Except this time the risks are potentially a lot higher.
Parks Tau is no better than bolshie bob or slaptjips, which means parks needs a nickname, I'll use parksandrecreation in the interim. He's approved the Legal Sector Code in spite of the fact that the largest legal firms do not agree with it.
Here's a backstory for the reader.
There was a rumour going around that the dti was going to gazette the legal code before the elections. John Jeffery (I forget what his position was but he's a waste of space anyway) asked the big four legal firms whether this would invite litigation. The answer was "most likely". But parks being an old anc deployee (so good his parents named him in the plural - I certainly hope they weren't thinking about the average park in South Africa when they named him), went ahead and gazetted it. He's so committed to this process that he hasn't bothered to post it on the dtic's website.
It just smacks of the rod davies playbook. I'll explain.
davies (bolshie bob to his enemies) was (I really don't know what he's up to now and I don't care) a zealot. He was steeped in communist ideology and when you mix this with anc incompetence and fuck-you-ness you have an amazing cocktail of uselessness. He was not interested in what the public thought of his BEE codes. He paid just enough attention to the comments he received to demonstrate that he might have read them. Have you noticed that his attempt to contain the fees must fall movement by adding bursaries into the skills development mix has failed. Failed dismally because no one wants to support a politicised student and you get nothing from SARS for the contribution. He was so hellbent on pushing this through that he attempted to scuttle the YES project by insisting that you get all the bursary points before you qualify for YES. That's the level of deludedness we had to deal with. The old anc.
And parksandrecreation is part of the old system. He's trying to bamboozle us by saying
“This administration has committed itself to accelerating transformation, guided by the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa which emphasises the need to correct the injustices of the past. This is captured in the statement of intent of the Government of National Unity (GNU),” Tau said.
This is safe because the DA is too busy fighting Cyril's arbitrariness to worry about arbitrary lawmaking. In fact they'll leave BEE alone because they have other plans. I would do the same. The problem is that the institution running BEE is useless, in spite of a DA deputy minister.
I was speaking to a friend who knows about the big firms and he says they want to know why they should litigate as opposed to just accepting it. They don't want to be seen as the whites who are scuppering transformation, however pushing through legislation that is unjust, unfair and absolutely unconstitutional (understand that no BEE code has been tested for constitutionality yet) in the name of transformation doesn't give you a licence to legislate. Here are my reasons why the big four (and Sakeliga) need to take it on review.
- If John Jeffery (whatever his name actually is) knew that it had problems that would raise the ire of the legal fraternity (not all of it) then those problems must go beyond the transformation aspect. Those issues need to cleared in court
- I suspect that there are certain procedural processes that have not been followed. This must be interrogated. I'm absolutely sure that bolshie never followed due process when it came to the codes
- How are these codes going to accelerate transformation? BEE has been an abysmal failure because it was never thought through properly. It was then left to people like me to figure out every single shortcut and work around. I can't find the code - it's just not anywhere where it should be. I think that there is a crony aspect here where certain extremely incompetent advocates are going to benefit more than anyone else.
- parksandrecreation is laying down a challenge to the likes of BUSA and BLSA. Both of these organisations will save this country in the long term. He wants to see what they are going to do. If they blink here then he'll push his luck further
- It's time that entities other than SAKELIGA stand up. We've seen some very successful litigation against the BEE Commission - they've lost every case, and SANAS. There is an appetite for decent legislation and fair processes. Let this one go and they'll continue. This is the proverbial shot across the GNU's bow. It's fair and reasonable
- How will South African jurisprudence benefit from this litigation? Probably massively. I've written before about how the government ignore comments. If this process is not questioned and ventilated then they'll continue doing what they do. We will be worse off if they don't
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