Paul Janisch

Fifty One Thirty - your new magic number

This post has been written often in my head.  It's proper title should be - "the future of empowerment is......... Fifty One Thirty".  You're going to see a lot of 5130.  The correct representation is actually 51/30,  51% black owned with 30% black women ownership.  You're going to see a lot of those companies sprouting up within the next few years.  

It works like this.  

The smallest percentage of black ownership that is acceptable under the codes is 30% black women owned.  25% black ownership will get you points but doesn't provide any benefits under procurement.  30% black women ownership does - 4 points.  The next best level is 51% black ownership - that'll attract a further 9 points under procurement.  You then get 100% black ownership which promotes you to a level 1 but actually doesn't do much more than that.   Clever companies will go the 51/30 route.  This gives your company access to 13 points under preferential procurement (more if they turnover less than R50m) and sets you up as an enterprise/supplier development beneficiary.  The balance of the shares can then be held by white people (or foreigners).  

What are the 51/30 benefits.

• If your turnover is less than R50m then you are a level 2.  This means that you don't have to worry about a BEE scorecard.  You can hire white people who you don't have to train.  White suppliers will seek you out to supply to the larger corporates and government and they won't have to give you a BEE scorecard
• You can insist on COD payment because you are an ED/SD beneficiary
• When your company turns over more than R50m you can refuse to implement any of the elements in the codes because your blackness provides your clients with 13 of the 25 procurement points.

The white/foreign/infidel co-owner can still sit there calling the shots because the company that is supplying Eskom is made up of a staff trust and he's put up the cash for the company.  The company is effectively a front  but because there are so many of them out there,  Eskom will never be able to check (don't worry Levenstain will attempt to out you).  Eskom won't check because it wants to support black owned businesses.  Larger corporates won't check either.

These 51/30s will go from strength to strength and monopolise procurement within the larger parastatals and corporates, effectively squeezing out those 100% black-owned businesses who are no longer competitive.  The 51/30s will also become the conduit for the rest of the companies that cannot/will not comply with the BEE codes to gain access to the larger corporates.  Their BEE status now becomes irrelevant.  

And then what? Nothing changes, white companies have adapted and hid behind their fronts.  Emerging businesses will struggle to get a foothold now that the larger corporates no longer need worry about them.  

Skilled people who sell their labour at competitive prices will not struggle to find positions in the 51/30s or their suppliers.  Yes you will still have those unpolicable pieces of labour legislation attempting to ensure that Manyi's distopian dream of companies reflecting the national demographics, but these will become less relevant because they cannot be policed as the government cannot afford to hire more people to police them.

If you ask me what to do with your business I would tell you to create a trust that provides for 51/30.   Even if I succeed in getting rid of the revised codes (and I am quite confident that I will)  51/30 is the future of empowerment irrespective of what codes exist.

If you don't know how to do this - speak to me, I have a few good ideas.

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Foreigners with farms over 12 000ha must sell

This appeared to indicate that the two-farm rule either looks set to be done away with, or that it would apply only if the two farms together make up 12 000 hectares. Officials from his department could not provide clarity on the matter after the briefing on Tuesday.

via www.fin24.com

Or do existing local farmers have to sell. Will black farmers have to sell? Will this useless fucking government just have its facts straight before it opens its incompetent mouth. This is the curse of South African legislating - sheer incompetence, coupled with no constitutional backing and dogmatic ministers who seem to think that you can run a country on hot air.

Racial migration concept ‘an absurdity’ - a more liberal homeland approach, but it's still a homeland approach

Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union Western Cape (Popcru) provincial secretary Mncedisi Mbolekwa said applying possible migrations meant our becoming more integrated.

“More coloured people are needed in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape, for example. We must get them to go there. We fought for society to be integrated,” Mbolekwa said.

via www.iol.co.za

Not an absurdity to the government. This statement is apartheid approved. As it is, white people are over-represented in Gauteng and I'm not going to pack up and head for Umtata. Or are they going to force me in time?

The speech that caused the trouble - FERIAL HAFFAJEE

There is no Messiah – you are your own liberator

My experience is that middle-class South Africa is often in search of a Messiah.  There is none. It’s not [deputy president] Cyril Ramaphosa. Or EFF leader Julius Malema. Or DA leader Helen Zille. The lesson of our past is that ordinary people in unity for the right cause remain the most powerful force in the world. Each of us is own leader. And our own liberator.

My lack of trust in elected politicians does not mean I don't know that the phrase and the moment of #Paybackthemoney has altered our politics completely. #Paybackthemoney is a campaign started by the Economic Freedom Fighters in August in response to Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's recommendation that President Zuma repay some of the undue benefit he accrued due to the renovations of his presidential estate at Nkandla.

