I ALMOST jumped up and down with my clenched fist ready to punch the air when I heard that the number of black dollar millionaires in South Africa has gone up more than 100 percent between 2007 and 2014.
The New World Worth report claimed that there were 14 700 black high-net worth individuals (HNWIs) by the end of last year, which equates to 31 percent of the richest of the rich of South Africa.
For the record, HNWIs are people with $1 million or more. (In South Africa, those would be a few lucky ones who can state a claim to more than R12m to their name as at the current exchange rates).
The report claimed that while the number of African HNWIs rose from 2 300 in 2007 to 4 900 last year, their white counterparts dropped by 13 percent from 36 900 to 32 100.
Up with black economic empowerment (BEE)! Let us forget shame of our national sporting teams and just take the national flag, wear it proud on our shoulders and run a victory lap.
We have transcended the race lines and proven just how nuts Hendrik Verwoerd must have been when he thought that we can live separated from each other.
The best single malt to ourselves.
Except that in the broader scheme of things, our celebrations could be misplaced.
In a country where more than 50 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, honouring this “significant” milestone takes us away from looking at the reality that our country is currently in – and exactly what successive ANC governments have tried to address since 1994 through BEE.
When this noble concept first caught our attention, we were told that it was meant to ensure broader and meaningful emancipation of black people to achieve sustainable development and prosperity.
Its main principle was to lift black South Africans out of the economic doldrums created by apartheid.
Empowerment policy
So inclusive was the concept that it went beyond the classic black definition of Africans, Coloureds and Indians and embraced people of Chinese origin who were here before 1994.
But a walk down the memory lane would show that only a few and mostly politically connected individuals have benefited from the concept.
There are those who remain fronts for wealthy companies and sometimes act as happy gatekeepers to keep noisy politicians who want to keep track of broad-based BEE codes.
Others enjoyed the flight up the ladder briefly only to come thundering down when they could not pay the money borrowed to finance speculative shares that were offered at ridiculously low prices.
Yes it is true that the black middle class has risen sharply since 1994, but by far the majority that still bear the blunt of apartheid exclusion and live in abject poverty remains black.
The reality – however unpalatable it may be to many – is that the post-1994 settlement failed to get white people in general and white business in particular to compensate for the social and economic violence that fattened their bank accounts but kept black people perpetually underdeveloped.
It only promoted some form of co-operation between the political elite and the business class, with a few more darkies getting a chance to move to affluent suburbs and join in discussions about bogeyman of the armed young-black-male phenomenon from the security of high walls and hi-tech gadgets.
Many former champions of redistributive wealth got co-opted into the new settlement, with the result that some became instant millionaires and are now at the forefront of defending the powerful capital minority, which up to now remains largely white. They have used this economic power to block even some of the most progressive pieces of legislation meant to empower ordinary black people.
Whenever the calls for economic transformation become more louder, they threaten to disinvest and hide under the banner of stability. For them paying taxes and accusing the government of doing nothing about crime is just enough to lift black people out of misery.
Take the mining charter for example, which for years the government has tried to implement to call the world’s top diamond, platinum and gold producers to address the living conditions of their employees and to enlarge black ownership of the mines.
Inequality
No wonder we rank among the most unequal societies in the world.
But the world is changing around us.
The five-months strike in the platinum belt (last year) and ever-increasing service delivery protests show just how impatient people are getting with the slow pace of transformation.
People even burn clinics and schools – the very meagre facilities that are meant to improve their lives – to vent their frustrations.
Martin Luther King once said there was nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people who feel that they have no stake in it and therefore feel that they have nothing to lose.
Sadly, Cosatu, the only remaining moral voice to champion the struggles of the poor and the working class, has only succeeded in its suicide mission to tear itself between the supporters of two middle-aged men: one who confuses a beautiful young employee for an office snack and the other who seems to be out (of) his depth at how to take such struggles forward.
The result is we are left with fringe lunatics like Solidarity on the one hand, and the United Front on the other.
Unless we get a pact that would allow the white collar regime of our country to commit themselves to ways of financing redistributive policies we could well be sitting on a time bomb.
In the past few days I have watched black students at the University of Cape Town – the bastion of eliticism – questioning the statue of Cecil John Rhodes in their campus.
Until then, I did not care much about that bored son of the English whose only past time was to denigrate people who happened to be of a skin colour different to his and thought himself so grand that he even had countries named after him.
After all, I owe part of my introduction to journalism from an institution that was named after him.
But these protests again showed me the length the people are willing to travel to make their voices heard.
It is about time that the government, business and labour sit down together to come up with a new pact that will address economic disparities in the country.
White capital needs to make available funds for a post-apartheid education system that would offer the children of their workers opportunities to move out of the perpetual vicious and generational cycle of poverty.
If we fail to do that, the events of that fateful August day in Marikana in 2012 would pale in comparison with what would come.
Sechaba ka’Nkosi is assistant news editor and senior reporter at Business Report.