Paul Janisch

These go to 11

If you ask James to quote the title of this post, he'll do it in a passable Nigel Tufnel accent. In fact his general ability to do accents is rather good, cue – g'day mate.

It's been a year for all of us. In spite of the difficulties he has remained the most amazing young man. He may be 11 but he still has the enthusiasm of a little boy. I've mentioned this before but he is fiercely passionate about stuff that he's deeply passionate about. At the moment it's history, specifically the second world war. This is great because I'm interested in that stuff, in fact I can see that we will be spending a lot of time at the War Museum this December.

This is pretty much 2022 done for James, it was the first normal year he'd had in three years. School had gone back to normal, he was able to freely mingle with his friends and he was forced to play sport. Hmmm not the best friends are James and sport. His school insists you play all sports, and there were glimpses of enjoyment, but not much. If he is to choose a sport then it will be swimming. And he's started water polo lessons. That's good news.

Our domestic situation has changed and I'm fortunate enough to see my kids in the day. I don't see them at night and haven't found a place where each kid has their own room. But there have been enthusiastic sleepovers in the lodgings. Him on a camp bed at the foot of my bed, but not for long. Still there's that enthusiasm, he does see a lot positivity in what's going around him. I draw a lot of inspiration from this.

For some reason I am suffering from chronic writer's block at the moment. I'll end it here. JimJam you are my hero. Your inner strength is contagious. You are still a very popular kid who makes friend very easily. And also you slot in so naturally with friends that you haven't seen for years. You are also a bright kid with an incredible thirst for knowledge. I love you very much and I know your brother does too even though he hides it so well.

End of BEE requirements for state procurement – maybe not so much

Enochonwood got round to gazetting the amended PPPFA regulations after the constitutional court told him that the last ones were shit. I would caution the reader to steer clear of (what's another word for sensational, I've used that word too often) headlines like

Big changes for BEE laws in South Africa

Because these headlines aren't quite on the money. The difference between the former regulations and these regulations is that preference points aren't awarded for BEE levels like they were in the past. Now they are awarded for

"specific goals" means specific goals as contemplated in section 2(1)(d) of the Act which may include contracting with persons, or categories of persons, historically disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the basis of race, gender and disability including the implementation of programmes of the Reconstruction and Development Programme as published in Government Gazette No. 16085 dated 23 November 1994;

The term "specific goals" here is paraphrased from section 2(1)(d) of the PPPFA. I underlined the word MAY because there could be other criteria. However those criteria are not mentioned in the regulations. What we do know is that the PPPFA states in 2(1)(e)

any specific goal for which a point maybe awarded, must be clearly specified in the invitation to submit a tender

This is where I get scared. In the last regulations you knew that if you were a level 1 then you'd get 10 or 20 points. Room for gerrymandering was somewhat limited. We now have an element of uncertainty. In fact I will posit that the scope for corruption might go up substantially because preference points can be directly allocated to a specific bidder. Think about it – a bid could say preference points will be allocated to a certain family who were removed from Bryanston and taken to the Middelburg magistrate's court (I should coco). It's not impossible that this could happen – not with our quality of daft looters.

Don't celebrate too early. Empowerment criteria are still a big part of the PPPFA. They are just a little better hidden, unlike the sign below.

Discheskombobulated

This does need to be discussed. Wait it's not a discussion, it's a monologue.

There are two empowerment stories that have made the headlines. The first is Dischem. I don't' want to go too deeply into this story. When I first saw the Whatsapp I thought it was fake news. In fact my mind suggested to me that this was some brand of anti-Semitism. I have met Ivan Saltzman a few times. He's an interesting guy, definitely sharper than most people. You wouldn't think it when you met him, but I think that's his style. So it turns out that this story was true. Dischem has too many white managers (90%of the manager are purportedly white males). Ivan says tohis staff, we could be hit with a fine of 10% of our turnover so no more wittes, OK?

This didn't make sense for two reasons. Firstly that employment equity requirement is in draft form and is unlikely to make it beyond promulgation because it will be fought all the way. And that's right, this government is incompetent and useless and they deserve to have their race-based quotas destroyed by the courts. Secondly, Dischem would probably destroy the department of labour in court. We are talking about sheerincompetence here, doesn't take a great lawyer to win this one – especially if the department hires the advocate for the stars.

I thought there must be some other reason. Was it because they needed to renew a licence? Are they gunning fo a large tender? The last official word is that Ivan was scared of the fine and he withdrew the notice, he was facing a bit of a commercial boycott and general press disgust – although he did find an unlikely ally in the black business council.

Then this weekend there was a sensational heading in the Sunday Times (as usual it's behind a paywall so you can't read it) To save Eskom, empowerment must go

That's not really the sentiment of the Eskom chair – Mteto Nyati. What he said was

1. Change the procurement rules to get rid of middlemen that mark things up by multiples of millions. He specifically spoke about foreign purchases. You see the so-called localisation rules create BEE "entrepreneurs" (read rent-seeking enablers) who act as agents and get paid a fortune. Eskom can't afford this. Id est "Procurement rules are not agile as they should be, including rules which say you cannot use suppliers that are not local. When the supplier of equipment is international you have to use a middleman to satisfy the localisation rule. There's no place for those kinds of practices now. We need to remove costs from the equation." He then continues "Internal corruption is largely at the back of empowerment processes that promote local small business (what he doesn't say is – businesses who cannot actually deliver on what they are selling, we are not talking about semi-skilled stuff, this is high end stuff)
2. "The other area where we can help is around skills, and rigid rules around who to employ in terms of equity targets. Right now we need to be focussing on the best person for the job… regardless of how they look."

That's it. Naturally the bbc, who are Dischem's best friends have now become Eskom's new enemy.

The Black Business Council (BBC) has slammed Eskom board member and former MTN CEO Mteto Nyati for his statement that South Africa's empowerment rules hamper the power utility's performance. The BBC believes Nyati's words are a deliberate diversion from improving its Energy Availability Factor to 75% and providing South Africans with a reliable electricity supply. "The Black Business Council strongly condemns the irresponsible and reckless utterances purported to be those of Mr Mteto Nyati regarding transformation and localisation," it said in a statement. "The purported views deliberately omit to mention corruption that was committed by white-owned companies at Eskom, as highlighted by the Zondo Commission." It added that Nyati's views project that blacks are being done a favour in their own country, where they are a majority.

There you have it, multinational companies that do not have a complexion are now white as well as the guptas and salim essa.

I don't know what else to say. I have no time for the black business council, and they probably have less time for me.

In short, Eskom is not reneging on its broader empowerment commitments. If you provide goods or services that are not critical to their operations you're still going to need ownership. If you are a manager that is a generalist then EE rules will apply. This is bad headlining and sensational bbc-ing.