Two articles caught my eye recently.
ICT Charter - Let it die
After eight long years of toing and froing, the ICT sector will finally have clarity on how it should implement empowerment, as the long-awaited charter has been submitted for gazetting. However, this is not exactly good news.
Nicola Mawson postulates that the charter is going to cause more trouble than the problems it plans to solve. One of the more relevant issues is the fact that ICT companies need to achieve a 30% ownership target. She (correctly) observes
Legislation in the sector was meant to make things easier – not make it so hard for companies that transformation becomes a spiral of red tape, instead of a way to empower those who deserve to benefit. The charter will create a regulatory nightmare in its current form – and do nothing to redress the imbalances of the past. After almost eight years in the making, it's frankly defunct now anyway – the sector has moved on and done its own thing in accordance with the codes.
I really don't want to labour this blog with Levenstein (the content on this blog is far superior than anything his company has ever published), but the underlined section is very valid. By labouring the charter point our hero is wreaking havoc with the whole process, you know, spanner in the works type of thing. Oh yes, on that subject, I saw a Facebook comment from the same Incredible Skulk stating that he spends 30% of his time checking on BEE certificates to make sure that the companies aren't fronting (unlike his company of course). Do you see the business model now? Simple - reject a certificate and then phone the offending company telling then that their certificate is invalid. And the rest is obvious; actually there is another revenue stream that no-one really knows about - if anyone has the Levenstein/Tempest email please can you post it in the comments below. It makes for the most interesting reading and business model.
Back to Mawson
On top of which, the charter adds requirements to stipulations. If an ICT company wants to sell cellphones to a mine, for argument's sake, it will have to comply with the mining charter so the mine can gain procurement points. Ditto construction, financial services, tourism... the list goes on.
I've seen this problem. I have a client out in Westonaria who was told by the mines that they have to comply with the mining charter's HDSA requirements if they want to do business with the mines. In other words a BEE scorecard (correctly issued or whatever) is not good enough in that sector. The fact that this is an untenable situation cannot be missed by the DTI (or can it).
AgriBEE target under fire
Not much going on here because the charter was gazetted under section 12 two years ago.
Johan Pienaar, the deputy executive director of AgriSA, said he was concerned about the lack of an overarching BEE charter in the sector. The government had gazetted the charter in 2006 (actually it was in March 2008), which should have been published as a code of good practice but had not.
And then he said
commercial white farmers had taken the initiative to assist black farmers in gaining market access, pointing out that organisations such as GrainSA and the Wool Growers Association in the Eastern Cape had contributed close to R200m towards AgriBEE-related initiatives.
You can read the contra arguments in the article.
And finally - or as my mate Grant says "ask me something about sport"
A transformation charter which will apply to all sports organisations is being drawn up
Speaking in the National Assembly during the debate on his budget vote, Sport and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula said South Africa was still witnessing a sporting environment where there was a skewed picture of sporting facilities and opportunities.
"It is a responsibility of this government to fundamentally change the status quo, and ensure that South Africa has national teams and the amenities are a true reflection of South Africa's population," he said.To ensure actions were focused and directed, SRSA (sport and recreation department) together with the stakeholders had started a process of drawing up a transformation charter which would apply to all sports organisations.
The speech the erstwhile ANKLE (ancyl) president made is full of great ANC rhetoric, words like national discourse, realisation of priorities of national objectives, robust debates, engaged and mobilise.
Fikile - don't make the same mistakes that everyone has made. Get a good charter drafted (which includes correct punctuation and spelling) and make sure that your administrators know what they are doing - otherwise it'll be a (insert your own expletive here), like all the others.
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