The African National Congress (ANC) and GOOD Party have vehemently condemned their coalition partner, the Democratic Alliance (DA), for introducing its controversial Economic Inclusion for All Bill. Unveiled during a media briefing on Monday, the DA's proposed Public Procurement Amendment Bill aims to replace the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBB-EE) policies, which they claim have resulted in decades of mismanagement under ANC leadership.

The party’s head of policy, Mat Cuthbert, said this new bill aimed at replacing years of ineffective ANC empowerment policies that have left the majority of South Africans unemployed, impoverished, and hopeless, with the party calling for the scrapping of the current ANC laws.

“Since the ANC’s BEE policy was first introduced in 2003, conditions have significantly worsened for the people it claims to represent. The unemployment rate for black South Africans was 36 percent in the last quarter of 2024, compared to 7 percent among white South Africans. From 2014 to 2024, the black unemployment rate increased by 9 percentage points, while the white unemployment rate decreased by 1 percent,” Cuthbert said.

However, the DA has indicated that it is yet to consult its Government of National Unity (GNU) partners on supporting its bill.

Speaking to the SABC News on Monday, ANC national spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, stated: "The idea that the DA foresees a future of South Africa without the transformation laws, starting with the BBB-EE, is an idea that must be challenged by all democracy-loving people and patriots, many of whom are beneficiaries of this policy.”

Bhengu-Motsiri said it is untrue that the current policies have only benefited a select few and those connected to the liberation movement.

“We have a lot of excellence, and people are rising in the corporate sector. People have risen in the public sector as executives. People have risen, and women have climbed the corporate ladder as CEOs at Eskom and elsewhere. Many of those people are proudly beneficiaries of BBB-EE. We will not have a situation where that happens on the part of the ANC,” she said.

Speaking on behalf of the GOOD Party, party secretary general, Brett Herron said the fact that the ANC has grossly manipulated Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policies to favour a small circle of its friends is disgraceful and wasteful, but that does not mean the national imperative to transform ownership of the economy should be abandoned.

“There have been some positive BBBEE initiatives, such as the transfer of company shares to employees, but these successes have been overwhelmed by a tide of state ineptitude and corruption. The implementation of BBBEE must be fixed with strong guardrails to curb corruption. Reducing colour-coded inequality is a task that must continue,” Herron stated.

Herron further stated ANC ‘s failures to ensure the transformation laws work for everyone should not be used to tamper with the good intentions of the progressive economic policy.

“What the DA Anti-BEE Bill seeks to do is to use the ANC’s integrity lapses as a tool to retain ownership of the economy in the hands of apartheid beneficiaries, while being charitable to poor people. It denies the undeniable links between poverty and race, which appear to be part of a broader strategy of apartheid denial,” he said.