Cape Flats to the JSE: New book challenges narrow narrative of B-BBEE

At a time when black economic empowerment is increasingly reduced to a shorthand for elite enrichment, Cape Flats to the JSE enters the conversation as a deliberate counter-narrative. 

The Johannesburg launch, held at Exclusive Books in Rosebank on Thursday, positioned the book not only as a company history, but as an intervention in how South Africa remembers and debates B-BBEE.

Author Phakamisa Ndzamela was explicit about his intention. The book challenges a dominant narrative that portrays empowerment as a failed project benefiting only a politically connected few. 

Instead, it uses the rise of Brimstone Investment Corporation to argue for a more layered understanding of how empowerment unfolded in practice.

Brimstone, founded in 1995 by Mustaq Brey, Fred Robertson and Rashid Seria, is presented as a case study of an alternative model. From modest beginnings, the company grew into one of the country’s longest-standing black-controlled firms on the JSE, building a portfolio across sectors including fishing, healthcare and financial services.

But the discussion at the launch made clear that this is not a simple success story.

Ndzamela traced the origins of the book to his postgraduate research in business history, where he struggled to find black-owned companies with sufficient archival material to support rigorous analysis. 

Brimstone stood out because it had kept records, minutes and institutional documentation, allowing its trajectory to be reconstructed with unusual depth.

That absence of documentation is central to the book’s contribution. Without recorded histories, the story of black business is either reduced to anecdote or dominated by a narrow set of high-profile deals that have come to define public perception. 

In that sense, the value of Cape Flats to the JSE lies not only in the story it tells, but in the record it creates, offering a rare, evidence-based account of how a black-controlled company was built, financed and sustained over time.

Ndzamela also located the story geographically. The Cape Flats, often portrayed through the lens of crime and deprivation, is reframed as a site of entrepreneurial activity. “A child from the Cape Flats should know that the Cape Flats is not just about guns and cars, but there is entrepreneurship there too,” he said.

In conversation with former Brimstone executive Lawrie Brozin, the discussion moved into the mechanics behind that narrative. Brozin, who joined the company in 1996, described an early environment shaped by risk, limited capital and reliance on relationships rather than formal funding structures.

Investors, he said, often backed the founders themselves rather than a fully formed business proposition. Deals were built on trust, reputation and a willingness to take calculated risks in an uncertain market. “We worked hard. We took chances. And we backed each other,” he said.

The emphasis on trust was not incidental. In a context where capital was scarce and formal systems were still evolving, relationships became the infrastructure through which deals were made. Even with legal frameworks in place, Brozin suggested, the success of transactions often depended on the credibility of the individuals involved.

The book also complicates the narrative that empowerment created entrepreneurs from scratch. Brimstone’s founders entered the post-apartheid economy with prior experience. 

Brey was a chartered accountant, Robertson had built a career in insurance and education and Seria brought a background in journalism and activism. Ndzamela uses this to argue that empowerment and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive, but that policy often enabled existing entrepreneurial capacity to scale.

He also sought to counter the claim that B-BBEE benefited only a narrow elite. His research into Brimstone’s shareholding found that about two million shares were held by black investors on the Cape Flats, with a further two million held through the Brimstone Empowerment Share Trust. 

For Ndzamela, this indicates a level of participation that is often overlooked. Yet the discussion did not dismiss the broader critique. Ndzamela acknowledged that inequality persists and that not all beneficiaries of empowerment have been broad-based. 

Wealth concentration, he argued, is a feature of capitalism itself, rather than unique to B-BBEE. Brozin’s account of deal-making reinforced that unevenness. Many empowerment transactions were highly leveraged and dependent on market conditions. 

Some delivered significant returns. Others collapsed, forcing companies to absorb losses and meet obligations under pressure. 

He spoke openly about failed deals and financial strain, stressing that the company’s survival depended on honouring commitments even when investments did not perform.  Internal cohesion, he suggested, mattered as much as strategy. 

The conversation also turned to the future of B-BBEE. Ndzamela argued that the framework is unlikely to be dismantled, given its legislative foundation and the structural inequalities it was designed to address. However, he acknowledged that it will need to evolve.

As the first generation of empowerment founders reaches retirement age, companies will face decisions about how to unlock value and transfer ownership without destabilising the businesses they built. 

At the same time, shifts in the economy, including pressure on conglomerates to unbundle and emerging opportunities in sectors such as energy, are likely to reshape the landscape.

Brozin suggested that the model requires refinement, particularly in expanding ownership to employees and those directly involved in building businesses.

What emerged from the launch is a picture that resists easy classification. The book challenges the dominant critique of B-BBEE, but does not dismiss its failures. Instead, it suggests that the absence of documented black business histories has narrowed how empowerment is understood, leaving both its successes and its limits only partially visible.

Cape Flats to the JSE does not resolve the debate around B-BBEE. Its value lies in reopening it with evidence, offering a grounded account that complicates both celebration and dismissal and placing on record a story that might otherwise have remained anecdotal.