The Development of Black Capitalism in South Africa and the United States

The study focuses on black corporate entrepreneurship or "black economic empowerment" (BEE) as a platform for comparative analysis of the struggles for black integration into the economic mainstream in the United States and South Africa. It investigates the role of racism and apartheid, as both state policy and social conventions, in the development or destruction of the spirit of black entrepreneurship in each country. The study also compares South Africa's BEE and USA's black capitalism programs; traces and theoretically explains the similarities or parallels and differences between the strategies, programs, and the resulting state-black business relations in each country. The central argument is that the absence of a supportive, developmental state to break down entry and institutional barriers in the USA led black business to rely on the black political class for support, thereby restricting the strategic networking and policy options available to them as a class. On the hand, a supportive state and a conscious state policy of BEE in South Africa, despite its deficiencies, have created the conditions that are making black South Africans more likely to achieve more sustainable economic empowerment and at a faster rate. This outcome is not just because of their numerical strength and the post-apartheid developmental state, but also because of the peculiarly different economic culture and empowerment trajectories they have thus far adopted