MOTLANTHE CALLS FOR STRUCTURAL SHIFT IN SOUTH AFRICA’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY
Former South African president Kgalema Motlanthe told the Black Business Council annual summit Wednesday that the country’s empowerment framework has been built on a misdiagnosis, and that fixing it requires a fundamental rethink of how the state and black enterprise approach capital formation.
Speaking at the Radisson OR Tambo Hotel and Convention Centre in Kempton Park, Motlanthe acknowledged that black economic empowerment (BEE) initiatives have at times enriched only a narrow circle of politically connected figures and functioned as compliance rituals rather than drivers of productive capability. But he argued the deeper failure lies elsewhere. “The problem is not solely that too few have been empowered. It is that we have not generated sufficient new capital, new enterprises, new industries and new markets to reproduce empowerment across successive generations.”
That distinction matters for how policy is framed. Where growth remains sluggish, manufacturing capacity eroded and domestic demand constrained, the space available for genuine empowerment contracts. The result, Motlanthe argued, is a country locked in contests over the distribution of a stagnant rather than expanding economic base.
Three decades of democratic governance, in his assessment, have delivered significant political transformation while leaving ownership and control of productive capital profoundly asymmetrical. The question he pressed the summit to confront was not simply whether previously excluded persons have gained economic power, but whether the underlying economic foundation has grown large enough to sustain that empowerment across generations.
His prescription was direct. “The BBC and the broader community of black enterprise must think beyond the transaction,” he said. “We must move from the acquisition of ownership stakes to the formation of capital, from empowerment deals to industrial development, from the status of beneficiary to that of producer, from consumption to investment, from individual accumulation to the construction of institutions capable of reproducing black productive capital across time.”
By contrast, the transactional model that has dominated much of the BEE era treats economic participation as a series of discrete deals rather than a structural project. Motlanthe’s call is for institutions, not just transactions.
He extended the argument to the continental level, challenging what he described as a narrative that African economic development begins with colonialism. Pre-colonial Africa, he noted, sustained sophisticated commercial networks linking societies across regions and into wider international circuits. The continent holds substantial assets: a young and expanding population, vast mineral endowments, agricultural potential, renewable energy resources, strategic geography and rapidly growing digital markets.
Those assets remain underutilized. The structural weakness, Motlanthe argued, is scale. Fifty-five sovereign states, each operating distinct regulatory, fiscal, monetary and legal regimes, produce fragmentation that inhibits economies of scale and weakens collective bargaining power. African integration, he said, must become an economic project rather than a diplomatic aspiration, requiring integrated value chains, continental manufacturing platforms, shared infrastructure, and financial institutions capable of mobilizing African savings for African development.
The two-day summit, themed “Growing the South African Economy through Economic Empowerment, Re-industrialisation and Localisation in the era of Artificial Intelligence,” continues Thursday with a session on the political economy under the theme “Growing and Transforming the Economy in a Local Government Election Year.” Whether that session produces concrete policy commitments, or remains at the level of aspiration, is the question the gathering has yet to answer.