The Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mzwandile Masina, wants to see a greater sense of urgency in the incorporation of black industrialists as key role-players in the economy.
Speaking at the Gauteng black industrialists stakeholder engagement session held at the BMW South Africa plant in Rosslyn, Pretoria last week, Masina said that the rationale and motivation behind the session was to focus on the building of strategic partnerships.
He added that throughout the existence of the Black Economic Empowerment Policy, government had encountered a trend of fronting and a lot of other dishonest practices that had continued to undermine its attempt to transform the economy.
“The BI programme is one of the catalyst programmes for transformation, and we are embarking on this campaign because we have to change the structure of the economy in South Africa. Because we have been attempting a number of themes around transformation, we have also put in place the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Commission with a view to dealing with some of the issues that we have experienced in the past,” said Masina.
Choosing BMW South Africa’s plant as the launch-pad for the BI stakeholder engagements was a deliberate attempt to send a strong message to corporate South Africa that it must change its ways of doing business, he added.
“The government of South Africa has continued to support you. We now want to move a step further working together with yourselves to ensure that localisation becomes a reality. We want to see many of our black companies participating in the core of your business,” urged Masina.
He also participated in a sod-turning event where BMW announced the start of its R6-billion construction of its new state-of-the-art bodyshop. The expansion will enable BMW to produce and export the next generation of the BMW X3.
He said the magnitude of this investment reaffirmed South Africa’s position as a viable investment destination.
