As an aside - this piece of virtual media has had 19 hits today. 19 hits - that's what I normally get in a good month.
This post has been drafted in my mind over the last week. The success of black economic empowerment came through the private sector pushing the procurement element, don't believe that any government entity or state-owned entity made any contribution to the empowerment of this country. All they ever did was push their own corruption agenda in the name of transformation. Look where the likes of Eskom, SAA and Transnet are now.
If we are going to survive this government and still travel the road of transformation then we have to do it as a partnership. It's OK for Vodacom to insist that you become 51% black owned and retain your level because they are going in a whole heap of trouble with their large suppliers that will never meet their demands and it'll take 100 years before they ever reach the desired levels of ownership (51%). If Vodacom (and any other huge entity that shares similar sentiments) were responsible corporate citizens then they would take a responsible approach to the empowerment of their suppliers under the revised codes. Perhaps they might send you out a letter that looks something like this
Dear supplier/service provider
There is no doubt that economic and social transformation is vital to overall success of this economy. Over the last ten years we have steadily improved on our BEE score by making greater empowerment strides through the various elements in the original scorecard. Your contribution to our improvement under procurement has been vital to our overall BEE score.
The gazetting of the revised BEE codes has had a negative impact on our BEE score. The levels that we have been used to achieving are now only something we can hope to achieve in the next few years. We too have been subject to demands from our own customers who are insisting that we retain our current level under the revised codes coupled with a substantial increase in our black ownership levels. This has proved to be very difficult in the current economy. The sheer cost of compliance will erode our financial viability and as such put our business and the livelihood of a number of people at risk.
We believe that if we are in this position then you must be too. We don’t want to encourage fronting, nor will we allow our suppliers to simply renege on their responsibility to transform this economy. We are however willing to travel this road with you. We understand that achieving similar scores that were reached under the old codes might be arrived at over a period of time. We’ll make no unreasonable demands on you but will expect an improvement in your BEE performance over the next five years.
In this respect we understand that is likely that your first few scorecards under the revised codes will come up as non-compliant. We will tolerate your non-compliance or current score for the next two scorecard periods, there after we will expect a steady improvement in your BEE performance.
Please join us in this journey and as a unit we’ll continue changing the social and economic landscape of this country through our steady investment in skills development, enterprise and supplier development as well as socio-economic development.
This kind of letter is far more responsible than the unreasonable demands that we are seeing by large corporates hoping to curry favour with politicians who truly do not know how to run a country, let alone a business that is profit orientated.
Here's the letter in word format. Use it as a proforma or use it in its current form. All I ask is that you send me an email (my email address is at the top of the blog) telling me that you've used it. You can modify it for your customers - believe me, they know exactly what you are going through.
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