Just a bit of South African context. In South Africa, in order to get a telcoms licence, you have to comply with BB-BEE (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment) requirements. Basically, you have to sell 30% (soon to be 51%) of your company to a local black owner. This is in addition to DEI requirements for employment.
For most businesses, these requirements are not mandatory to exist or operate, but gives you a bidding advantage for government contracts. For example, Microsoft, amazon and Temu can operate here, because they dont need any special licences. But for some sectors, companies need to aquire a license.
It can be argued that such legislation was necessary to incentivise business to diversify their employment and ownership to those previously excluded.
BUT, the way it is implemented, there is a huge emphasis on black ownership for various sectors. What will basically happen is a business needs to acquire a license from a government department. These licenses would only be granted if you give ownership of your company to the “appropriate” investor. Invariably someone connected to the government. They determine the price and basically get gifted portions of companies.
So what has basically happened is that this legislation only effective portion these days, is to enrich the politically connected.
So basically Elon is not wanting to pay the bribes necessary to get the required license to operate.
I Hate the buffoon, but on this he is correct.
In what sense is he correct? It’s not because he’s not black, you’ve just cited the workaround—and it’s not like he’s a guy who takes a principled stand against nepotism. The idea of the state taking partial ownership of a company that is operating in their country also doesn’t give me too much pause, free trade is extractive—and I’m simply not sure that Elon Musk deserves that money more than someone in the South African government, lol
Agree, he is not taking a principled stance. He is playing the “I am being oppressed because of my race” card, despite his extensive privilege.
One correction, it’s not the state that officially takes ownership, it’s politically connected private individuals who get the ownership. The public gets zero benefit.
Thank you for the clarification.
Black, white, doesn’t matter. He should however be dead.
Yeah. At the very least banned from everything everywhere, except jail and hell.
Isn’t this stupid fuck FROM South Africa? The levels of shit here I swear to god.
He’s also an illegal immigrant who stayed on an expired visa.
He lies constantly to stir up shit with his base and enemies, something for us plebs to “discuss/argue about” while they distract from the grift. It’s part of the game to play the victim.
Our leadership is less than dog shit.
He says dumbass shit like this, then wonders why his Nazi salute was called a Nazi salute and not whatever excuse he gave.
Same shit for Trump, talks shit, then cries when someone points out he’s a fucking racist, rapist hypocrite.
That’s their core propaganda mechanic. Some bit of offensive trivia is found and shared by Elon. He’ll tweet it. Trump will share it. It’s on the evening show on fox they evening and in newspapers by morning. Repeat this the next day.
Funny enough, I do believe our BEE laws in South Africa should be scrapped. According to our news he offered to pay 26% in royalties, like Google does for example in South Africa, but did not agree to give away equity. The BEE laws are basically a way for politically connected ANC members to get a slice of the pie, does not one bit help the majority of people here.
Look Elon is a shit, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. There also needs to be empowerment laws, I say to poor citizens not based on any race laws, even though the majority of extremely poor people are black, coloured indian, mixed…, but not ones that mostly filter to the politically connected like the current BEE laws favour.
He just drumming up his nazi base who have no idea of the multiple levels of irony.
Only thing poor about him is his genetics
