Paul Janisch

Who'd have thought that we could depend on SERR Synergy. SANAS handed a legal snotklap

SERR seems to have established itself as a disruptive force in the BEE market place.  I have a lot of respect for them.  I'm probably most impressed with their sales people.  SERR is a big business and a real player in the industry. 

One day someone at SERR decided that they didn't like Yuneal's directive about using a financial year for BEE measurement.  SANAS are such an evil force that companies have been forced to use a financial year because they fear that SANAS will take away their license or will force them to withdraw certificates.

SERR then said "Fok dit!." and went to the High Court in Pretoria asking for clarity, citing SANAS and Slaptjips as respondents.  What is most interesting about this is that neither SANAS or Slappie (Patel for the new readers) didn't oppose it.  You can imagine what happend (and so we launch into a new play).

Scene - an office complex in Pretoria

SANAS person (name escapes me) - Oh bugger, those SERRs have gone to the high court to question Yuneal.  I'd better call SlapTjips, sorry  Minister Patel. 

She (I know it's a she) dials the Office of the Minister of Trade and Industry and Competition

Minister's Office - Hello you are through to the minister of summer footwear and hotfood

SANAS person (name escapes me) -Huh!! What the fuck is that?

Minister's Office - Damn sorry.  Are you looking for Minister SlapTjips?

SANAS person (name escapes me) - Yes, he is being called to court to explain Yuneal's behaviour.

Minister's Office - You can't speak to him now, he's not in his office.  I think he's gone to lunch.  I don't see his slip slops under his desk.  He loves wearing them now that he is allowed to.

SANAS person (name escapes me) -Please ask him to call me.  I can't leave a name because I don't know my name

An hour later.  The phone rings.

SANAS person (name escapes me) -Hello it's me who has no name

SlapTjips - Here I am phoning you back, you ruined my lunch and I got hot chip oil on my slops and so now I'll have to get some more

SANAS person (name escapes me) - It's another court case, this one's about Yuneal.

SlapTjips - I've been reading that cheeky white blogger's posts about Yuneal.  When my predecessor left he left me with some vital reading. That blog was one of them, he's a pain in the backside.  Next time I'll ban the sale of guitars.

SANAS person (name escapes me) -I think we can fight this.

SlapTjips - No, don't bother.  The blogger's right.  We won't oppose it. SERR can pick up the costs.  We've got Afriforum and Afrisake to worry about.  I don't want to lose those cases, can you make sure that the state attorney does not brief Dali Mpofu.

They didn't oppose it.  It's a court order Download Signed Court Order 22 March 2022 and it says the following

The directive issued by the South African National Accreditation System, First Respondent ("SANAS") on 6 April 2021 entitled "Clarity on Measuring Period", in the subject line ("the Directive") is declared unlawful and is reviewed and set aside.

It is declared that SANAS has no power in terms of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act No. 53 of 2003 ("the BEE Act") or any other legislative instrument to prescribe the measurement period that must be taken into account when verifying an enterprise's compliance with the BEE Act or the Codes of Good Practice issued under the BEE Act.

It follows that SANAS has NO authority to prescribe or interpret anything. 

I'll have to write to the dtic about this, because SANAS and the dtic have been very quiet.

 

 

SANAS – oh SANAS, where is thoust legitimacy?

Unfortunately my tirade against SANAS brutality has not ended. I'm amused by this but not by the unchecked power that SANAS wields over the economy through their verification agencies. I am going to write to the dtic about this, my concern is that SANAS is amending codes in fact. It doesn't matter that it's not supported by law, that will be resolved by a court case. I've tried that before, had no luck – but if there bodies of people who would like to help me brief attorneys and get counsel and pay me for the privilege of managing this then I'm in.

I need to start with SANAS. I have not found the authority that provided them with right to manage BEE certification. This predated the bolsh (I wonder how he's doing now that mother Russia is marauding a former Soviet but now sovereign state, my money's on that he wishes that communism will return to Russia and they will be great again, as if they ever really were, he'll be disappointed). I can't blame our resident commie for creating this mess. I don't think he did much to prevent It from happening, neither has Slaptjips. Be that as it may they are now responsible for issuing licences to determine blackness disguised as transformation.

What is SANAS

SANAS is a statutory organisation created by the Accreditation for Conformity Assessment, Calibration and Good Laboratory Practice Act, 2006. Already we are seeing that they are well placed to handle BEE. The Act's preamble says

To provide for an internationally recognised and effective accreditation and monitoring system for the Republic by establishing SANAS as a juristic person; to recognise SANAS as the only accreditation body in the Republic for the accreditation of conformity assessment and calibration and monitoring of good laboratory practice; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

This is quite limiting. In the first place SANAS does not have the legislative support to do BEE stuff. Perhaps there is something here

In the interests of balancing verification practices and ensuring consistent technical competence, the BEE Verification Agencies are required to undergo accreditation. the dti collaborates with the South African National Accreditation System (SANAS) in this regard, to harmonise accreditation and verification practices, thereby enhancing South Africa's economic performance and transformation.

