The short answer is: “Most probably not.”
During the Future of Empowerment conference held in September 2015, the then deputy director-general of the Department of Trade and Industry, Mr Sipho Zikode said that only 10 000 Chinese people in South Africa were eligible to benefit from black empowerment programmes.
When South African citizens were subject to race classification in the apartheid era, Chinese people were classified as “coloured” and suffered the disadvantages that were part and parcel to the apartheid legislation.
Mr Zikode said: “Those Chinese were South Africans brought in by the apartheid government and the number is about 10 000 of them…. these are Chinese that are today classified as black by the current legislation, not the 1.3 billion in China. Only the 10 000 that were here before 1994.”
As per the Migration Policy Institute, there are about 10 000 descendants of Chinese migrants who, between 1870 and the mid-20th century, came to South Africa from Guangdong, China.
So, if you are ethnically Chinese, can prove that you are a descendant from a Chinese person who were classified as coloured during the apartheid era, then yes, you are black as per the B-BBEE Codes of Good Practice.
https://www.businesslive.co.za/archive/2015-09-18-state-defends-bee-benefits-for-chinese/
https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/governance/developmentnews/bee-chinese230608
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