Behind the fascinating, tumultuous and shocking revelations in the trial of former police commissioner Jackie Selebi, something else is on trial too; black economic empowerment (BEE).

Even though, by accident of birth, I am excluded from participating in SA’s most ambitious and controversial effort to right the wrongs of the past, I’m in favour of BEE.

Some time ago, The Economist’s correspondent took issue with the notion of BEE as an attempt to “buy off” political opposition to capitalism, in the same way that “English” capital bought off Afrikaner capital in the early years of apartheid. The comparison is silly; the proportions, dimensions and motivations are totally different.

Many businesspeople are equally critical of BEE , but from a different perspective. Even if they see the potential advantages, they notice that the costs are huge and have to be born by the economy. BEE happens at the expense of shareholders ­ essentially pensioners present and future ­ and corporate expansion opportunities, which means jobs.

Instead of issuing shares to raise capital to expand, companies are issuing shares to provide a gift to small groups of people lucky enough to be able to participate.

The more common criticism of BEE is that the focus is too narrow, on a small handful of politically connected individuals. The unions see BEE as an attempt to warp the minds of South Africans and divert them from their natural state, which is to be communists .

Given the opposition to BEE, it’s remarkable it continues to exist at all. I believe that, given time, legislative intervention is unnecessary. Black businesspeople will eventually thrive in proportion to their numbers. But we don’t have time; something needs to accelerate the process. And the idea that South Africans can just pretend apartheid didn’t happen is morally obnoxious and politically impractical.

Yet supporting BEE in principle and supporting it in practice are two different things. This is where the Selebi trial comes in. He is accused of throwing up a smokescreen by hurling accusations at others. There is merit in this argument, but the more we learn about how BEE was implemented during the Thabo Mbeki administration, some of which is coming out at the trial, the more dubious it seems.

BEE is essentially a short-cut process, trying to achieve in a short time what would probably take a long time. But its application has introduced a grey area where it’s unclear what constitutes a legitimate short cut, and what constitutes an illegitimate short cut. No one seemed to have bothered to find ways of drawing a distinction. It introduced an era of greed, where “helping each other” and “bribing each other” are almost indistinguishable.

That the chief of police should be fraternising with crooks and taking gifts from dubious individuals is appalling. But some of these people were also giving “gifts” to the African National Congress Youth League, members of the intelligence community, legitimate businesspeople and outright crooks. What happens to them?

BEE has created a “grabfest” culture, where everybody who is anybody is waiting for their tender to come . And what’s worse, the “grab it while you can” culture is spreading into established business too. Gaming the system is not a sport played only by BEE businesspeople , as several trials under way of “established” businesspeople demonstrate.

I’m sure there are many legitimate BEE beneficiaries . But for every legitimate beneficiary, there is someone who has learnt that the way to get to the top is to game the system. Instead of a class of businesspeople, BEE is creating a class of rent-takers.

With acknowledgements to Tim Cohen and The Weekender.