The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) plans to raise concerns with United States (US) authorities over a requirement imposed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that companies participating in its South African Equity Equivalent Investment Programme may not have any white shareholders.

Jaco Mulder, the party’s Gauteng leader, said last week that the FF+ would formally approach US Ambassador to South Africa, L Brent Bozell III, and ask him to refer the matter to the relevant US authorities.

According to Mulder, AWS has confirmed that companies participating in the programme must be 100% black-owned.

“Consequently,” Mulder said, “South African businesses may be barred simply because one shareholder does not qualify based on the prescribed racial classification.”

The issue was not necessarily whether AWS was contravening US law, but whether the application of an absolute racial requirement by a multinational company and federal contractor outside the US was consistent with current US government policy on race-based discrimination.

Mulder cited US President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14398 of 26 March 2026, which expressly prohibits federal contractors from engaging in racially discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion activities. The order also addressed disparate treatment based on race or ethnicity in contracting and programme participation.

Mulder added that both AWS and South Africa’s authorities needed to set out their thinking on the matter: “The Freedom Front Plus insists that AWS and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition provide clarity on where the 100% black-ownership criterion comes from; is it an explicit requirement of South African B-BBEE [broad-based black economic empowerment] regulations, a government condition, or a corporate decision by AWS?”

The FF+ said South Africa needed investment, entrepreneurship, and job creation – “genuine transformation and empowerment” – arguing that economic opportunities should not be restricted by racial criteria.

South Africa’s systems of racial preferencing have not only been a flashpoint of tension with the US and a subject of criticism from opposition parties and civic groups in South Africa, but have in recent years come under increased scrutiny as the country faces the consequences of a protracted failure to grow economically.

Restrictions on economic participation and the effective taxing of capital before any returns have been seen have imposed significant costs on the economy and limits to growth.

This has not been lost on South Africa’s people, and as this newspaper has reported, a poll conducted earlier this year by The Common Sense, in conjunction with the Social Research Foundation, found that close to two-thirds of South Africans agreed with reform of B-BBEE that would shift the emphasis from race to socio-economic criteria. Majorities across all race groups endorsed this position.