Opinion / Letters LETTER: State on the wrong track BL PREMIUM

Your front page report (Calls for action over failure to transform, May 10) reveals the depth of the madness that has attached itself to the government’s approach to economic empowerment. Almost 200 companies have been "referred for prosecution" for failing to meet racial targets set by the government. Your report calls for "harsh penalties". Firms are referred to as "offenders". Calls are made to delist "noncompliant" companies from the stock exchange. Employers that don’t meet racial quotas are referred to as "intransigent". But these "intransigent, noncompliant offenders" are the only hope SA has of pulling out of the economic slump the country finds itself in. Against the odds, and in the face of policy hostility, many of these companies are doing everything they can to make a go of it in a now almost zero-growth economy. We brief many companies and every week see company boards whose efforts to make a contribution to the country can only be described as heroic. These companies,...