Differences of opinion must be expected. There are those of us who think that the proposed codes are dangerous and nonsense and must be rejected with a similar amount of contempt that jungle jim has for white people and then there are those who love the codes. Here are two different submissions.
The first was drafted by The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) and I don't have their permission to use it or post it. However I am going to because it is a very well thought through document that illustrates the folly of Rob's new codes - almost flogging the dead horse alive. Whoever wrote this researched it properly and brought in relevant sections of the BEE Strategy and ministerial speeches. This paragraph shows that the drafters had their mates firmly in mind when they wrote the new codes (and it is safe to assume that they are almost exclusively African because of the EAP targets under EE and skills). Page 3
Rather than to de-emphasize black ownership as the national growth plan suggests, the ownership element in the score card is awarded a further 5 points and its relative importance to the total BEE score card of a business is therefore increased. With the new definitions of qualifying enterprise development contributions and qualifying local supplier development beneficiaries - which are now limited to black owned businesses, the number of points attributable to contributions directly related to black ownership of business has increased from 23 points (23%) to 53 points (50.47%). (The 53 points represents the 23 points on ownership score card and the 28 points on enterprise and supply development score card related solely to black ownership.) More than 50% of the available points on the score card is therefore directly related to the black ownership of businesses. Rather than de-emphasizing black ownership it has become more than double as important under the revised codes as compared to the existing codes. It is a clear reversal towards a narrow-based approach towards BEE and is clearly not in alignment with the stated national objective adopted in the national growth plan.
Percy Abelkop showed in his presentation that (WAP means Working Age Population)
95% of revised Code targets the same 41% of WAP (24% of total population), and
Benefits sharply favour pinnacle of economic pyramid with 100 points favouring the top 10% of WAP and 65 points favouring the top 2% of the population
When you start reading the codes in this context you understand why the SEIFSA submission concludes with
The revised codes are nothing but a disappointment and have the risk of acting as a death penalty for economic transformation in South Africa.
Contrast that with the BMF's submission. They rabbit on about being a non-racial organisation, which is a necessary qualification after Manyi marketed it as an extremely racially exclusive organisation (oversupply of Coloureds anyone?) and then get to the nitty gritty. Little of what they suggest makes much sense from making BEE compulsory to insisting that all elements should be priority elements.
You have to understand the BMF in its context. It is an employee representative organisation – they want EE to be the most important element at 30 points. I would suggest that an overwhelming number of its members do not run their own businesses and as such how could they understand how complex it is to implement these stupid codes.
I can't support their view, I'll grant them that they are now more relevant since jungle's departure but this gobbledegook does expose them as not specifically relevant to the broader economy.
Submissions are due by tomorrow.
Very good summation of the situation, especially the BMF bit.
Posted by: Sakkie | January 04, 2013 at 10:49 AM