Does SANAS appear in gazetted BEE codes?

It appears not. It doesn't even appear in the BEE Act. There's no mention of it in the gazetted verification manual (2008). I checked the 2019 amendments and there's no reference there. In fairness I have not checked other BEE codes, other than the FSC and there's no mention there. This does make sense, why would you want to allow SANAS to fuck it all up when you can ask some other organisation to do it as well (and I was wrong about IRBA – I miss them terribly).

What is SANAS job then?

Perhaps this is where it sort of gets its BEE responsibilities. Section 5(1) of the Act must speak

5. (1) The objects of SANAS are to-

(a) accredit or monitor for GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) compliance purposes, organisations falling with its scope of activity;

(b) promote accreditation as a means of facilitating international trade and enhancing the Republic's economic performance and transformation;

(c) promote the competence and equivalence of accredited bodies; and

(d) promote the competence and equivalence of GLP compliant facilities.

This is iffy. Accreditation is defined in the Act, it doesn't quite refer to accreditation but

"accreditation body" means a body responsible for third party attestation related to conformity assessment and calibration facilities conveying formal demonstration of their competence to carry out tasks against specified criteria, including criteria in International Guides and Standards;

This definition is interesting because it refers to carry out tasks against specified criteria. This is a significant word because it must mean that specified criteria appear elsewhere, not criteria that SANAS whips out on a whim. Not being the lawyer I should have been, I would suggest that this definition precludes SANAS from opining on established criteria.

What is R47-03?

This is the standard that SANAS uses to accredit VAs. What needs to be noted is that it is a SANAS document with Yuneal's name on it – there's another Google search for you Yuneal. It's not a gazette. At best it's a contractual document between SANAS and the VAs. It's a process document which is what it's supposed to be.

NOW THEN – WHERE DOES SANAS GET THE AUTHORITY TO ISSUE NOTICES ABOUT INTERPRETATION OF THE VARIOUS CODES?

I can't find it. And this where I need help. I don't think it exists and as I wrote before, their interpretations are amendments in fact. Even the dtic can't amend a code without following due process. It's worthwhile noting that the last two Yuneal decrees, or at least the last two that I know about, were issued by SANAS. He maintains in the one that he did it in conjunction with the dtic. Yet they are silent.

I have enough now. I'm not finished with SANAS yet but I now have enough background to write to the BEE department. Oh yes dear readers, not only will I keep you abreast of what happens I will post the letter on this blog just after I send it.

My fok Slaptjips - ek will fokken plakkies koop (and not on the black market)

Once upon a time we had bolshie bob who was the most destructive minister in zuma's cabinet.  He was a rotten commie who was determined to make us as strong as Mother Russia - even though we've never really been like that.  I can't write enough  about that useless idiot.  Or maybe I can - we have a new moron on the block, Ebie "Slaptjips" Patel.  He's living up to his predecessor's name.  He is cut from the same cloth - but only the cloth of clothing that he has deemed acceptable.

It's not like me to post DA ramblings on this blog - they are in my opinion the best of a really bad bunch.  They will benefit from this lockdown lunacy whilst the others will suffer.  Who the hell is going to vote for the anc when they were the ones who told you you couldn't work, couldn't buy cigarettes and stole your food parcels which were designed to feed you.  The DA will simply get more votes than the others because more people won't vote at all.  According to the DA, Slaptjips (uppercase for now because he's so useless I have to give him something) is now the minister of fashion

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is stunned by the bizarre and extraordinary clothing list that has been gazetted by Trade, Industry and Competition Minister, Ebrahim Patel which seems to have been plucked from Alice in Wonderland.

These new clothing regulations are frankly mad and seem more at place during the 1980’s under the Soviet Union than they do in a democracy like South Africa.

There is simply no justification for the Minister to be determining what clothes people can buy and worse, how they should wear them.

According to the regulations:

• You can buy shirts so long as they are promoted “to be worn under jacket coats and/or knitwear” which is ridiculous and insulting to South Africans’ intelligence;

• You may only buy crop bottom pants so long as they worn with boots and leggings which is just ridiculous;

• And finally, you can only buy “closed toe” shoes which is just laughable.

I'm almost longing for malossie to come back.  He had some fashion sense

More seriously - you have to read Bruce Whitfield's article about Slaptjips and has banning of e-commerce because it's unfair on bricks and mortar retailers

Trade & industry minister Ebrahim Patel has sparked understandable fury since famously disallowing “unfettered e-commerce”, arguing that it risked the spread of Covid-19 and would be unfair to those in physical retail that aren’t allowed to trade.

Patel doesn’t want the hassle of dealing with the many complaints he would receive from spaza owners and physical store owners who would demand the same rights. So instead, he imposed a wholesale ban.

And that is unfair. It’s unfair on you and me, now forced to go to increasingly busy shops to buy things that could easily be delivered safely to our homes. It’s unfair to the delivery drivers who could be gainfully employed. It’s unfair to the dispatchers, order takers, manufacturers and suppliers of raw materials who might get some income.

