The Daily Maverick is becoming the most valuable source of fine journalism in this country. There is nothing that comes close to it. By the way they are looking for financial support, if you are so inclined you can read more about this here.
Back to the Maverick. Dirk de Vos wrote a fantastic article over the weekend. I'm not a Marxist fan nor that familiar with his theories, but I do know that that inept commie bolshie bob is a massive officianado. de Vos sets up his argument thus
In general, socialists continue to favour top-down direct interventions by the state preferably supported by “evidence based” research. When decision-making follows a process of identifying a problem with the objective of solving it by reviewing evidence and evaluating options, what we mostly get instead is some predetermined solution with evidence selected to favour the pre-selected solution. That type of policy making process is faulty because we cannot know the full ambit of what the problem is all about or that a whole number of factors will change once the policy is known. Goodhart’s Law shows the dynamics at play: Individuals who are aware of a system of rewards and punishments will optimise their actions within this system to achieve their own best outcome.
In other words policy makers come up with a solution to a problem without spending much time figuring out whether they actually know how to solve that problem. de Vos turns his attention to black economic empowerment and its raison d'etre
A good example of a failing policy is Broad-Based Black Empowerment (BEE) legislation and its regulations. The problem of lack of participation of black people in the formal economy and racial inequality is the problem to solve.
And in one sentence he sums up the fuck up that is best described as bob's folly
What we get is a a complex scheme of BEE regulation and arcane rules.
He could stop there, the points is made, but he's far too an analytical journalist.
The only interesting thing about BEE regulation is about they reveal about what the drafters of the rules think private firms work. Well, they don’t work in the way the BEE codes suggest they do. They work in all sorts of different ways. Still, the BEE regulations provide a system of rewards and punishments. They are also thoroughly gamed: they get manipulated by a range of actors from failing white-owned companies, specialist BEE advisers (I'm one you know - in the business of making white people look black) , funders, crony capitalists and those with a talent for manipulating state procurement budgets.
I think he must have been reading this blog. All this bullshit about voting rights and board meetings and the like - these are done by large companies. Since when does the average smallish to large business actually sit down and conduct a board meeting? bolshie bob obviously knows the answer. I once heard that idiot being interviewed on the radio and telling all those who care to hear his deluded voice that he will insist that CEOs start getting involved in the operations of small black businesses. Huh? - what would a CEO or even a high end employee be able to tell a small business about running their business. It was Anglo, in their submission of comments on the revised codes who asked the very pertinent question. What do we know about running a supplier's business? We are miners - we mine shit and then send it off. But we could start working on companies upstream - we could advise them on the best ways to manage the raw materials we produce. No! says bolshie bob. It's all about suppliers. What fucking drivel. Back to de Vos
Sadly, the response to the unsatisfactory outcome is to swap out some of the original rules, sub-rules and sub-sub rules with a whole raft of new rules that are equally misguided and arguably worse because they are combined with additional rules addressing issues of enforcement.
And so we bring in the awesome awdoz and SANAS. SANAS is so concerned about process and paperwork that if has failed to take into account that all companies are doing is producing documentation to support stuff. The actual benefit that is being derived is not measured. de Vos absolutely hits it here.
Black empowerment won’t be advanced by better enforcement of BEE regulations. The whole scheme of BEE is wrong-headed.
And he correctly concludes with
Of course, the original problem, namely the exclusion of the black majority and inequality has not gone away and, in some respects, the original problem has got worse.
I can only hope that Cyril is reading this. I have lamented often on this blog as to why have they made the codes so difficult to understand and even harder to measure. I think I know one of the underlying reasons and this has to do with lobby groups like the broke black business council - who are now returning to BUSA (apparently Cyril wants business to speak with one voice). I suspect that these lobby groups are attempting to use apartheid-style policy making where you make a certain class of people adhere to "arcane" rules and exempt others - thereby making it easier for that exempt class to gain access to the lucrative government business (a broke government I need to stress). It's all in the name of trunceformaysheeyin.
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