BEE as currently applied can easily be seen as a form of expropriation since companies incur complex, cumbersome, and expensive transactions in order to become empowered.
This is the opinion of Adv. Anton Alberts of the FF Plus. He strongly criticized the ANC government’s economic plans and said it has failed to create jobs, except in the public sector that is turning the economy more and more into a pyramid scheme.
Adv. Alberts said that there is now an opportunity to apply the correct internal economic policies and start over to increase trade with the United States, or to be ignored by the country under President Donald Trump, with the possibility of sanctions hanging in the background.
He said the Department of Trade and Industry has not succeeded to accelerate industrialization in the country – it has actually decreased under ANC control – and thus South Africa cannot even really make use of the low Rand through exports to grow the economy.
Under the Obama administration, the ANC government was placed under a lot of pressure regarding the continuation of membership and benefits under the AGOA legislation.
Under the Trump administration, South Africa’s membership of AGOA will remain under scrutiny, but there is a reason to believe that the ANC government will be placed under extreme pressure.
The drastic intervention in the free market through Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and affirmative action and especially under the Trump administration will provoke more questions.
It is quite possible that the Trump administration will begin to impose sanctions against the ANC in accordance with the current US legislation that prohibits trade with countries that appear to be engaged in the expropriation of US assets.
Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
South Africa Today – South Africa News
