Black businesses have a critical role to play in South Africa’s economic recovery and driving the country’s participation in economic integration agenda through the African Continental Free Trade Area, President Cyril Ramaphosa has said.
Speaking at the annual Black Business Council summit dinner in Johannesburg late on Thursday, Ramaphosa said there was “need to work together to expand the frontiers of broad-based black economic empowerment, and resist any efforts to narrow them.”.
“We do not accept the argument that black economic empowerment has had a destructive effect on the economy. Rather, slow progress in the pace of economic transformation is what is holding back our nation’s development,” Ramaphosa said.
He dismissed allegations that the government’s black economic empowerment programme had “enabled corruption” in South Africa.
“It was the corrupt – in both the private and public sectors – who enabled state capture,” he said.
Ramaphosa also noted that the country faced many different challenges, and overcoming them required a meaningful social compact between government, business, labour and communities.
NM/jn/APA