Puerile writes and Davies responds.

The reader might be unaware that this blog's curator took the Duncan McLeod article to the Daily Maverick with his (not Duncan's) typical anti- bolshie twist. It was a more sanitised version of my normal blog posts, no bolshie bob references – just Rob Davies, I think that my bolshie point has been made. I stand by my assertion that Davies' legislating processes need to be critically examined.

Well blow me down if the ex-minister himself doesn't respond to the article the next day. In the article the largely discredited ex-minister rambles on about the work that he did with the BEE Act. Mentions the black industrialist policy and the quality of industrialists that they have appointed, even though this policy is destined to fail because industrialists need power and Davies' last political master (the even more discredited jacob zuma) killed Eskom.

What Davies doesn't do is get to the gist of my Maverick article, that he lied to the public. He vaguely attempts to justify his decision to accord Telkom with the facilitator status with

Instead of requiring development finance institutions or operators of public infrastructure to have to obtain verification certificates, a process was developed to accord them "BBBEE facilitator status". A high court has now ruled that there were procedural flaws in the case of Telkom, which it also ruled was not entitled to such status as it is not a fully state-owned entity. The current authorities will have to determine the way forward on that particular issue.

A lot of smoke and mirrors in that paragraph. Davies told the commenting public – which is any stakeholder in the globe that might compete with Telkom in South Africa, that Telkom had applied for facilitator status. They hadn't. I mention the benefit of this facilitator status in my Maverick article.

The advantage to Telkom is massive. About 51% of Telkom's shareholding is made up of investors on the JSE.  It is possible to derive a black ownership scorecard out of those shareholders, but it is onerous, expensive and very rarely delivers anything close to the target under any code (the ICT code sets a target of 30% black ownership). 

Telkom, therefore, walked into a verification with a guaranteed 25 points on the scorecard – all it needs to do is worry about the balance of the elements. These 25 points can decide whether a company is competitive or not.

There were a few more amusing comments he made.

One such denialist is Paul Janisch (Business Maverick, 22/7/2020). For some years, Janisch has run a blog dedicated to demonising any measure aimed at promoting broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE). His stock in trade has involved highly personalised attacks, including developing an infantile nickname for myself: Bolshie Bob. Wednesday's piece was yet another example of his red-baiting anti-transformation rants.

The denial he refers to is a transformation denialist. I would like to respond to this paragraph specifically

1. The blog goes back a lot more than some years – it's coming up for its 14^th anniversary (even predates Davies)
2. I am grateful that he mentioned his blog nickname – although he was mistaken if he thought that I thought enough of him to put that nickname in uppercase, he was consistently lowercase
3. I don't think the nickname is infantile. I think it's puerile.
4. I am impressed that he read my blog. I wondered if he knew about it
5. He refers to me as a denialist because he can't call me racist. I dispute that this blog is denialist. I wrote over 1000 articles about empowerment because I wanted it to become a de facto knowledge base on the subject. I don't believe I am denialist. I would prefer to regard myself as a realist. I objected to his policies because they were devoid of logic and could not result in any transformation- they are simply too expensive to implement. If there is expense then clever solutions are found.
6. He's right about the red-baiting. I have no interest in communists in politics. I disagree with the concept even though I have a very significant communist relative.
7. What Davies failed to understand that it was people like me (and there is one under every rock) who were left to interpret and implement the drivel that he published. He offered little, if any, guidance.

I stand by this. The blog is the best free BEE resource in the world. I will never agree with any government policy that I find impulsive or devoid of objective logic.

WHY NOW?

I would certainly have started targeting Davies in about 2012 on this blog. It seems that the term bolshie bob started in 2018. Many of the posts from 2012 to now would have had some go at him. On top of this I had published a few articles in very respectable publications where I had shown very little (in fact no) support for Davies over the years. All of these are not complimentary of Davies or his department. In realistic terms this is quite a battering. Not a rebuttal nor a word from Davies was ever forthcoming.

This Maverick article struck a nerve and I can only speculate as to why. Obviously Davies would have liked to have left a positive legacy – that's not possible. A friend of mine called me yesterday and correctly observed how Davies' appointment as head of trade and industry shows how politically astute zuma was. As long as Davies believed that he was working within his communist framework then he would do zuma's bidding. I think he was the only minister who was consistent in the same portfolio during the 9 wasted years. History is not going to be kind to zuma and it won't be kind to any of his ministers and it won't look at Davies at being anything else as destructive.

Perhaps Davies' rebuttal is as a result of him being a little concerned about what he signed in those ten years. I do believe that he didn't check what he signed. I come back to the first iteration of his revised codes (then nicknamed Rob's Folly), they were shockingly written. I elaborated on them at the time. They are an embarrassment for someone with a PHD. It suggests that he did not read them.

I suspect he is going back on the last ten years and wondering whether his minions were honest with him about what he signed.