Hear the cry of black business

Johannesburg – The government this year missed a golden opportunity to level the playing field for black business in SA.

Black-owned businesses, on top of the tremendous challenges they faced since the start of COVID-19 have revealed that many have been forced to shut down.

This has left scores of workers unemployed despite the National Treasury and South African Reserve Bank providing R200-billion in relief funds to banks to support them.

The government has conceded that the lion’s share of the credit extended so far has ended up with white-owned businesses.

This is unacceptable in a country that is the most economically unequal nation in the world, according to the World Bank.

The gap between the wealthy and poor in SA has been increasing steadily since the end of apartheid in 1994, and this inequality is closely linked to racial divisions in society.

There is still a window of opportunity to grow black industrialists and, developments, in the mooted multibillion-rand infrastructure outlay.

The biggest danger facing social cohesion in SA is economic inequality and the government must treat it as a national security risk that it is.

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