It's most definitely not payback. It's empowering a systemically oppressed group of people which btw is 92.7% of the total population, per the 2022 census
Let me use an example
I went to university with a white girl that bemoaned BEE
She didn't get into her preferred university, but still had the finances to fund her way into her second choice uni and is now a practising lawyer. Same end result.
Likely, her place at the first choice university went to a student with similar marks but qualified for BEE
The point is, her family's history of economic advantage due to the advantages gained as a result of racist apartheid laws meant that even though she was so-called maligned by BEE, she was able to achieve tertiary education and her end goal career with zero delay. Without any numbers to back it up, I'm willing to bet this is the case for most white students who were forced to re-evaluate.
Most people of colour in this country in my generation are born into families whose parents and grandparents have little to no formal education because they were, by law, denied the opportunity to study. While her and my parents were able to go to good schools and then university during apartheid they were subjected to Bantu Education:
"Bantu Education was a segregationist educational system implemented in South Africa by the Apartheid government through the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Designed to enforce white supremacy, it enforced separate, inferior schooling for Black students to prepare them only for manual labor and subservient roles."
Sure, not all white people in this country are rich but the point is that even poor white people in this country have infinitely more resources, be it access to generationally superior education, family members with resources they can depend on. Elon's family profited during apartheid and he's now mega rich, while men of colour his age are, on the whole, impoverished.
My family wasn't rich when I was a kid. Still aren't. But, my university educated mother, despite raising us alone, was able to become a teacher and send five children to private schools and then qualify for university bursaries and scholarships. I didn't but a family friend paid for my studies. We are all now successful in our own rights. My older brother is a film director, my older sister works for Big 3 accounting firm.
I can assure you, the inconvenience of having to look for second choice avenues into uni etc are incomparable to the damage done to millions of families as a result of decades of segregation and slavery.