The slogan placed the battle against corruption centre-stage, which is where it should be. Until then, a huge ANC was able to railroad its way through too many scandals. I think here of the arms deal, of Chancellor House [the ANC’s business arm] and Guptagate [the illegal landing of a jet containing large numbers of the family and friends of the Gupta dynasty at the military’s Waterkloof air-base]. These are the pockmarks on our way to being a just-like-the-others emerging market.   

Each of those scandals ended in no justice and confined largely to history’s unaccountable dustbin. 

Nkandla will not go the same way because of the #Paybackthemoney campaign and it may serve the purpose of raising the public appetite against a cancer which I am not sure we can excise. South Africa is deeply corrupt – R40bn is misused annually in the public service and collusive practices in the private sector are shown to increase the wealth gap.   

via www.news24.com

Please read the whole speech. We need to stand up as business and as tax payers against this tyranny. If not we are complicit in the rot.

Ferial continues with:

We are in a phase of political leadership that is neither visionary nor united. Increasingly, I find that we are in a phase of leading from the middle where a society is moved by forces that are not political. I don’t even think that those forces are business right now. That sector is running scared – cowed by former president Thabo Mbeki and sidelined by President Zuma, it has no idea of how to be a citizen in South Africa in the 21st century. I think our moral high-ground and global reputation is held by civil society and by the creative sector. Here, I find South Africans pushing the edge: be it at the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg; the Soweto Theatre; David Tlale’s studio and Kirsten Goss’s jewellery. Or perhaps Cassper Nyovest and KO – our hip-hop movement is right up there, giving Kanye a run for his money.

Blackouts fuel pessimism

We are just beginning to see, too, the extent to which continual load shedding, combined with incoherent government policy, take their toll on the economy. More pessimistic economists are now revising growth forecasts for this year and even, in some cases, next year, down to below 2%. SA’s economy is starting to look very bleak indeed over the short to medium term and without some serious structural reforms it may not be good in the long term either.

via www.bdlive.co.za

What they mean is GET RID OF ROB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'You are a broken man presiding over a broken society' | Politics | RDM

We have allowed one powerful man to get away with too much for too long. This man is here in our presence today.

Honourable President, in these very chambers, just five days ago, you broke Parliament.

Please understand, Honourable President, when I use the term “honourable”, I do it out of respect for the traditions and conventions of this august House.

But please do not take it literally. For you, Honourable President, are not an honourable man.

You are a broken man, presiding over a broken society.

You are willing to break every democratic institution to try and fix the legal predicament you find yourself in.

You are willing to break this Parliament if it means escaping accountability for the wrongs you have done.

On Thursday afternoon, outside this House, Members of Parliament were being arrested and assaulted by your riot police.

A few hours later, inside this House, our freedom to communicate was violated by an order to jam the telecommunications network.

Not long after, armed police officers in plain shirts stormed into this sacred chamber and physically attacked members of this House.

This was more than an assault on Members of Parliament. It was an assault on the very foundations of our democracy.

Parliament’s constitutional obligation to fearlessly scrutinise and oversee the Executive lost all meaning on Thursday night.

The brute force of the state won. And the hearts of our nation broke.

We knew, at that very moment, that our democratic order was in grave danger.

And what did you do?

You laughed. You laughed while the people of South Africa cried for their beloved country.

You laughed while trampling Madiba’s legacy – in the very week that we celebrated 25 years since his release.

Honourable President, we will never forgive you for what you have done.

Madam Speaker, I led my party out of this House on Thursday night because we could not sit by while our freedoms were destroyed right in front of us.

When we emerged from this chamber, we heard the President reading the cold and empty words from his prepared text.

They were the words of a broken man, presiding over a broken society.

For 6 years, he has run from the 783 counts of corruption, fraud and racketeering that have haunted him from before the day he was elected.

For 6 years, this broken man has spent his waking hours plotting and planning to avoid his day in court.

In this broken man’s path of destruction, lies a litany of broken institutions. Each one of them targeted because of their constitutional power to hold him to account.

via www.rdm.co.za

This is a very powerful speech. I met him last year and I knew I was in the presence of a proper leader. I told Oliver that this man was the future.

Fantastic - of course the ANC and that idiot will ignore it, but as Maimane says - change is coming.

State of the nation - indeed. No foreign land owners and set asides

What happened before Zoomer started speaking showed the real state of the nation.  What a despicable person and the party that he represents is rapidly descending into a neo-Nationalist party (the old PW Botha version).  It would seem that our dearly beloved president is now considering how to pay off his Nkandla loan - there are three possible payment options, cash, EFT or eWallet.

But what then of his bland presentation, what of the content.  I don't know if you noticed that his partisan audience wasn't actually clinging onto his every word,  if it wasn't for Blade's sycophantic applause, he would have received no applause whatsoever.  I think Blade pissed off Pravin because every time the  hysterical one applauded it woke Pravin up.

