As I've said before, the dti will push through anything it wants because it knows that no one will ever raise a stink about their legislating by decree. If they ignored 550 comments when pushing through their last attempt at transformation then they will ignore comments again. But if there are enough comments then we can all group together and force them to explain what they have done.
There was an interesting article written by Andile Khumalo in the Sunday Times yesterday. I can't post a link that works because you have to be an online subscriber to read it. It's called "Is this the end of broad-based BEE?" Khumalo, like me, is somewhat nonplussed by the instant promotion to a level 2 if you are 51% black owned. He writes (edited a bit)
If a large company is 51% black owned it becomes a level 2 without measuring its contribution to management control etc. How can this possibly make sense? Surely this is taking us back to the days when ownership was the only relevant measure of whether or not, and to what extent, South African corporates were contributing to economic participation by black people..... We are essentially back to pre-2007 when BEE was all about giving shares to a few high-profile black individuals and doing nothing about the inequalities that permeate every aspect of South African society....... It seems to me this change spells the end of broad-based BEE and implies the reversal of all the difficult progress that has been made against tremendous resistance.
Again I apologise to Andile Khumalo for not putting up a link to this article. But you can read more about him here. And I apologise to anyone who takes exception to me reading the Sunday Times, I actually don't want to but I've got to know my local newspaper seller who told us that he makes R4 (four rand) a paper and sells about 20 papers a week. I pay him R50/paper which is double the cover price and feed him every week - he also gets a Christmas bonus. He's the only reason why I and others in my neighbourhood support him - Iqbal can get knotted I refuse to read any of his publications.
Back to Andile - he's spot on here. You're not going to solve South Africa's woes by changing the ownership structure of businesses. bolshie bob could argue that by changing the ownership structures where companies are majority black owned that you will be able to influence societal change. We all know that bob is just a deluded commie - this will not happen in the short term and we need short term gains. People like Andile will become "investors" in these massive businesses and will be paid a lot of money to tell the verification agencies exactly what they need to hear. And those businesses will continue as they have.
14 days people - 14 days to submit your comments. And I've already written them for you. Please submit the comments. Our business future depends on it - and if davies gets away with this then he will make other amendments that will further erode the economy. Everything you need to know is in this blog post.
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