"I have sought to recruit many competent black people, and no sooner have we recruited and trained them than they leave. I get so upset … I am stopping this recruitment of black people. I am okay with my Afrikaners. They stay and do the work, and become experts."

South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni as quoted recently in the Financial Mail .

This quote has been sitting on my desk for a while, crying out to be posted along with something of substance. I guess what has kept me reserved is how big a statement this really is. Here we have a prominent black South African being candid about the realities of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) legislation and it's effect in his organisation. When it comes to the social discourse around BEE in South Africa, we are accustomed to politicians driving the need for reform in previously white-advantaged businesses, with very few cursory statements from prominent business people (they have to say it, to be politically correct!).

Spend some time chatting to a few businesses and you'll soon encounter the narrative pulse around BEE in SA. As we try to make sense of our worlds and describe that meaning, we can gauge what is happening in the nation's consciousness, if you like. It doesn't take too much digging around in our consciousness to find that they way people desribe themselves and their businesses in relation to BEE is eating away at the heart of our identity. Not only this. It is also eating away at the substance of businesses from a talent perspective. This is in effect what Mboweni is saying: I do not have faith in balck recruits.

Now, we can of course be quite cynical about … just about anything, as a nation. But what I have begun hearing is more than token cynicism – it is a cancerous narrative with very little hope for remission. I'm beginning to see how the legislation, and haphazard implementation, has robbed the transformation process of its validity.