For those who have now returned from the Gupta's Taj Mahal after evicting them from their compound because they are foreign nationals and foreign nationals are no longer allowed to own land in South Africa, you might have noticed this little statement

Government will set-aside 30% of appropriate categories of State procurement for purchasing from SMMEs, co-operatives as well as township and rural enterprises.

This is good idea - of course we understand the term SMME to mean BLACK SMMEs  but that is detail.  But in order to do this you'd need to amend my favourite section of the Constitution, 217.  I have blogged about this often.  To change the constitution you need a 2/3rds majority.  Last night's performance will result in an even sharper drop in the ANC's majority.

The rules have changed now.  The ANC/government is no longer relevant or reasonable. 

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How can a leader of any country be so derided by one of the most influential publications in South Africa

No Nkandla report said I squandered money - Zuma

How can a leader of any country be so derided by one of the most influential publications in South Africa

Quite simply because he is not respected by the business community.  You cannot assume that the FM is speaking in isolation here.  Just take a look at the cover page of this week's issue.  The lead article is equally damning. 

JACOB Zuma’s Presidency has taken on a particular flavour. Exposés of capricious political interference in important arms of the state such as the prosecuting authority, the police and the intelligence services have become commonplace: there is little shock factor left in the abuses of power and process committed by his friends in his name; and there is no parallel with any other SA president in the extent to which he has personally benefited from holding office.

This article appears at the same time when Eskom is loadshedding the life out of the economy.  The impact of this loadshedding will be felt for a long time yet, and yet it is this moron's face that graces the cover of the FM.  Today is the State of the Nation Address, we are anticipating fireworks from the equally moronic Malema.  It's very strange how the adage - the enemy of your enemy is your friend, rings true almost all the time.   

And the ANC does nothing - no wonder I am patently anti-ANC.  I can't imagine that any logical person who either fought against apartheid or is relieved that it is over could have wished for a South Africa that looks like this with this destructive imbecile  at the helm.  Please come back  quickly Jesus, Christ knows we need you more than ever.

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BEE timeline

This is not me own werc. I can't be sure whether I pinched this from Arno Jansen van Vuuren or Chris van Wyk or a combination of the two. This brief story doesn't contain the levels of analysis that you might get from Chris or Arno. It's not a complete timeline – for instance the Liquid Fuels', Mining Charter and the first version of the PPPFA regulations predate the BEE Act. For the purposes of this post the world starts in 2003.

Please excuse this immodest plug but large sections of this timeline are taken from posts that I had written on this blog at the time.

Year	What happened
2003	BEE Act is passed. Soon afterwards the first Financial Sector Charter was published. The DTI also started publishing pieces of proposed codes – the first one was ownership. BEE scorecards were being issued by the likes of EmpowerDex based on something
November 2005	DTI publishes the first draft of the BEE codes. This was the first time we had ever seen a complete generic code
February 2007	DTI gazettes the generic codes of good practice. They weren't amazingly written but the flow worked. No verification agencies are accredited and wouldn't be for the next two years. This was the wild west period of the BEE world. With no verification agencies being accredited you had cowboys like myself issuing BEE certificates, and there were no standards.
Feb 2009	First 9 BEE verification agencies are appointed. I wrote something about this at the time.
May 2009	Tourism Charter is the first to be gazetted under section 9 of the BEE Act
January 2011	IRBA brought in as an accreditation authority
April 2011	Rob starts talking about revising the BEE codes
June 2011	Treasury publishes the revised PPPFA regulations which come into effect December 2011
November 2011	BEE Act is amended
October 2012	DTI publishes revised draft BEE codes, apparently BEE hasn't worked at all and these codes will speed up the process.
October 2012	FSC is gazetted. It is now very similar to the 2007 codes but Rob has published the revised codes for comment. This would mean that it would have a very short lifespan.
October 2013	Revised codes are gazetted. There is little difference between the draft codes and final codes. These will ultimately come into effect in May 2015.

This is a short timeline – a mere ten years. A lot can be done in 10 years, but not so with this dithering government. The significant periods are highlighted in the table above. The first acceptable codes were thrust upon us  in 2007  but it took until 2009 before any acceptable objective measurement system came into force. And Rob starts talking about revising the BEE codes 2 years after verification agencies have been accredited. He had in fact given BEE two years to show earth shattering success. He's behaving like an obese person who gives a diet two weeks to show dramatic results. Even a four year period is short. In the case of the FSC he didn't give it a chance at all.

I hope you're seeing the ridiculousness of Davies' behaviour. He's out of his depth and his head is in the clouds.

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"Unfortunately, that was ignored."

No, my friend, it's Sanral that is breaking the law

Refusing to comply with laws that are perceived to be unjust is an essential democratic safeguard.”

He concludes “Unless public institutions respect the spirit (and letter) of the Constitution and facilitate the emergence of a more participatory democracy they are likely to continue to face such resistance.”

via www.rdm.co.za

Per John Clarke of Outa. This refers to etolls but rings true for a large number of pieces of half-baked legislation that this government churns out.