through poverty, performance, and social impact. 

It calls for a shift from identity-based policy to measurable developmental results, arguing that empowerment should now be about poverty rather than race, about performance rather than participation. 

The proposal speaks to a growing public fatigue with policies seen as politicised or captured, and to a desire for a system that rewards competence and delivery. 

Yet beneath its administrative logic lies a deeper question: can justice be pursued through neutrality, or must it remain anchored in the historical conditions that produced inequality in the first place?

For nearly three decades, BEE has been the state’s main instrument of economic redress, conceived as a moral response to centuries of exclusion from property, capital and opportunity. Its intent was restorative, linking justice to historical repair, but its implementation has often fallen short. 

Over time, the policy’s moral purpose was weakened by limited oversight, political capture and the concentration of benefits among a small elite. 

While it expanded ownership and representation in some sectors, broad based participation and structural change have remained elusive. 

The JSE’s transformation dashboard shows black economic interest at about 14 percent in 2024, with voting rights around 25 percent; black women’s economic interest stood at 5 percent and their voting rights at 11 percent. These figures reflect progress in form but not in substance.

 This vacuum has led to the DA’s proposal, which promises inclusion without ideology and reform without history. 

The Bill redefines empowerment in the language of developmental equity. It introduces a procurement scorecard weighted 80 percent for value for money and 20 percent for social and developmental outcomes. 

These outcomes are linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on job creation, environmental responsibility and support for small businesses. In theory, this approach could reduce fronting, professionalise tendering and redirect public spending towards measurable developmental outcomes.

 Yet the philosophical shift it represents is significant. Where BEE sought restorative justice, the DA model privileges distributive efficiency. 

It advances the view that equality is best pursued through race neutral measures, with poverty positioned as the primary marker of disadvantage and the basis for redress. 

This marks a transition from a deontological conception of justice, grounded in moral duty to correct past wrongs, to a utilitarian one, focused on maximising aggregate welfare. 

Yet this transformation raises a fundamental question about the ethics of equality: can a society that remains structurally unequal claim to be fair by pretending to be colour blind?

 South Africa’s inequality remains deeply racialised. The legacy of exclusion continues to shape patterns of ownership, employment and opportunity. 

Wealth and privilege still align closely with race, while poverty and vulnerability remain disproportionately concentrated among those historically dispossessed. 

The geography of inequality, from who lives closer to economic opportunity to who depends most on public services, mirrors the moral map of the past. 

To remove race as a category of intervention is to pretend that history has completed its work when it continues to structure the present.

 Proponents of the Bill counter that race based policies have become instruments of corruption and exclusion. They argue that non-racial developmentalism can achieve what BEE has not: broad based upliftment rather than narrow enrichment. BEE compliance costs small businesses significant sums each year, deterring genuine entrepreneurs and entrenching incumbents. Procurement inefficiencies have also suppressed competition, inflated costs and distorted markets. From this perspective, the DA’s model seeks to restore merit, competence and efficiency as the true engines of transformation.

 However, the question is whether efficiency can substitute for justice. Market rationality alone does not reverse structural inequality. 

In societies where the moral economy has been disrupted by dispossession, justice cannot simply mean procedural fairness; it must mean historical repair. 

Fairness requires not equality of treatment, but equality of opportunity, and this cannot exist when inherited advantage remains intact. 

Therefore, a racially neutral policy may produce a racially unequal outcome if the starting points are asymmetrical.

 Procurement has long been the principal instrument of redistribution in South Africa. To shift its moral logic from empowerment to efficiency is to redefine the state’s developmental role. It risks transforming the state from a vehicle of social justice into a regulator of market performance. Such a shift may restore investor confidence, but it could also alienate a society that is still waiting for the material promise of democracy to be fulfilled.

 However, there is a valid insight in the DA’s critique. The moral intent of BEE cannot excuse its failures in governance. The capture of empowerment policy by political and business interests has eroded public trust. Reform is not optional; it is necessary. However, genuine reform must integrate efficiency with empathy. 

It must design mechanisms that deliver measurable outcomes while still confronting structural inequities. This may require a hybrid approach, one that retains race as a diagnostic lens but moves beyond it as the sole basis for entitlement.

 Ultimately, the debate on the DA’s Bill is not about procurement alone; it is about the philosophy of nation-building. It tests whether South Africa’s moral economy can evolve from redress to reconstruction without erasing memory. 

The danger lies not in the pursuit of efficiency but in the temptation to forget. True empowerment must be historically conscious and future-oriented, capable of linking justice with performance and dignity with delivery. A just economy is not one that ignores race, but one that no longer needs it to recognise fairness.

Prof Joseph Sekhampu, is the chief director of the North-West University (NWU) Business School.