The DA congratulates Afriforum and Solidariteit who today succeeded in dealing the final blow to the Department of Tourism’s discriminatory tourism fund.
The DA has long advocated for this fund to be inclusive of all businesses in the tourism sector that have been affected by the economic crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, and not just those that are 51% black-owned. All South Africans were affected by the devastation of the Covid lockdown, and still continue to struggle today.
Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, the then Minister of Tourism, introduced the Equity Fund in 2020 as an institution that would only allocate loans and grants to businesses with at least 51% black ownership.
Despite the uproar against this race-based practice, the new Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu refused to remove the grant criteria.
The DA welcomes this reversal of government’s irrational racial barriers to relief funding. These barriers exclude South Africans from receiving vital funding to save their livelihoods on the basis of race, forcing their businesses and their employees to join growing unemployment line and depend on the inconsistent payments of social grants.
The ANC government has had 27 years to expand economic opportunities and has largely failed in doing so, because it lacks the political will to look beyond its own stomach and address the suffering of South Africans. The enforcement of racial criteria to determine access to relief funding is a moral disgrace perpetrated by the ANC, and the DA welcomes the Constitutional Court’s ruling against this practice.