Michael Mayalo
The Youth Business Chain, as the vanguard of all youth-owned companies within the ranks of South Africa, applauds Sekunjalo and Dr Iqbal Survé on their latest move to support a black-owned bank ‘UBank’ with R250m, under certain conditions.
South Africa suffers from monumental racial economic inequalities that have created a pool of wealth among a minority, while committing the majority to a cycle of poverty. In the absence of legislation and policies to repel draconian apartheid laws, and economic reparations to address centuries of social and economic injustices meted out against the African majority, what is left is for the young people in business to become their own economic liberators.
We highly understand the cries and frustrations of young people in business, particularly black people, who continue to be discriminated against by the neo-liberal banks. They easily give car loans, but discriminate when it comes to business loans. We still pose a tangible question that remains unanswered: how much did black business get from the Covid-19 recovery loans, channelled through these banks?
It's about time we break the dominance of financial institutions, which take but never gives back. Capitalist take billions from stokvels, yet they fail to provide stokvel members tangible loans, and still charge them huge interest rates.
We are aware that the five biggest banks in South Africa are the anatomy of criminality, yet we choose to turn a blind eye because they are controlled by capital and are white-owned
Is it not a crime against the fearless spirits of our forefathers, that only 1% of the entire financial service sector is controlled by indigenous Africans?
All the banks that we trusted with our money have been involved in various acts of economic terrorism, from collusion to manipulation of the currency, to illicit capital flights, tax evasion, to the exclusion of black people in accessing substantive loans.
We now are aware that they are highly protected by the SA Reserve Bank and, apparently, they are to big to fail.
They can steal, collude, kill, hamper the economy, lead to job losses – nothing will happen to their executives and, as far as they are in existence, no other black people are capable of controlling the flow of money.
Unfortunately, the mistake we continue to make is to assume that being black is enough to make our leaders conscious, when the only consciousness they know is that of money.
In conclusion, we are calling on all youth-owned companies, civil organisations, business forums, unions and organisations, to support by the brave move by Dr Iqbal Survé and support a black-owned bank
* Michael Mayalo is the executive chairperson of the Youth Business Chain