The extraordinary public response to The Common Sense’s reporting on Elon Musk’s offer to provide free high-speed internet to 5 000 rural South African schools has exposed something profoundly wrong with the country’s approach to economic empowerment. The story has attracted hundreds of thousands of views across The Common Sense’s platforms, approaching one million. Seldom has a single example demonstrated so clearly the distance between the stated moral purpose of South Africa’s empowerment policies and the consequences for the people those policies are supposed to uplift.

The story emerged from an exclusive interview with the United States (US) ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell III, in which he discussed the considerable potential of the South African economy, the opportunities that closer economic relations with the US could create, and the policy changes that might unlock greater American investment. Among the examples he raised was Starlink, which he said had offered to provide free internet connectivity to South African schools. The commitment to providing free high-speed internet to 5 000 rural schools, potentially reaching more than 2.4 million children every year, would, according to Starlink’s representations, continue in perpetuity and would include equipment, connectivity, solar power, devices, software, and ongoing support.

Consider what that means for the children involved. Across rural South Africa, there are thousands of schools in which children are already at an enormous disadvantage. They are often taught in poorly resourced classrooms, by teachers working under difficult circumstances, with inadequate access to textbooks, specialist instruction, libraries, laboratories, and the wider educational resources that children in better-off communities take for granted. A high-speed internet connection would, by itself, solve the bulk of those problems.

A child in a remote village could gain access to lessons presented by excellent teachers anywhere in the world, digital libraries, mathematics and science instruction, and educational support systems increasingly available through advances in artificial intelligence. Teachers themselves could obtain assistance with lesson preparation, subject knowledge, and professional development. The geographical isolation that has long contributed to educational disadvantage would be entirely overcome. And, as anyone who has used Starlink will attest, the connectivity is off the charts compared to anything available across South Africa.

What makes this episode especially revealing is that Starlink has not asked to be exempted from black economic empowerment (BEE) requirements. In a formal letter sent to Trade, Industry, and Competition Minister Parks Tau in June 2025, the company expressly rejected that interpretation of its position. It wrote, “Starlink has never sought an exemption from B-BBEE laws, nor have we asked for any special treatment.” Instead, the company proposed complying through an Equity Equivalent Investment Programme, a mechanism already recognised in South Africa’s empowerment framework and used by multinational businesses in other sectors. Such arrangements allow companies to satisfy empowerment obligations through investments that produce broader economic and social benefits, rather than through the transfer of ownership stakes.

But South Africa’s business and governing elites say that is not good enough. They want to be cut into an ownership stake in Starlink, failing which the firm may not operate in South Africa. And to hell with the children who will be academically stunted as a consequence and forced into menial lives of piece-jobs and hard labour. That is a price big business and government in South Africa is prepared to pay to preserve the riches that accrue from the cuts they extract from any business trying to invest in the country. By any other name, this is straight-up corruption and a crime against South Africa’s people and its children.

The implications extend well beyond Starlink. If a company prepared to make an investment of this nature cannot satisfy empowerment requirements through a programme that directly benefits millions of poor South Africans, then similar obstacles will confront other businesses seeking to bring capital, technology, infrastructure, and expertise into the country. The cost will seldom appear neatly in a government budget or a regulatory assessment. It will be measured instead in investments never made, employment opportunities never created, technologies never deployed, and the diminished prospects of people who may never know what was available to them.

South Africa’s low rate of investment, persistent unemployment, and weak economic growth are not disconnected from the policy environment in which businesses must operate. The Starlink case gives those abstract economic relationships an immediate and deeply human meaning.