Allegations are pouring forth about SANAS. I'm not referring to SANAS as a whole, just the BEE department. I have a few sources and I found it necessary to call them to hear the issues. A very reliable source told me that Mokgadi Rameetse the Accreditation Manager of the BBBEE department or division is a solid person, reasonable and knowledgeable. However the system is a problem from accreditation through to ongoing assessment.
1) Accreditation
David Kalmin (who I still miss terribly) told me that he thinks that his SANAS accreditation cost him about R200k. He said that the labour costs to get this accreditation made up more than 75% of this amount. It was arduous and killed many forests. This makes sense when you look through the process diagrams on the SANAS website. SANAS was set up originally as the National Calibration Service (NCS), later the National Laboratory Accreditation Service (NLA). Initially the NCS, which was operated under the auspices of the CSIR, accredited laboratories only in the field of calibration. They started out ensuring the scientific standards were maintained. Of course they are going to be process orientated. I suppose it's a marvel of modern social science that they have managed to extend this a social experiment like black economic empowerment.
2) Ongoing assassination assessment.
This is where the wheels completely fall off. You would expect that scientific type people would come in and conduct the annual verification assessments. Not so - apparently they have a number of independent service providers and a few actual SANAS employees who travel the length and breadth of the three major metros (because there is not enough business outside of those to warrant a verification agency even though places like Bloemfontein really need one) and police them. Reports are that the inspectors (they remind me of the old Transvaal Education Department school inspectors) cannot not find non-conformances. They'll dig until they find at least four, so my informant tells me.
The most notorious of these people is a character whose name should be Catastrophes, we'll call him just that. Catastrophes is in the sunset years of his career as a working person and takes his job very seriously. From my understanding he sows fear in the minds of his 70 odd verification agencies. A non-conformance can result in you losing your licence. But Catastrophes is not your average fear-monger, he's a lot more than that. He's an arbitrary fear monger. A verification agency won't know what arbitrary rule he may invoke at any one time. You would think that if there are gazetted codes and practice notes and you followed those then you'd be in with a fighting chance. Not so with Catastrophes, he may come in and offer non-conformances for not adhering to an OPINION by the bee commissioner; or he may regard a draft code for comment as binding. Perhaps he might refer to the draft verification manual and insist that it be followed. Catastrophes then hands out non-conformances for these transgressions. That the verification agency could never have known that this was a potential transgression is not an issue in Catastrophes' world. You would think that a reasonable person would provide a warning and say if you don't fix this you're in for the high jump next year.
Why is this of concern to us?
I have a situation where the client's measurement period ended 12 months ago, they did everything that they were supposed to do according to the codes. They have now discovered that their best intentions have been regarded as potential Catastrophes' non-conformances and they haven't been awarded the points. Such is the fear of Catastrophes that said VA is not willing to budge. That's why we need to care. What's the point in following a gazetted rule that some arbitrary, and quite possibly not well suited to the job, person will negate in 12 months' time.
I come back to a quote that's credited to Paul Hoffman - a man I like to quote often.
A critical element of the rule of law is that there should be certainty about what the law is and what it requires, both procedurally and substantively. This involves consistent conduct by those in positions of authority, a uniform interpretation of the provisions of laws and a respect for precedents that are set in decisions made in cases of similar nature.
Why is SANAS handling BEE anyway?
I can't think of a body less capable of handling a social and economic programme such as BEE. This is not science - this is about structural change. There are no empirical rules you can apply here - you can't use Newton's third law ever. This is about an economy and all the players in the economy. It's dependent on political and social stability which then leads to economic stability. Catastrophes happens to work for SANAS but there are a lot of people like him all over the place - who use arbitrariness as a tool to instill fear.
SANAS belongs to the dti - and bolshie bob is running that into the ground. I suppose it's convenient to have it all under one umbrella. But not to the end user. What we need and want is an institution that understands the dynamic nature of the South African economy and is able to adjust to these dynamics. You can't have it in the same fold as the people who make the rules. It needs to be outside the dti, perhaps even in Patel's ministry. I think Treasury would be great - at least you'd know that the people running it were competent. We need a relaxation of the accreditation process so that more entrants can come into the market. There is scope for at least another 100 VAs, but this won't happen with SANAS running it.
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