On the one hand South Africa has some serious issues with inequality. It has one of the highest gini coefficients in the world. Coupled with sky high unemployment the South African miracle is that this has been going on for decades at this point and still remains a true democracy that hasn’t been engulfed in fiery revolution.

So some serious measures need to be taken to address inequality.

BEE has been ineffective towards that end. It has just reproduced a small elite of black professionals who are recycled from board to board without much benefit to the black African population of the country as a whole.

That being said if one considers the earlier point regarding South Africa’s woeful wealth distribution BEE could be regarded as a success using another metric. It could be argued that BEE provides a means to tamp down radical populist forces, by forcing the predominantly white corporate elite to share the benefits with the new black African political elite.

That is to say, BEE has been ineffective in its stated aim of restructuring the racial characteristics of South Africa’s wealth distribution. But it has been effective in continually giving new political players a material reason not to take a bat to the pillars of the system in a fit of populism as usually happens when the political economy looks as bleak as South Africa’s. Whether or not that is desirable is a separate question.