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Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has become one of the most high profile strategies of African National Congress (ANC) government. Yet BEE has also become highly controversial, critics arguing variously that it serves as a block to foreign investment, encourages a re-racialisation of the political economy, and promotes the growth of a small but remarkably wealthy politicallyconnected ‘empowerment’ elite. There is considerable substance to such analyses. However, they miss the point that BEE policies constitute a logical unfolding of strategy which is dictated by the ANC's own history, the nature of the democratic settlement of 1994 and the structure of the white-dominated economy. This paper seeks to unravel that logic through the pursuit of ten propositions. An overall conclusion is that while there is a strong case for arguing that BEE (or some similar programme to correct racial imbalances) is a political necessity, the ANC needs to do more to combine its empowerment strategies with delivery of ‘a better life for all’.

The emphasis initially laid by the African National Congress (ANC) on national reconciliation after 1994 meant that its ideas about Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) were non-threatening to white interests. However, the government's recent strategy is more assertive, having the aim of creating a black capitalist class, which is both ‘patriotic’ and productive, as laid down in the ANC's guiding theory of the ‘National Democratic Revolution’. Corporate capital is responding with recognition of the inevitability and potential advantages of BEE. However, given the centrality of the state to the deliberate task of creating black capitalism, there are considerable dangers of the latter's lapse into Asian-style cronyism. The ‘patriotic’ nature of black capitalism is therefore in sharp contestation with its ‘parasitism’.

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