South African business is not helping to reconstruct the South African economy, Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille said on Wednesday.

"Business is standing back with its arms folded and leaving everything to government.

"In fact, business is doing something very similar to what it was doing during apartheid," she told students at the University of the Free State's MBA programme.

De Lille criticised South African business for failing to show commitment to a "Marshal Plan" way to reconstruct and develop South Africa.

After the Second World War, European governments and business got together with the help of the United States and devised a huge reconstruction and development project called the Marshal Plan to kick-start the economy.

"This plan worked precisely because of the tremendous commitment from all quarters, including business," De Lille said.

The difference between Europe then and South Africa in 1994 (after apartheid) was that "photographs of FW de Klerk hanging on the walls of business board rooms were taken down and replaced with photographs of Nelson Mandela".

De Lille said reconstructing the economy was about building a whole new economy that worked for all South Africans and not just a privileged few.

South African business should engage with government to identify problems and find solutions to speed up transformation.

More emphasis should be placed on broad based BEE, focusing on interventions, such as worker-ownership schemes, rather than continuing to make a few rich black individuals even richer.

"When an individual's wealth exceeds a certain amount, say R10-million, he or she should no longer qualify for BEE," De Lille said.