90% OF BLACK SOUTH AFRICANS EXCLUDED FROM ECONOMIC CONTROL – ZUNGU
- BEE NEWS
- 6d
- 3 min read
Jeanette Chabalala | 23 February 2026
Business tycoon Sandile Zungu says while control of the economy is firmly in the hands of a minority, 90% of black South Africans have no meaningful management or control of the economy.
“It is a despicable situation. It is unacceptable. It has got to be challenged,” Zungu said in an interview with Sowetan editor Sibongakonke Shoba for the podcast show In the Know.
According to Zungu, whites make up 10% or less of the population — a figure he says is dwindling — yet control of the economy is firmly in their hands.
“The other side of the coin is that 90% of black South Africans, that includes Indians and Coloured South Africans, have no control of the economy. They have no meaningful management or control of the economy,” he said.
Zungu was responding to questions on whether there should be changes to the government’s black economic empowerment policy.
Zungu said as long as the demographics of SA were not finding expression in the economy, both in management and ownership, that was something that needed to be challenged.
On the economy and how it should be revived, Zungu said unemployment had nothing to do with empowerment. That the economy was not transforming enough and not creating enough opportunities for youth employment had nothing to do with empowerment or with the narrow nature of transformation.
“It’s very important to state that categorically. More often than not, out of desperate times, people eat this narrative hook, line and sinker that BEE has robbed the economy of an opportunity to create jobs. It’s a lie. It must be dismissed with the contempt that it deserves,” he said.
He said empowerment laws must be enacted with the sole intention of hastening black participation.
“Tweak them with the sole intention to hasten black participation at a mass scale because our social order, our political order which is stable, is at risk if the margins of the economy are littered with black souls and the centre of the economy is lily white, which is the current situation. It is unacceptable.”
Zungu also said the government needed to do better, to work faster and persuade corporate SA to embrace change.
He said the failure of the economy to create employment was, in large part, because of the macroeconomic choices the country has failed to make — or the macroeconomic choices that have been “disastrous”.
“It could be attended to by a government that is prepared to confront the problems we have.”
Zungu cited the sale of Iscor to ArcerlorMittal as an example of lost local control.
He said ArcelorMittal SA was quickly absorbed into the parent company’s global supply chain, limiting what it could produce and leaving SA at a disadvantage.
“We are far from the markets. Logistics of any supply chain dictate that unless we come up with massive incentives, why must things be made in the southern tip of the world?” he asked.
“We were likely going to be a loser,” he said, adding that ArcerlorMittal was a shade of its former self.
He added that job losses in towns such as Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal and Vanderbijlpark in Gauteng have been disappointing.
Zungu also said the sugar industry had suffered a massive disappointment over the years.
“Government must make a choice and say: ‘I would rather protect those who are benefiting here and creating employment here, and beneficiating primary produce here, [turning] sugarcane into sugar, than protect those who want sugar to land here cheaply’.”
‘Disclaimer - The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the BEE CHAMBER’.