He said a large retailer South African retailer required businesses to give one million products upfront to be placed in their stores and would only pay the supplier 90 days after the stock had been sold.
This, Nomlala said, was what was barring black entrepreneurs from penetrating the retail sector because they simply did not have the money to supply one million products nor could they afford to wait for months on end before they were paid.
A change in legislation was necessary to ensure suppliers were paid upfront, he said.
"By the time your stock reaches the shelves, you would’ve already been paid. This would then enable your company to reach R200m [in revenue] a year.
“We need legislation that tells businesses to transform.
“While we don’t have this, then we’re hoping for something that will fall from the sky,” Nomlala said.
BEE not helping black entrepreneurs - BMF's Andile Nomlala
Image: Twitter/ BMF
Black Management Forum president Andile Nomlala said he did not believe that Black Economic Empowerment was helping to develop black entrepreneurs, saying it was racially selective.
Nomlala described BEE as a “willing-buyer, willing-seller system”.
Addressing guests at the Nelson Mandela University’s annual youth summit on Tuesday, Nomlala said regardless of his position in the BMF, he did not support the policy.
He said if South Africans wanted to participate in business on a larger scale, government would need to put legislation in place that prioritised black business owners.
“As long as we don’t have that [legislation] we’re not going to reach the economic prosperity we want,” he said.
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“We need to legislate ourselves to wealth. Any other disadvantaged group in the past, particularly the Afrikaner community, legislated themselves into wealth. [We] need to pin a deliberate economic strategy and tie it up with legislation that is punitive in its implementation.
“Not so long ago, from the 1940’s, Afrikaners were economically impoverished compared to the British but never spent too much time wanting to dismantle British institutions.
"Instead, they put legislation in place that ensured that British organisations were able to employ Afrikaners and when those Afrikaners came out of that employment, they would then be put by government into a system where they would be given business opportunities,” Nomlala said.
Nomlala said the current policies in place in the country did not allow for black youth to participate in the country’s economy, adding there was lack of funds to do this.
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He said a large retailer South African retailer required businesses to give one million products upfront to be placed in their stores and would only pay the supplier 90 days after the stock had been sold.
This, Nomlala said, was what was barring black entrepreneurs from penetrating the retail sector because they simply did not have the money to supply one million products nor could they afford to wait for months on end before they were paid.
A change in legislation was necessary to ensure suppliers were paid upfront, he said.
"By the time your stock reaches the shelves, you would’ve already been paid. This would then enable your company to reach R200m [in revenue] a year.
“We need legislation that tells businesses to transform.
“While we don’t have this, then we’re hoping for something that will fall from the sky,” Nomlala said.
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