. @PLMyburgh I finally read your @dailymaverick article that seeks to explain fully what you couldn't (necessarily so) explain in a Tweet last week, that in your view govt is tacitly saying BBBEE isn't working. I find large parts of your article unconvincing. I'll explain (1/15)

Before I get to substantive disagreements, a few thoughts about your framing & views about this platform, might be useful. Firstly, I find it irritating when articles banalise Twitter criticism by referring vaguely to "Twitter critics". Why not name your peers explicitly?? (2/15)

We all know, for example, that @RediTlhabi exists... why subtweet her instead of attributing her thoughts to her? Ditto other very serious fellow journalists and analysts. Writing *AWAY FROM* Twitter doesn't inherently imply better logic and cogency elsewhere... (3/15)

Secondly, waspishly and collectively describing sharp and some thoughtful criticism as "Twitter outrage" doesn't invite those critics to read you with generosity. Ironically, your article is voluminous, which means you DO take your peers as seriously as you should/do ... (4/15)

But in that case, you may as well as not undermine your own serious mini-essay with a crass framing of legitimate criticism and sharp Twitter debate as "outrage". Simply get on with summarising criticism and deconstructing it... (5/15)

Last preliminary point- like you, I'm not a fan of Twitter as a preferred platform for substantive debate (anymore). I personally agree that "debate" here is often reductive, not productive, anti-intellectual and often worse. I won't 'debate' you here beyond this thread... (6/15)

I would have preferred a proper live debate offline, over coffee or even semi-formally on a platform like Instagram Live, or TV or radio. Twitter is exhausting. So if you want more debate after this, WhatsApp me to agree where/how (or we leave this here as is) ... (7/15)

Ok. Straight to the substantive points: you make one OBVIOUS and spectacular logical and practical error--- corrupt middlemen do NOT = failure of BBBEE. You're analysis here is waaaaaay too hasty. (8/15)

Corruption by middlemen just is that--- corruption. It tells you NOTHING about either the desirability or the feasibility of BBBEE. It just tells you that black business like white capital can be corrupt too. And? (9/15)

So you effectively put BBBEE on trial but the *premises you rely on* aren't intrinsic aspects of BBBEE. Of course corruption is rife. That's trite. And yes it is our biggest challenge in SA right now. No doubt. But what follows from that for your argument? Not much. (10/15)

By your fuzzy reasoning one can conclude a range of policies to be inherently undesirable because a value chain is sullied by unethical behaviour. In fact, what I am therefore saying suggests that the problem is WORSE than your article implies. (11/15)

I'm bluntly putting it to you and us who critiqued you that corruption and general lack of ethics are so ubiquitous now in SA that all state policies are in danger of not seeing the light of day (not only BBBEE). (12/15)

Finally, your comment about white-owned firms was a shocking attempt to exculpate white capital when you say: "... looting by white-owned firms has occurred within and because of the current BBBEE environment..." (13/15)

"... not in spite of it." I had to read that thrice to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me!! White-owned firms have SPONSORED corruption since the apartheid-era and they INDUCE state-sector corruption now. Why are you not taking their agency and moral taint seriously? (14/15)

Conclusion: excellent analysis on the general nature and prevalence of corruption. But (important as that is) it doesn't lead to the conclusion "BBBEE is a policy uniquely and also inherently suspectible to corruption". You overreached even within long-form writing. (15/15)