Reparations relic: South Africa's attempt to address inequality has gone awry

单集文稿 ...

• 00:08

  Hello, this is Rosie Bloor, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.

• 00:15

  Welcome to Editor's Picks.

• 00:17

  We've chosen an article from the latest edition of The Economist that we thought you might enjoy.

• 00:22

  Please do have a listen.

• 00:32

  Some months after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990,

• 00:38

  he told businesses that South Africa must deracialise the exercise of economic power.

• 00:45

  Such words unnerved the conglomerates that had prospered under apartheid.

• 00:52

  Mandela's African National Congress, or ANC,

• 00:55

  then thought that nationalising industries was the best way to uplift black South Africans.

• 01:02

  To help convince the ANC of the merits of capitalism,

• 01:07

  before it won power in South Africa's first all-race election in 1994,

• 01:13

  the firms proposed empowerment deals instead.

• 01:19

  Discounted assets were sold to members of the new elite,

• 01:22

  including Cyril Ramaphosa, today one of South Africa's richest men.

• 01:28

  and its president.

• 01:30

  What began as ad hoc inducements has become the most far-reaching state-sponsored attempt at racial redress in the world.

• 01:41

  Black Economic Empowerment, or BEE, requires firms,

• 01:46

  in effect, to have a minimum share of black investors,

• 01:49

  to hire and train black staff, and to buy from black-owned suppliers.

• 01:56

  Despite criticism of BEE from President Donald Trump,

• 全部文稿