Implement CEE cautiously, SA urges Zambia

Implement CEE cautiously, SA urges Zambia
By Chibaula Silwamba
Saturday June 21, 2008 [04:00]

South Africa has advised Zambia to be cautious when implementing the Citizens' Economic Empowerment programme by ensuring that majority Zambians benefit from it. In an interview in Lusaka on Wednesday, South Africa's North Western Premier Edna Molewa said Zambia should be careful as it implemented the empowerment programme, saying there were lessons to draw from South Africa's black economic empowerment (BEE), which only created a few billionaires.

Molewa said her country made a mistake in the implementation of the BEE whereby only a few people benefited and became very rich while the majority of South Africans did not benefit and were still poor.

She urged Zambia to ensure that the economic empowerment programme was as broad-based as possible so that many Zambians could be empowered and not just a few.
Molewa said though the economic empowerment programmes were good, they had to be checked.

She said after discovering that the BEE had only benefited a few people, the South African government decided to review the programme.

"The black economic empowerment is a good policy, however, I think as we went through that back economic empowerment we discovered that it was able to empower just a few people very quickly," Molewa said.

"It was for that reason that we said let us also rather focus on broad-based black economic empowerment and that is the outcome of the commission that was set up by the President Thabo Mbeki and the government to investigate whether we are still on track."

Molewa said the commission had recommended that the BEE should be broad-based.
"The recommendation is that let us have a broad-based empowerment so that you can empower as many people as you can instead of just a few," said Molewa.

The BEE is South Africa's programme aimed at empowering black South Africans.
It is a pragmatic growth strategy that aims to realise the country's full economic potential. Zambia has embarked on a similar programme called the Citizens' Economic Empowerment.