Merriam Webster defines the word Trust as "belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc." Do we have any reason to trust Bolshie Bob and his band of untrustworthy souls? (I frantically looked for an apt Commie Russian word for Bolshie's minions but I lack that communist thing). We don't. I don't need to think about this nor is it necessary to engage in any form of debate with my inner conscience. Bolshie Bob has taken Stephen Covey's second habit of highly effective people to heart when it comes to issuing legislation and codes of good practice. For the uninitiated the second habit is "start with the end in mind."
History has shown that Davies' draft BEE codes are in effect the final product. This is in spite of 555 submissions received. Logic states that a number of those would have been very well thought out and offered constructive comments on the impracticality of what he had proposed. These comments were largely ignored. The only difference was that you wouldn't drop two levels and they removed the SED code that spoke of 100% beneficiaries. They then published a document that makes for puke-inducing reading. The retching was made worse when the DTI removed the SED code from the draft and then published a final SED code that we had never seen before – in effect we were not asked to comment on that at all. I don't know why I bothered getting upset reading the final code, I should have been grief stricken at the draft phase. It's just that I didn't know that the draft was in fact the final code.
A few other have codes have come up for comment. I haven't looked at them for a couple of reasons. The first one is that they are built on a compromised document and secondly I know that they are going Covey here – all comments that address the impracticality will not be considered. In short it's simply a lack of trust. I would imagine that those companies subjected to these codes feel the same.
And here is the rub of this post. It was announced last night that Rob has published the revised FSC for comment. Comments close on May the 17th. Again I have got a draft of the revised FSC code and have had it for about a year. I knew it was coming but I thought it would take a long time to get to comment phase. This is the big cheese. It took years to move from the first draft from 2003/4 to the one that we know now. And therein lies the problem.
Here is a bit of a timeline
- Early October 2012 – draft revised codes come out. Comments close at the end of November
- 26 November 2012 – Rob publishes the final FSC (ostensibly to discourage the financial sector from commenting on this new codes)
- On or about 17 March 2016 – the draft FSC submitted for comment
If you haven't seen it yet, there is a problem. The current FSC was given 1228 days to succeed. Or 3 years, 4 months, 12 days. In reality it's less than that. The first scorecards under those codes would have started coming out 6-12 months later. In effect Bolshie Bob has given the transformation of the financial sector less than three years to succeed. That's not even a fighting chance. He quite simply doesn't trust the industry. He doesn't actually trust anything. If the head honcho doesn't trust anyone then his minions are going to display a similar tendency. Because he doesn't trust them he will drive his Stalinist agenda onto the unwilling pubic expecting them to comply.
By the same token we (being everyone that isn't part of the state) don't trust him. How do we know that he won't change his mind in three years' time and thrust something even more unfair on us? As it stands we don't believe that he will actually consider the comments on a new system because he hasn't bothered in the past.
In a democracy, which we purport to be, the lawmakers are there for the benefit of the public. It is up to them to develop a trusting relationship with us. In the case of transformation it is vital that we can trust that the decisions made on our behalf are in our best interests, because it is up to us to effect this strategy with our own money and resource. This trust must initially come from the lawmakers. The ANC-government, like their Nationalist predecessors, have not done so. The trust relationship has diminished to almost negative under Zuma.
This leaves us in a position where we have an obligation to submit comments and take part in the lawmaking process even though we know that our input will not be considered. You see Bolshie Bob has consistently shown that he legislates with the draft in mind.
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