Since the fall of institutional apartheid, the democratic Government has been involved in an organised effort to reconstruct South African society in a manner that overturns the apartheid social and economic architecture. This objective derives from the South African Constitution’s injunction that we need to restore the dignity of all citizens through deliberate socio-economic promotion of the historically marginalised sections of the population.

In this context, the State and business has a moral obligation to creatively harness private and national resources towards the resolution of the historical injustice of racial, gender and class exclusion in all spheres of life. In the realm of economic life, this implies the need to transform the patterns of asset ownership in a manner that reinforces the national objective of building a society that truly belongs to all who live in it.

This derives from the recognition that the bulk of industrial assets in South Africa have, until now, been racially concentrated, thereby generating uneven social and economic relations that drive inequality, social and excess to capital exclusion.