BEE benefits everyone: ANC

ANC deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa has said that black economic empowerment benefits everyone and is necessary to build a prosperous, sustainable and equitable society.
Ramaphosa was speaking at the ANC Nelson Mandela Region gala dinner conference.
BEE was launched in 2003, to redress the inequalities of Apartheid by giving certain previously disadvantaged groups of South African citizens economic privileges previously not available to them.
“Black economic empowerment is necessary not only to satisfy the imperatives of the Constitution. It is necessary not only to correct the wrongs of the past. It is necessary and essential if we are going to build a prosperous, sustainable and equitable society,” he said.
“Effective black economic empowerment benefits everyone.”
“Our common identity as South Africans enjoins us to work together to address the legacy of centuries of deliberate economic exclusion and dispossession,” Ramaphosa said.
He said that South Africa, like the rest of Africa, has suffered the plunder of its natural resources, the exploitation of its people and underdevelopment.
“We need to undo the deliberate exclusion of black people and women from meaningful participation in the mainstream of the economy,” Ramaphosa said.
He said that the country has made some progress, but much more needed to be done. “We need to use the resources of the state to promote black business through preferential procurement. We need to refine the codes of good practice and better implement them.
“We need to understand the barriers that still prevent black and women business people from establishing themselves in particularly industries. And we need to work together to address them.”
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