This article was first published by Business Day on 4 December 2025
Affirmative Action policies were initiated in the United States in 1961 by President John Kennedy, via an executive order. After more than 63 years of affirmative action in order to socio-economically uplift blacks the record has, to say the least, been counter-productive, vis-a-vis the intended beneficiaries, the blacks.
All this is illustrated in the statistics below. On the socioeconomic ladder, blacks languish the lowest rung in comparison with other US ethnics.
US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey – 2023 and 2024 Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), divulges the following statistics on the household median incomes of US ethnics:
- Asian : $ 112,800
- White : $ 89,050
- Hispanics : $ 65,540
- Blacks : $ 56,490
Based on empirically verifiable evidence, affirmative action/BBBEE (Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment) policies are not only a dead duck but are counterproductive and should therefore be totally abolished post haste!
To justify and rationalise BBBEE on the basis that apartheid affirmative action on behalf of whites generally and Afrikaners particularly as intended beneficiaries, is a gross acknowledgement and shameful admission that BBBEE is racially discriminatory. This is so abundantly clear!
This dastardly experiment in social engineering negates the realisation of the Rainbow Nation vision of Mandela, Tutu, and de Klerk as it is fraught with the danger of stoking what were the dying embers of racial tensions. BBBEE has got nothing to do with the people of Langa, Bonteheuwel, Soweto, Mitchell’s Plain, Phoenix and other townships. The people who benefit are black elites, especially those that have political and family connections. It is also the rent-seeking opportunists and some very few rent-seeking corporate entities that have been finding it expedient to be seen to support BBBEE. The BBBEE situation has been stretched to a point where Afrikaans speaking Coloureds and Indians, in predominantly Afrikaans speaking areas, have been ignobly excluded and marginalised in favour of Blacks. It is quite clear that in these cases that the employers have been legislatively intimidated by affirmative action/BBBEE policies.
Reverberating across generations, his back still bearing the pronounced weals from constant sjamboking while a slave, as if a harbinger, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) had ominously stated: “And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs”. Douglass had pulled himself by the bootstraps – by educating himself. He had become a slavery abolitionist, writer and distinguished orator and statesman among other attributes and achievements.
Douglass must have turned in his grave when the US government embarked on affirmative action policy and decades later. smiling at realising that his ominous warning was being vindicated in the form of the negative unintended consequences (pertaining to blacks) coming home to roost. Nevertheless, he will find some degree of solace in knowing that as per the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, affirmative action for college admissions has been abrogated nationwide and that at least seven US states to date, had banned the iniquitous policy of affirmative action.
Martin Luther King, Jr (1929 – 1968), late civil rights movement leader who was a descendant of slaves, uttered the immortal words while addressing multitudes of American citizens who had gathered in front of the Capitol: ”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”. Pregnant with a profound concept, King’s words encapsulate a firm standpoint that clearly negates any racially discriminatory policy like BBBEE/Affirmative Action.
In conclusion, no amount of spurious argumentation or rationalisation can obfuscate the fact that BBBEE thus affirmative action are socioeconomically irrational and morally egregious.
This policy must be totally and effectively abrogated.
This criticism of BBBEE will incur the wrath of the beneficiaries and so let it be. To this, the appropriate respond is this insightful quote by internationally renowned economist Prof Thomas Sowell: “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear”.
