I have tried to restrict my Chinese black economic empowerment (BEE) view to some private writings, but after a weekend that espoused our diverse heritage, I would like to jump on the bandwagon and fully agree with the view that some Chinese people should qualify for BEE benefits.

About a week ago, my colleague, Penelope Mashego, wrote a story entitled “State defends BEE for Chinese”, which noted that “only 10 000 Chinese people in SA were eligible to benefit from BEE programmes”, quoting Department of Trade and Industry deputy director-general Sipho Zikode. Zikode is recorded as having said: “Those Chinese were South Africans brought in by the apartheid government and the number is about 10 000 of them … these are Chinese that are today classified as blacks by the current legislation, not the 1.3 billion in China. Only the 10 000 that were here before 1994.” This view that some of the Chinese people in SA should qualify for BEE has for some years caused an uproar, especially among some senior politicians. The opposed voices argue that some of the Chinese people must be stripped of their BEE status. This would be hypocritical and would, in fact force, the state to review other racial groups too. By other racial groups, I mean Indian, some coloured, Cape Malay and even many who call themselves African today.

If the Chinese who arrived through indentured labour, like Indians and Malays did, are excluded from BEE, why are the Indians and Malays retaining their status quo? Some of SA’s Chinese citizens, like other southeast Asians, such as the Malays, came to the Cape as slaves and for labour purposes that suited the colonial agenda. In The Shaping of South African Society 1652-1840, Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee note that by 1652, the Dutch were already acquainted with slavery through the Dutch East India Company’s Indian experience. When the colonialists sought to settle in SA, they needed some form of labour.

Jan van Riebeeck decided that to meet labour needs, some slaves had to be brought in, and so slaves started trickling into the Cape. Some of these labour suppliers were Chinese and southeast Indian people. Later, in the 1700s, some of the freed blacks were taking part in entrepreneurial activities, including in the retail sector. The Chinese, as Elphick and Giliomee note, were good cooks.

“In 1727, several European bakers submitted to the authorities that certain burghers and Chinese were in the habit of sending their boys about the streets to sell different sorts of cakes and pray that this should be forbidden as it causes the memorialists great injury,” Elphick and Giliomee note.

This explains that the entrepreneurial activity of the Chinese, like many of the Africans, had been frustrated by the racist Europeans. This led to limited economic participation for many non-whites, including the Chinese, hence the need for BEE redress today. Simply put, the Chinese were restricted from realising their full business potential in SA.

The 1967 Government Proclamation, as cited by Al J Venter in Coloured — A Profile of Two Million South Africans, refers to all people of colour except Africans and these were “the Cape coloured, Malay, Griqua, Chinese and Indian, other Asiatics and other coloured”. However, Venter notes in later pages that there were instances in which some Anglican schools, before the official apartheid date of 1948, turned away some coloured children save for the Chinese. Admittedly, there would have been instances in which Chinese were given preference over Africans and other coloured. Equally, there were instances in which the coloured, including the Indians, were given privileges that Africans did not get.

The point is that during the day of these oppressive regimes, many non-whites had some form of privilege that one or the other section did not get.

For instance, a few Africans were given some privileges, such as the vote in the Cape, while other Africans did not qualify. Should we then say that all of those (Chinese, coloured, Indian and Africans ) who had some privilege during colonial and apartheid rule, should not qualify for BEE now? How does one then audit the privileged Africans and coloureds of the day who may have benefited under colonial rule? It becomes a disaster to unscramble that colonial egg!

This article first appeared in Business Day