‘This country will burn’: ANCYL warning over B-BBEE

The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) has warned that if South Africa dismantles transformation laws like Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), the nation will burn. Following two Supreme Court rulings, the league decries the assault on empowering black people. These court decisions include invalidating the Legal Sector Code and weakening B-BBEE in public procurement, all aimed at preserving an economic system that marginalizes the black majority, particularly Africans, and maintains white dominance over wealth.

Tsakani Shiviti, ANCYL spokesperson, labels these rulings as a "counter-revolutionary offensive" safeguarding economic privileges from apartheid. Despite the legal sector code's development to advance constitutional transformation, its defenders claim it was dismissed on a technicality. Shiviti asserts that while the complexion of the law has shifted, the concentration of economic power remains largely unchanged.

She emphasizes that political freedom without economic emancipation is not true liberation. Young South Africans face unemployment and poverty, and they will not remain idle. Economic exclusion poses a threat to peace. The ANCYL warns that if the majority remains economically disadvantaged while a few hold the wealth, the country will burn.

The league's demands include publicly defending transformation, re-issuing a lawful Legal Sector Code within 90 days, ensuring B-BBEE preferences and set-asides in new procurement laws, enforcing employment equity and B-BBEE across all sectors, and resisting corporate pressure to dilute black economic empowerment.