President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on the private sector to recommit to economic transformation in order to build a South Africa where all can share in the country’s wealth.

Writing in his weekly letter to the nation today, Ramaphosa says using lessons learnt over the past three decades, the country must move with greater purpose and ambition to implement meaningful, broad-based black economic empowerment.

He lamented the fact that many continue to benefit from the legacy of exclusion entrenched by apartheid.

Ramaphosa has emphasised that the notion that a choice must be made between Economic growth and transformation is false.

While progress has been made since 1994 to put in place laws such as the triple B-EE and Employment Equity Acts, the income gulf between white and black households remains vast, according to Ramaphosa.

He has called for private banks to review their lending practices to unleash the potential of black businesses and use their supply chains far more deliberately to empower many more black-owned businesses, not just to improve their triple BEE scorecard, but to grow and diversify their supplier base.

We must dispense with the false notion that we must make a choice between growth and transformation. Economic growth without transformation entrenches exclusion, and transformation without growth is unsustainable.

🔗 https://t.co/2nkYoDbuOB pic.twitter.com/ySrTuUHNcH

— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) June 9, 2025

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