The DA’s Procurement Bill: Political theatre but with a serious message for the economy

Key topics:

• DA’s Bill challenges BBBEE, focusing on poverty, jobs, and sustainability.

• Political move aims to expose ANC’s race-based policies before elections.

• Business impact highlights BBBEE’s red tape, urging outcome-based reform.

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By Dr Joan Swart*

The Democratic Alliance’s new Public Procurement Amendment Bill—or, as it calls it, the Economic Inclusion for All Bill—has drawn both praise and scepticism. On the surface, it’s a sweeping attempt to replace South Africa’s race-based empowerment model with one that rewards poverty reduction, job creation, and sustainability. But look closer, and it’s clear this Bill is less about lawmaking and more about messaging.

The DA knows the numbers. A Private Member’s Bill to repeal the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Act stands no chance in a Parliament dominated by the ANC, EFF, and other parties wedded to race-based policy. The DA isn’t trying to pass it—it’s trying to prove a point.

And yet, that doesn’t mean the exercise is meaningless. In fact, the Bill raises an uncomfortable truth that South Africa’s business and political elite would rather ignore: the current empowerment system is strangling competitiveness, discouraging investment, and enriching a narrow political class while doing almost nothing for the poor.

A Policy Failure in Plain Sight

After 30 years, BBBEE has failed on its own terms. Black unemployment stands near 36%, inequality remains among the worst in the world, and a small circle of politically connected insiders has made billions. The DA’s Bill uses that evidence to make its case for change.

Instead of rewarding ownership structures or racial quotas, it proposes a model based on measurable outcomes—how much a bidder contributes to development goals such as jobs, education, health, and environmental sustainability. Poverty, not pigmentation, becomes the proxy for disadvantage.

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In practice, it would align South Africa’s procurement system with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), replacing rigid racial codes with a single digital scorecard that measures social impact. It’s ambitious, modern, and arguably the first serious attempt in years to define empowerment in practical, not ideological, terms.

But in politics, ideas are only as powerful as their context. And this one lands in an election season.

The Economics of Political Theatre

The Economic Inclusion for All Bill is, in reality, political theatre with a fiscal undertone. It allows the DA to tell voters—and investors—that it understands what BBBEE has become: a tax on productivity and a barrier to growth.

At the same time, it gives the party a moral platform. By positioning itself as the champion of non-racial fairness and clean governance, the DA contrasts its brand of technocratic competence against what it calls the ANC’s patronage politics.

This kind of performative legislation is not unique to South Africa. Around the world, opposition parties table Bills they know will fail to expose hypocrisy and shape public debate. In that sense, the DA’s Bill is a message to markets as much as to voters: we’re ready to govern responsibly; they are not.

Still, symbolism comes with risk. When reform becomes performance, it can lose credibility. The DA might win headlines but not hearts—especially among black South Africans who see any repeal of BBBEE as erasure of redress. That’s the delicate line between principle and perception that every reformer must walk.

Why This Debate Matters for Business

For business, however, the message is overdue. The BBBEE framework has become a costly compliance industry. Companies pay tens of thousands of rand for verification certificates, endure endless paperwork, and often rely on consultants just to maintain a rating that satisfies procurement rules but adds little to real transformation.

Investors notice. A European Union report in 2020 found that BBBEE complexity and regulatory uncertainty were among the main reasons foreign firms reconsidered investment in South Africa. The World Bank has made similar observations. When empowerment policy functions like an unpredictable tax, capital goes elsewhere.

The DA’s proposal—linking empowerment to transparent social impact metrics and simplifying verification through a central portal—could dramatically reduce red tape and restore a measure of trust between government and enterprise. Even if the details need work, the underlying principle is sound: use public spending to reward measurable development, not political loyalty.

A Missed Opportunity for Real Reform

The tragedy is that this debate could have been more than campaign messaging. The DA could have released its proposal as a Green Paper, inviting a national discussion about how to modernise empowerment. Such a process could have drawn in economists, civil-society experts, and even pragmatists within the ANC who privately admit BBBEE is failing.

By choosing to table a Bill instead, the DA ensured confrontation rather than collaboration. The result: a useful idea framed as a partisan statement, which makes it easier for opponents to reject out of hand. South Africa loses another chance to talk seriously about how to design a fair, efficient system of inclusion that actually grows the economy.

A Signal to Investors and Reformers

Still, as political theatre goes, this one has substance. It signals to reform-minded South Africans that not all opposition is destructive. The DA is testing a post-racial, outcome-based model of empowerment that could eventually replace BBBEE—if not now, then when the political winds shift.

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For investors, the Bill’s subtext is simple: a DA-led government would scrap bureaucratic empowerment schemes in favour of measurable social returns and merit-based procurement. For ordinary citizens, it hints at a future where empowerment means opportunity, not paperwork.

Conclusion: A Message Worth Hearing

The Public Procurement Amendment Bill will not become law. But its existence forces a vital conversation—one that goes beyond race and ideology to the real issue of how South Africa can make growth inclusive again.

In that sense, the DA’s Bill may be theatre, but it’s useful theatre. It reminds the country that genuine empowerment is not about ownership certificates or quotas; it’s about unleashing enterprise, cutting corruption, and rebuilding trust in the state’s ability to spend wisely.

And whether one agrees with the DA or not, that’s a debate South Africa can no longer afford to postpone.

*Dr Joan Swart is a forensic psychologist with an MBA and an MA in Military Studies. She serves as a director of CapeXit NPO.