Gigaba calls on white businesses to help transform economy

Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has urged white-owned businesses to champion economic transformation in the country, saying failure to transform the economy leaves the poor vulnerable to its shocks.

“The economy of today still reflects our colonial and apartheid past. We need white businesses to champion transformation and view it within the commercial interest of business,” Gigaba said on Monday evening, speaking at an engagement held by the Black Business Council (BBC), Fin24 reported.

The finance minister said white business could help to transform the local economy in the form of collaborations to support black, women and youth-owned business.

He said the most difficult challenge facing the economy was the need to ensure inclusive growth because the South African economy was highly unequal and monopolised, compounded with the challenges of low competition and high barriers to entry, according to the report.

Gigaba also said there were high concentrations of wealth based on race, gender and class in the country.

“It is only because black dispossession is normalised in society that some are offended and shocked by the call for radical economic transformation,” he said.

There would be no shock at the call for economic transformation by the ANC-led government if the realities of citizens living in townships and rural areas were understood, he added in his address.

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