Those aren’t words from my mouth, I would have used more choice words. This came from a person who is a player in SA business. I approached the person to ask their advice about certain skills projects we have going.
This is not a surprise at all. The largest corporates have long paid lip service to the process. Claiming that they are committed to transformation. They “engage” with the government at every level. And to what end?
Corruption, crime, potholes, electricity, infrastructure. Theft, incompetence, duplicity, racism, blame, you name it. We’ve all had enough of this. And the government knows it.
Where does this leave us? I can’t see that BEE is going to be canned in a hurry, but I do see that the desire to comply to the letter of the law is waning. I don’t think we need worry about the BEE Commission. They have probably realised that they are toothless. As for the DTIC I think we need worry – because the incompetence levels there are scary. How’s this for a story
There is a company that dropped a level (multiple levels) because they had lost their ownership. They had completed a YES programme and wanted to go from that skimpy level 8 to a 7. I sent an email to someone whose name was on the DTIC’s website. And I was given the name of a militant Millicent who would hear our case. It was obvious that she had little time for two white people pleading their case. She found fault with the fact that there had been a two year gap between certificates. I informed her (and I know this as a fact) that there is no requirement to renew ever. “Oh yes there is!” thundered Millie. “The Verification manual requires it was well.” Pity Millie didn’t know that the manual is only applicable to VAs.
She then went onto to insist on evidence that the verification agency would have taken into account. Why would you do this? It sounds like a personal agenda. And you know you are powerless because she’s clueless and militant. Where’s the reward for doing YES? It doesn't exist.
It all talks back to the government. They are not to be trusted. This article came out a few weeks ago and I wholly agree with it. The author concludes with
The biggest hurdle, in my view, to making the undermining of BEE more common is not the risk of legal jeopardy, but the sentiment harboured by too many South Africans that they owe the South African government a duty of obedience in conscience. Once this hurdle has been scaled – and it is becoming easier to scale as government’s incompetence and incapacity gets more pronounced by the day – BEE will all but collapse under the weight of noncompliance.
We aren’t there yet but it’s coming. As this awful government starts losing power so will the revolt gain momentum. If we become a coalition government then it’ll move quicker. There’ll be so much infighting that governance is bound to suffer.
Ownershield is geared for this change. It’ll be cost effective and non-invasive. Like the things we’ve been offering over the last few years, we have expanded beyond ownership and intraternships. Budgets are tight and BEE was only invented for the good times. Perhaps that’s the point. We’ve been taken for complete and utter fools for 30 years. If you want compliance that talks to your internal requirements then we can help you. If you want to spend a lot of money then we’ll have to turn you down.
And why do you want to spend huge amounts of money on this ludicrous programme.
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