ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has announced that his party will table a draft resolution in the National Assembly to scrap the broad-based black economic empowerment policy.
Mashaba was speaking at the Apartheid Museum on Tuesday, alongside Michael Beaumont, Lerato Ngobeni, Nasiphi Moya and Kgosi Letlape.
He said this resolution, in terms of Rule 119, will call for the creation of an ad hoc committee to look into economic transformation laws and suggest urgent reforms.
“We embark on this effort to bridge partisan divides and build genuine consensus, establishing a dedicated and constitutionally empowered platform that will not merely culminate in rhetoric but in real legislative reforms that advance economic justice in South Africa,” said Mashaba.
He touched on five key proposals to guide transformation, which he referred to as essential policy levers to bring real, measurable change.
These are inclusive economic empowerment, social investment grants, housing and spatial justice, gender justice, and social cohesion.
Mashaba is calling for “inclusive economic empowerment legislation, which he said will introduce an opportunity fund.
This fund would be financed by a 5% levy on company profits and will replace the BBBEE framework, and invest in education, entrepreneurship, and infrastructure in disadvantaged communities.
He explained that small businesses will be exempt from this levy, and the fund will be time-limited to 30 days.
“ActionSA is not opposed to Black Economic Empowerment. On the contrary, we believe that economic justice is a historic imperative. But we are opposed to the narrow, corrupt, and politically manipulated fashion in which it has been implemented – an approach that has entrenched inequality rather than dismantled it,” said Mashaba.
On social grants, he said ActionSA wants to protect people’s dignity while reducing dependency. The party plans to support youth development, mental health services, and safer communities to help people become active members of society.
He also addressed immigration, emphasising that South Africa cannot fix its problems while dealing with those of other countries.
He blamed corrupt border officials for allowing undocumented immigrants to compete with South Africans for jobs and services.
He highlighted that even after apartheid ended, marginalisation continued through poor education, failed economic policies, corruption, and weak immigration control.
Mashaba said that without proper reforms to replace apartheid-era laws, the goals of the Constitution would remain out of reach.
He mentioned several apartheid laws, including the 1913 Natives Land Act, to the 1985 Coloured Persons Education Act, as evidence of the damage that still needs to be repaired.
“Now, I’m citing these always not to spite or, as many like to claim, for the pleasure of dwelling in the past. I do so to remind you of the pervasiveness of the apartheid legacy that was meant to inform the work that post-apartheid administration had to do to undo the socio-economic ravages of many decades of apartheid, as envisaged in the Constitution,” said Mashaba.
“What we have seen instead are successive ANC administrations that were expected to constitute ‘a government for the people by the people’ becoming one after another, ‘governments for the politically connected by their comrades’,” Mashaba added.
He said that while laws such as the Employment Equity and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) were introduced with good intentions, they ended up helping only the small, connected elite.
“This cannot be allowed to continue while 60% of young people remain without the prospects of employment or further studies,” said Mashaba.
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