Lionel speaks to the nation’s representatives. And probably believes what he says

These vignettes come from the minutes of presentation that our Li presented to some committee in parliament. This is what he told them (with the help of one or two others)

• 555 submission were received and analysed;
• Consolidation of comments and engagements with the Presidential B-BBEE Advisory Council and other stakeholders; and on this subject
  • with regards to the analysis of the public submissions, there was a team working on each and every one of the submissions and changes were made where there were a large number of people commenting in the same manner.
• The more skills development done, the higher the enterprise scored on that element and while it was not an absolute requirement, it was to the benefit of the enterprise.
• with regards to new entrants, the increase to R50 million was done in order to ensure that more and more black people could be included in the B-BBEE in the years to come with the status and benefits of a new entrant.
• the codes would kick in on October 2014 and the first assessment would take place in October 2015, which was a 12-month backward review.
• the focus was not on ownership because even if ownership was changed in the economy, it did not mean that it would be a more prosperous society. Rather, growing the number of entrepreneurs was the way to do it, which was why 75% of the points were non-ownership points.

Admittedly I have been very selective about what I have chosen to put in this post, the rest of the stuff is just puffel and poppycock. The six selections that I have highlighted make for the most sensational blogging.

1. 555 submissions. And then they consolidated the similar ones. We know that Udge and co were one of the companies whose submissions were accepted – because he told us. Why then were the comments from Anglo and pretty much everyone I know ignored. Were they in the minority? I think the answer lies in the second comment – "engagements with the BEE Advisory Council". This BEE Council is lacking in proper business brains and entrepreneurial capability. They also have too few (if any) white business people sitting on it. If white-owned businesses are the target market then surely it would make sense to have this racial sector adequately represented. I believe that legitimate comments that questioned these codes were ignored. And I also believe that there were many of these comments.  I must return to a point I've made before, I also believe that a large number of comments came from companies who are now exempt from implementing the codes. But I've said this before.
2. Love the thing about skills development, Lionill forgot to mention that you need to apportion your skills' development spend according the race group of each person – a major omission I think. Yes a company will benefit from skills development but there are two problems with the 6% rule
   1. You get less than 1% back from your SDL. The actual cost to a company is over 5% of payroll on black people alone. Don't forget that there are a lot of white and foreigner people working in South Africa. Their training is over and above this 5%. This is off the bottom line. And even if you spend that amount there is no guarantee that you'll get the points because they've limited what you can regard as skills development spend
   2. Training in the workplace must benefit the workplace. You may recall a prior blog post where I postulated that FirstRand would need to spend about R18,500 on each black person's training every year. When are these people actually going to do some work? They'll be on courses all the time.
3. It's official – Sipho said it. We start issuing in October 2015.
4. The new entrants' thing is rubbish. It's giving those who got the first round of deals a second go.
5. But the focus is on ownership. Don't believe Lionel's propaganda. Please will someone send this to Mr October before October next year – here are those sections and their corresponding points that are concerned about ownership

Name	Points
Code 100 Ownership	25
Procurement
B-BBEE procurement spend from all Empowering Suppliers that are at least 51% black owned based on the applicable B-BBEE procurement recognition levels as a percentage of total measured procurement spend	9
B-BBEE procurement spend from all Empowering Suppliers that are at least 30% black women owned based on the applicable B-BBEE procurement recognition levels as a percentage of total measured procurement spend	4
B-BBEE procurement spend from Designated Group Suppliers that are at least 51% black owned	5
Supplier Development
Annual value of all supplier development contributions made by the measured entity as a percentage of the target	10
Enterprise Development
Annual value of all Enterprise Development and Sector Specific Programmes made by the measured entity as a percentage of the target	5
TOTAL NUMBER OF POINTS THAT ARE CONCERNED WITH BLACK OWNERSHIP	58

 

We've been lied to and they continue lying to us. And this is the most alarming issue. We don't have to tolerate these lies and this arbitrary law making. Already there are EME certificates being issued under the new codes. I am sure that 100% black QSE affidavits are doing the rounds as well. And the DTI does nothing about this anarchy. We are going to stop them. I might not be able to prevent them from issuing more rubbish in the future but I am going to block these codes and I'm very far down the line in getting this right. If you are interested in my fight and you have a lean budget please submit a PAJA application. If you have a bit more money then I'll be contacting you.

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And so spake those who dictate our future