Protecting black pensions is not ‘anti-black’ – Masondo

I have been called “anti-black.” Let me deal with that directly.

The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) manages over R3 trillion, almost entirely on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF). More than 90% of GEPF contributors are black South Africans: teachers, nurses, police officers, public servants.

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The money we safeguard is not abstract capital. It is their deferred wages. Their dignity in retirement.

Protecting those pensions is the most profoundly pro-black act this institution can perform.

The accusation did not arise from genuine concern for transformation.

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It arose the moment the PIC began holding certain counterparties to obligations they freely entered and have since failed to honour. When the conversation shifts from what do you owe to who are you, justice is not being sought. Distraction is.

South Africa knows this tactic. When accountability closes in, the accused reaches for the nearest available shield. Here, that shield is race. It works precisely because the wound is real.

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Our history gives the charge its sting. But exploiting that wound to evade a contractual debt is not solidarity. It is cynicism of the most corrosive kind. It delegitimises BEE [black economic empowerment].

There are those who speak the language of empowerment while pursuing private enrichment at the expense of the working class. A pension fund is, by its nature, a collective instrument.

Every rand lost to default or predatory conduct is a rand taken from a retired teacher in Limpopo, a nurse in the Eastern Cape, a clerk in Gauteng. That is not empowerment.

That is extraction weaponising identity politics. I do not have the luxury of popularity. My obligation is to the fund’s beneficiaries, the hard working workers; not to those who default on their commitments and cry foul when held to account. If enforcing a valid contract makes me “anti-black” – then the word has lost all meaning.

I have one question for those making this accusation: Whose interests are you actually protecting?

The PIC’s position is clear. We protect the millions of black South Africans who entrusted us with their savings. We will do so without apology and without retreat.

Economic emancipation is not a slogan to be deployed when convenient and discarded when it demands sacrifice. It is measured in outcomes, that is pensions paid, savings preserved, promises kept.

That is our work. We will not be shamed out of doing it.

* David Masondo is chair of the Public Investment Corporation.