💯 THE ANC’S QUIET EVICTION OF WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS FROM THE ECONOMY South Africa has approximately 51.6 million black African citizens and only 4.5 million white citizens. Whites constitute roughly 7.1% of the population, or about one person in every fourteen, yet the ANC continues treating this small minority as an economic obstruction requiring ownership codes, employment targets, procurement preferences and racial legislation to reduce its participation. This is no longer redress based on individual circumstances. It is deliberate economic exclusion based on race. ● RAMAPHOSA SAID IT HIMSELF On 15 June 2017, then Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa told the Gordon Institute of Business Science: “We need to fundamentally alter the racial and gender composition of the ownership, control and management of our economy… It cannot be owned by white people.” Ramaphosa did not condemn monopoly, corruption or excessive concentration alone. He identified white ownership as the condition that had to be altered, then became President of the government responsible for applying the machinery required to alter it. ● THE LAW MAKES RACE A CONDITION OF DOING BUSINESS The B-BBEE Act was enacted in 2003 and strengthened in 2013. The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition states that its objective is to increase the economic participation of legally defined “black people,” while expressly confirming that white citizens do not qualify as beneficiaries under the Act. A white South African may risk his capital and establish a company, but that company cannot operate competitively outside the racial framework. Its ownership, management, training expenditure, suppliers, enterprise development and access to public business are measured through B-BBEE requirements in which white ownership earns no black-ownership recognition. The state therefore reaches into the company and measures who owns it, who manages it, who receives training, which suppliers are used and where development money is spent. The owner carries the commercial risk, while the ANC retains the racial clipboard. ● EMPLOYMENT EQUITY MOVED FROM ENCOURAGEMENT TO ENFORCEMENT The Employment Equity Act introduced racial representivity into appointments and promotions. Its amendments empowered the Minister of Employment and Labour to prescribe numerical targets across economic sectors, and those targets were gazetted on 15 April 2025. White applicants and employees may consequently be disadvantaged when their racial category is considered overrepresented, regardless of their personal history or whether they ever received any measurable benefit from apartheid. Discrimination has not disappeared; it has been converted into a target, placed in a spreadsheet and issued with a government seal. ● THE STATE TAKES WHITE TAXES—THEN DISCOUNTS WHITE BUSINESSES Public tenders already award advantages according to racial ownership. The new draft procurement regulations propose reserving every public contract below R20 million for 100% black-owned suppliers. Tenders between R20 million and R100 million would impose prescribed procurement requirements involving 51% or 100% black-owned suppliers, while contracts above R100 million would require at least 25% of subcontracting to go to 100% black-owned businesses. A white-owned company could offer the strongest expertise and lowest price and remain excluded solely because of ownership race. White citizens must nevertheless continue paying income tax, corporate tax, VAT, fuel levies and municipal charges, after which the government may use their money to finance contracts from which their businesses are excluded. The taxpayer remains welcome. The taxpayer’s business increasingly does not. ● LAND WAS ALSO FRAMED AS A RACIAL TRANSFER On 28 August 2007, ANC Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulama Xingwana described the government’s challenge as: “To ensure that government redistributes land from whites to blacks…”