South African minority groups also needed to be empowered to play their rightful role in the economy and the public sector, said ANC national treasurer Matthew Phosa.

Speaking during the Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge memorial lecture in Durban on Friday night, Phosa said it has become immaterial whether those minorities had privileged access to opportunities a decade and half ago. The event was organised by the ANC.

The Mxenge couple was assassinated by apartheid government agents after they had become a thorn to the flesh of the apartheid regime by, representing activists who were tortured by the oppressive government. They were both lawyers.

Phosa said the Mxenge couple died so that people could have a democracy in which all have equal opportunities and everyone can make a contribution.

"From that perspective we must ensure that the minorities in our country also empowered to play their rightful role in the economy and the public sector.

"Whether those minorities had privileged access to opportunities a decade and half ago, has now became immaterial."

Phosa said there were patriots in all groups and cultures.

"I am especially keen to ensure that lost skills from the public sector are recaptured through the interaction with the so called minorities," he said.

"In calling for a clinical look of the way in which we promote black ownership, we should, therefore ensure that entrepreneurs from minority groups are assisted to break free from their constraints and make the contributions which we all know they can."

He said South Africa faced substantial global challenges which would not be helped by bickering about the sins of the past.

Phosa said the ANC would repeatedly re-look the basis on which empowerment policies were managed.

This would include increasing levels of black empowerment ownership in businesses, streamlining institutions that finance black entrepreneurs and also developing similar empowerment programs for minority groups to ensure an inclusive approach towards social upliftment and job creation.

He added that the ultimate goal of empowerment was to ensure that South African ownership profile changed and that in the interim, more black people would either own business, or have substantial share in commercial ventures.

The challenge was how to streamline the institutions that make available financing to black entrepreneurs and to consider something along the lines of a BEE bank, said Phosa.