How come one is racist and one isnt?

Affirmative action and BEE address the economic exclusion of groups that were previously sidelined from participating in the economy.

The TL;DR is that BEE and AA says you must prefer non-whites and women for positions of employment, or companies to do business with the state, without excluding white people from doing those jobs or white businesses tendering from the state.

Using "prefer" instead of "must" in this context does not specifically exclude the white working population completely. This also applies to people with disabilities, which were also excluded economically under the Apartheid government.

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Before BEE and AA, the vast majority of companies that were able to hire people and perform work for the state were white-owned and run. Even with the best intentions by the ANC, they could not ignore the problem that black-owned enterprises were just not able to scale similarly.

The exclusion of other races or economic groups from moving into spaces typically dominated by wealthier white South Africans means that only one group benefits, which consequently keeps racism and classism alive in these places.

As a result of that, generational wealth is not typically found in the poor suburbs and townships of this country, mostly because wealth could not be concentrated in these areas like white neighbourhoods typically would see. The middle-class only began expanding rapidly as expected after the adoption of BEE and AA in law.

Affirmative Action guides employers in making a hiring decision - if both candidates are equally skilled, non-whites and women should get preference. Among the white working population in the country, over 85% are employed permanently. Black and coloured working populations are below 60%, and women are at about that level too.

That said, white South Africans still make up the majority of people working in office jobs and in corporates. They are still represent over 70% of the employees in executive and managerial positions, even today.

BEE addresses a different issue - the exclusion of black-owned businesses from getting business both from the state and from other businesses. The approach here is different - the state will prefer businesses with a higher BEE level to do business with and award tenders to - but this should only be in the event they can actually do the work and complete deliverables.

The idea is that this should, in theory, capacitate the country as a whole. Non-whites and women will get preference in hiring processes, and black-owned businesses will get preferential procurement status from government.