{"id":842666,"date":"2025-11-11T10:16:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=842666"},"modified":"2025-11-11T10:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:16:23","slug":"the-man-who-created-bee-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/842666\/the-man-who-created-bee-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"The man who created BEE in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Renowned political economist Moeletsi Mbeki says it is a misconception that Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) was an invention of the ANC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, it was pioneered by Sanlam, with the mastermind behind BEE being the company\u2019s former executive director, Attie du Plessis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attie du Plessis was born on 9 March 1944 in Boksburg. His father worked at the railway and later owned a butcher’s shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He attended Laerskool Baanbreker en Ho\u00ebrskool Voortrekker, and completed numerous degrees and diplomas at Stellenbosch University, WITS, UNISA, and Harvard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He began his career at Federale Volksbeleggings as an accountant, later advancing to executive director. He then took a job as a financial manager at Wesco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His most significant work occurred between 1986 and 1997, when he served as the executive director of Sankorp, which was part of Sanlam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He later moved to Sanlam as an executive director, and served as the chairperson of Business South Africa and president of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was also the chairperson of the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) Council and a director at Absa and KWV Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attie du Plessis was the brother of Barend du Plessis, a former National Party member who served as Minister of Finance from 1984 to 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attie du Plessis was one of the Sanlam leaders directly involved in talks with black leaders in exile in the eighties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first meeting was in Dakar, Senegal, in 1987. It soon became apparent that the ANC leadership wanted to talk specifically to Afrikaner business leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grietjie Verhoef wrote that Marinus Daling and Du Plessis were the two leaders from the Sanlam and Sankorp stable who assisted in the talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These talks facilitated communication between leaders inside and outside South Africa, leading to peaceful negotiations and democratic elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanlam and Sankorp created the first BEE deal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Political economist Moeletsi Mbeki<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Moeletsi Mbeki said many people think BEE was an ANC invention. \u201cHowever, it was actually invented by an Afrikaans man,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Attie Du Plessis, an executive director of Sanlam\u2019s Sankorp, was the man behind the idea of black economic empowerment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sankorp, the strategic-investment arm of Sanlam, concluded what is cited as the first formal BEE transaction in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1990s, South Africa\u2019s business sector was concerned about the future stability of the country’s political and economic well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanlam executives suggested that helping black people share in the ownership of the mainstream economy would serve their aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1993, Sankorp concluded the first Black Economic Empowerment transaction in South Africa on behalf of Sanlam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sankorp sold a portion of its interest in its subsidiary, Metropolitan Life, to a new company, Corporate Africa, which black individuals owned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A holding company of Metropolitan Life, Methold, was formed jointly with Sankorp and issued shares in Methold. The shares were only available to black buyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transaction was concluded in August 1994, and the name of the holding company, Methold, was changed to New Africa Investments Limited (NAIL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the early 1990s NAIL was the largest black owned company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEE did not help the South African economy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Cyril Ramaphosa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mbeki stated that from the outset, he was opposed to Black Economic Empowerment because it did not generate economic value or create wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told Stef Naud\u00e9, then Director-General of Trade and Industry, that he did not think this was what the new South Africa should be doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTransferring shares from white people to black people does not grow the South African economy,\u201d Mbeki said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBEE did not contribute to the South African economy and did not create new wealth. They were distributing the existing wealth of metropolitan wealth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, some connected individuals, including Cyril Ramaphosa, were in favour of BEE and the benefits which came with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCyril Ramaphosa went off to persuade the new ANC government to discuss how it should adopt black economic empowerment policies,\u201d Mbeki said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discussion was around how the ANC government should implement the policies which they learned from Sanlam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey informed the president about the steps they should take to advance Black people and Black businesses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act of 2003, which was published during Thabo Mbeki\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many people believe that Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) was an invention of the ANC. This is not true. BEE was created by an Afrikaans man in an Afrikaans company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":842679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[1875,24063,24065,22379,22324,24064,2880],"class_list":["post-842666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-anc","tag-attie-du-plessis","tag-barend-du-plessis","tag-black-economic-empowerment-bee","tag-moeletsi-mbeki","tag-sankorp","tag-sanlam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842666"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842734,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842666\/revisions\/842734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}