Reflecting on the Black Industrialists and Exporters Conference hosted by the department of trade industry and competition (DTIC) last week, one is left with mixed feelings. 

While the aspirations of the programme are noble, not enough is being done to push the boundaries and realise the full potential of the Black Industrialists programme.

One of the fundamental flaws limiting this programme's success is the lack of a clear and well-articulated description coupled with a broader vision of what the notion of a black industrialist actually entails.

Lewis Carroll’s age-old adage, that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there, rings true here. There is a growing sense of the term “black industrialist” beginning to take on a “catch-all” phrase to blanket everyone, from those who have built empires from the ground up, hold controlling equity stakes and demonstrate deep operational expertise in their respective businesses, to anyone with a loan or grant from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), National Empowerment Fund (NEF) or the DTIC.

This is not to suggest that the notion of a black industrialist should be used as a gate-keeper with regards to who can and who can’t be referred to by the term. However, there are some obvious risks to the approach that is currently being adopted, hence some perceived limitations of the programme.

The first is that blanketing all and sundry as black industrialists does not give the emerging and upstart entrants something to aspire to, simply because the concept is neither understood nor properly defined.

The second is that it becomes increasingly elusive to tangibly measure where progress and success of black industrialists is happening. One is led to make this second conclusion based on the assessment of the last 30 years of democracy, 20 years since the implementation of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) legislation and nine years since the launch of the Black Industrialists Policy, that the country cannot attest to having a black owned commercial bank, telecommunications company or oil major.

A handful of law firms, consulting houses and auditing firms that are black-owned and controlled, however these are far and few apart while the mainstream firms in these respective areas cannot be attributed as being in the hands of black people. 

While it is the stated intention of the government to develop a class of black industrialists, who will diversify the historic patterns of ownership of industries making the industries representative of the country’s broader demographic, a few areas can be highlighted where the state is missing a fundamental opportunity to purposefully attain this aspiration.

The spectrum auction and licencing round of 2022, with the next phase set for 2024, is one such area where the state missed an opportunity to sow the seeds for the development of the black-owned telecommunications company of formidable stature.

The Public Procurement Bill is another such area that could be leveraged by the state, given its R1 trillion annual spend, to run a massive scale industrialisation programme targeted at setting up and developing black industrialists.

Common to both of these examples is that these are public instruments, or areas in which the government has considerable influence, but are seemingly unable to match up the stated black industrialists’ aspiration with the very tools in the government’s tool kit.

As a start, my submission is that the definition of a black industrialist should entail two critical aspects. Firstly, a company that is both majority black owned. Secondly, there must be demonstrable operational involvement by the industrialists in all aspects of the business, and not limited to boardroom positions.

• Monage is the president of the Black Business Council