DUMA GQUBULE: BEE STATISTICS LACK CREDIBILITY, BY ANY MEASURE
- BEE NEWS
- Jan 13
- 3 min read
Duma Gqubule | 13 January 2026
Flawed methodologies behind mining’s empowerment claims.
In his 2024 state of the nation address President Cyril Ramaphosa said the participation of black people in the mining industry was increasing. “Black ownership stands at approximately 39% ... compared with 2% in 2004,” he said.
Last month, during a discussion about Anglo American’s merger with Canadian company Teck Resources, which I opposed and he supported, mining minister Gwede Mantashe repeated the fake 39% statistic.
The measurement of black ownership has lost all credibility, and this should be the first priority during trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau’s review of broad-based BEE (BBBEE) policies.
This is due to fatal policy mistakes the government made when drafting the BEE codes and sector charters, especially in mining and finance. There has also been a proliferation of fake statistics about black ownership, which have polluted public discourse. The maze of conflicting statistics has confused the public.
The measurement of black ownership has lost all credibility, and this should be the first priority during trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau’s review of broad-based BEE policies.
In 2022 the BBBEE Commission said JSE companies had an average black ownership of 39% in 2021. At the end of December 2021, the JSE had a market capitalisation of R20.5-trillion. The 39% finding implied that black people owned assets worth R8-trillion, which was obviously impossible and should not even be debated.
The commission must tell the public that it is not measuring actual black ownership but something else. We have a serious problem if the government cannot measure black ownership or if the rules allow it to make such bizarre findings.
Last year Wits University professor William Gumede said R1-trillion had been transferred to about 100 politically connected people by 2008. Yet my analysis of three excellent databases that have tracked such information shows that there were BEE transactions worth R345bn between 1994 and 2008.
Anyone with an elementary knowledge of such things knows that most transactions during the first wave of BEE unravelled during the late 1990s in the wake of an emerging market crisis. Many other BEE transactions did not transfer ownership to black people, and most beneficiaries were not politically connected.
Ramaphosa took the 39% statistic from a Minerals Council report that did not explain the methodologies it used to make the finding or publish information for each company. This is not surprising because the Mining Charter is a shambles of a document that betrays from start to finish every principle of empowerment that the country has developed over many years.
The “once empowered, always empowered” principle makes a mockery of empowerment.
The charter has no rules or scorecard with definitions on how to measure ownership. It has no mechanism to independently verify the BEE contributions of companies. Mining is the only sector where companies do not have to produce a BEE certificate from an independent verification agency.
The “once empowered, always empowered” principle makes a mockery of empowerment. An analogy to explain this absurd principle is that companies can continue to recognise black directors in perpetuity after they have left a board. A “whites only” board can therefore count as empowered.
The charter has no rules on how to measure or monitor net value that accrues to black shareholders after they have settled their debt. The industry believes in a voetstoots sale of production to black shareholders with no obligations to ensure they transfer net value. It considers the signing of a transaction as the achievement of the target.
But under the BEE codes the achievement of the target is a 10-year process, not an event. Full compliance can be achieved only when net value has been transferred. Any measurement of black ownership that uses the charter is not credible. Tau’s review of BEE must abolish this sham of a charter and align it with national policies.
• Gqubule is an adviser on economic development and transformation.
‘Disclaimer - The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the BEE CHAMBER’.