True reform means doing the hard work of broadening empowerment, not scrapping the principle.

As we near the end of 2025, the second-biggest political party in South Africa and the ANC's partner in the national governing coalition has mounted an extraordinary PR and legislative campaign calling for the end black economic empowerment in South Africa.

It is brazen and revealing. Let me start where the DA begins, with the truth that Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment has not delivered on its promise in full.

But let me also start where the DA refuses to go, with the truth that South Africa still lives with the economic architecture of apartheid. The question, then, is not whether economic redress should be put aside, but how a policy can be designed so that the redress can finally begin to work for the people it was written for.

I am one of those who have said that B-BBEE has not worked. And I still stand by that. But my critique has never been about whether we need economic redress, it has been about whether the broad-based part of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment has ever been realised.

When you examine the pillars of transformation contained in B-BBEE policy: ownership, management control, skills development, enterprise and supplier development, and socioeconomic development,...