Rich List another reminder that transformation is stalling

If, at its core, empowerment is about getting the white business class to open membership of their golf clubs to their black contemporaries, then what we can take from reports such as this year's Business Times Rich List is that not too many can afford the tee-off fees.

The list is another bleak reminder of just how difficult the experiment of deracialisation and creating an inclusive economy has been.

Often when the issue of the lack of transformation is raised, critics are quick to bring up evidence of how much of the JSE black people own - through their pensions.

I hear that, but it is passive investment. And while the Public Investment Corporation is often cast as a black player and the biggest on the JSE, it isn't a black organisation. It's a state-owned enterprise. It may champion BEE now, but a DA- or EFF-led government could drop that focus.

In a world so easily swayed by populist rhetoric, the emotive issue of transformation will bear great fruit in seasons to come and in quarters we'll wish weren't the ultimate beneficiaries.

The EFF today chooses to concentrate on the issue of land. But if its leaders paged through Farmer's Weekly, they would find many small-scale farmers more than willing to sell their acre of Africa.

In the long term, massive urbanisation will define the battlefield for votes.

The urban jungles of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town are territories still dominated by big business, hence the rising unemployment problem.

Small and medium-sized businesses absorb more labour.

Two decades of experimentation with empowerment was supposed to have delivered a class of capital-rich black South Africans, who'd be at the forefront of transforming the face of business by gaining enough capital to start their own little empires. By definition, they'd be smaller and thus able to start dealing effectively with the dark cloud of unemployment - South Africa's rate is among the highest in the world.

Of the 100 richest South Africans tracked by Who Owns Whom, a paltry numbercan be classified as previously disadvantaged.

The years since the 2008 global recession truly haven't been kind.

When Tokyo Sexwale took off his political robes to wade through the corporate sector, like a few others such as Saki Macozoma, he had some lofty ambitions.

"I want to be a black Harry Oppenheimer," Sexwale, then 48, said in a 2001 interview, a year after he had become the first black chairman of a listed platinum producer.

His journey didn't last long. The unravelling began as soon as bankers called in their loans for one of his larger deals.

His ill-fated return to politics is perhaps best explained by this turn in fortune.

There are similar tales of woe; businessmen, due to their own hubris and in some cases through no fault of their own, couldn't see past the smoke and mirrors. With a 10% stake in a sophisticated and in some cases centuries-old conglomerate, just how did they expect to effect change within and to drive share prices to pay off their debt burden? The odds were heavily stacked against them.

Business has really come to the party over the past year in trying to save South Africa and the National Treasury. It's good to finally have them there.

But in the long term, the greater political risk is to continue dragging their feet through sometimes uncomfortable truths about our stalling transformation journey.

E-mail derbyr@sundaytimes.co.za or find him on Twitter @ronderby

• Read here to find out how the Rich List research was compiled