This is the 1000th post or THE SUCCESS OF BLACK BUSINESS WILL BE MEASURED AGAINST THE FAILURE OF WHITE BUSINESS

This blog was started in August 2006. I started writing it as a guide to people who wanted to know more about the vagaries of black economic empowerment. Perhaps the liberating experience of having a platform to pretty much say what you want went to my head because the blog soon evolved into a political vudderfok venting place. Many would argue that it devolved into such a home. There were some particularly good posts - I have to say this myself because no one has told me as much - that contained my analyses of certain aspects of this sordid industry that I operate in. Other times there were knee jerk digs at the quality of personage that works in our rudderless regering. I came across some of the biggest racists that this country has ever seen (jungle jim) and in certain cases I endorsed one or two people who have slipped so far in my estimation that I cannot understand why I bothered with them in the first place (Thami Mazwai).

This post is a short(ish) reflection on the last 9 years. A hell of a lot has happened in those years. The first codes of good practice came out in February 2007 followed by a number of sector codes. All this good work was negated by Rob's Folly (revised BEE codes). We have seen the politically connected benefit (Penuel Maduna under Mbeki – and I don't care if I spelled his name incorrectly) and now Zungu under Zuma. To a certain extent Zungu got his arse kicked in the Arcelor-Mittal deal – but not hard enough unfortunately because it is his band of BBC merry men that are attempting to hijack the economy with the full endorsement of Number One and his handlers.

When I started in this business I believed that we could make a go of this empowerment thing. The Maslow-approved scorecard made so much sense that it could only but work. That was in spite of the fact that the codes and all of the supporting documentation wasn't particularly well written and that the DTI had absolutely no clue what they were doing. Even when you take this into account we saw an amazing take-up of BEE throughout the country. I measure this by some of my more remote clients who couldn't get a scorecard out of the local Worcestor butcher in 2007 and now you can get scorecards out of their local filling station. If the scorecard message is getting through to rural Worcestor then it must mean that a greater awareness has drifted through the economy.

This is what happened over the next five years

1. Scores steadily improved. I noticed that certain verticals stuck to an industry average, the banking sector is probably the most obvious.
2. The message circulated throughout the economy
3. Investments in enterprise development (more often than not donations) and skills development increased
4. High profile BEE deals petered out. Most of them had been concluded and needed to run their course, in many cases they were extended
5. The new breed of potential BEE takers started getting pissed off because the deals were done. They persuaded Rob that a change was needed

And so change arrived. Rob's revised codes were bludgeoned through, the DTI paid scant regard for any comments. And here we sit on the cusp of the new BEE era.

The NEW BEE ERA

I hate the term BEE, irritates me. The new ERA is simply a system where by a small cabal of connected Africans (someone described them to me as the Aurora crowd but I think you can throw in the Imperial Crown Trading crew too) designed a system whereby they would benefit under state procurement because white companies (a broad term describing everything that is not black by definition) could not compete on points or on racial profile. To quote Loane Sharp

The government is now creating 100 "black industrialists" (the government's term), and it appears that the much-vaunted R1-trillion infrastructure programme is being delayed to ensure that government-nominated industrialists win the overwhelming proportion of civil engineering tenders.

You see the problem here was that companies were making such great progress in their BEE endeavours that black owned companies could no longer compete on points. To make matters worse they would also need to go through the expense of empowerment even though they were black just to match a white owned competitor.

"Nee fok dit," they said sobbing into their single malts at the Michelangelo. "We'll reduce everything down to race and create a system that can only suit us." And so they did, the revised BEE codes are just one small element of this, the PPPFA is the next to fall.

Where do we find ourselves in this 1000^th post? A simple summary must be – THE SUCCESS OF BLACK BUSINESS WILL BE MEASURED AGAINST THE FAILURE OF WHITE BUSINESS, and ultimately the economy. Anthony Butler perhaps captured this sentiment perfectly when describing Malusi's ridiculous visa rules

It would be comforting to imagine that this is merely a "departmental silo" problem, in which Home Affairs is preoccupied with child trafficking, while Tourism is preoccupied with visitor convenience. Or that this is all a matter of face for a young minister who wants to be president, has failed as minister of public enterprises, and now cannot bow down before the forces of reaction. But it is much worse than that. (I)t is about race. The tourism industry, no matter how many jobs it creates, shows a white face to government, and the success of the sector breeds resentment.

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