Bruce is wrong on one count, ou Slappie isn't the minister of trade and industry - he's the minister of trade and industry and competition.  Like bolshie before him he knows nothing about this and knows less about competition.

Slaptjips is something else and will probably our something else for a long time to come - because Cyril ain't got none

We need a dti holiday and accredited Verification Agencies (March 2020)

Before I go into the number of VAs (79 of them) there is something else that needs to be discussed. And it's the dti and their BEE codes.

The economy is now comfortably in a recession, productivity is decreasing substantially because of the isolation. Small businesses (which are the backbone of the economy – that's why the dti wants to control them) are suffering because of the lack of economic activity. And we have the most ridiculous BEE targets that need to be achieved this year. It's a known fact that BEE stopped being about transformation years ago. It's a whipping tool that suddenly became a useful thing to sort out social ills like fees must fall. Under that useless commie idiot bolshie bob (rob davies) the BEE codes would have become a saviour for the whole nation – he was not above upping the targets to sort out tax problems.

Ebie's different though. He seems to be a lot more balanced than bolshie was. One thing for sure, he doesn't speak as much. He garnered a lot of praise for the Pepsi deal, he's known to scupper deals because he's a bloody unionist. This time not,

One competition lawyer told Moneyweb that given the grim state of the local economy and the government's high-profile campaign to encourage foreign investment, Patel can have had little room to push for onerous public interest commitments. "It can't have been a good time to fight for workers getting some control," said the lawyer.

This does show that Ebie understands that we need to be rational here. So Ebie, here what I say to you. Give us a BEE holiday for the rest of the year where every BEE scorecard that is issued where the measurement period starts in March 2020 has relaxed targets. Don't give up procurement, reduce the skills, enterprise and supplier development targets. It'll show that you see that business need to survive this pandemic – they don't need financial targets that are going to close them down. And whilst you are at it tell Samson to climb off his mining hobby horse and give us reliable green power – and then he can tell the bbc, zungu and adil to shut up as well.

Now onto verification agencies.

What is interesting is that the list that I have put on this blog is read often. Why not update it.  Not much has happened since that last post - only 79 now.

Here's a chart showing where you can find them

Interestingly the two "other" ones are in Limpopo and the North West. You can find them here – you need to dig deep into the website to find the list. My calculations are here.

bolshie bob's bye bye surprise - good riddance to that destructive commie

Oh to leave a legacy.  This wasn't a priority for zuma and it's certainly not a priority for bolshie bob who demonstrated a callous disregard for the well being of the economy.  Before he vacated his office he left us with four more gazettes.  This is no longer his problem, it's now Ebie's issue.  As to where the money is going to come from to fund these far out amendments, only bolshie knows; and history has shown the bolshie knew very little indeed.

Our erstwhile friend signed these nasty documents in early April and then wrote that these were "for implementation within 6 Months from date of Gazette". The date of the gazettte is 31 May 2019.   I suppose I am supposed to tell you what this six months means.  I have no idea what it means. Is there a further notice the Ebie is going to send out to tell us when this is going to apply?  Knowing SANAS we're all in for a surprise, they'll probably tell us that we should have known about it on the 9th of April when that erstwhile dingbat signed it. This smacks of last minute bitterness.

Also - these are only applicable to the dti's codes.  

Replace (the applicable code) within Gazette 36928 with the following Amend(ment)

Ebie now needs to amend all the other codes.  This then begs the question of fairness.  Mein Gott Ebie - you've got your work cut out for you.

Here are the four amendments.  I haven't read them properly, they are inevitably much worse than my initial reading suggests.  The blurbs below are brief summaries.

Download 42496gen306 flow through removed

We knew the modified flow through would be removed when it came to a level 2 as an EME and QSE.  It's gone now

Download 42496gen303 amended definitions

He's tightened up a number of definitions.  However he's very clear the ED or SD beneficiaries are EMEs and QSEs.  Something he doesn't stick to in the ED/SD code below

Download 42496gen305 skills and bursaries

Rob Davies lives in cloud fucking deluded land (yes I put his name in uppercase -  I want someone to Google this and know who fucking bolshie bob is).  For 4 points companies now have been given the grand privilege of donating 2.5% of payroll to students at higher education institutions.  Somewhere or somehow bolshie bob and his band of desperate warriors seem to think that this is a reasonable amendment to the code.  That the economy is shrinking and more people are losing their jobs is not our commie hero's issue.  He must have believed that there is enough money for these donations (according to the EAP).  No company I know has got enough money for these four points.  I wrote about this in 2014, by my calculations Standard Bank would be in for about R400m for those 4 points (not that they are subject to that code).  I still wonder how many companies actually agreed to this requirement.  This alone needs to be queried.

He's also made one section for learnerships, apprenticeships and internships, it's now up to 6 points for 5% of staff.

Download 42496gen304 - ED proc et al

Probably the most controversial of them all.  He's upped the points for black owned purchases and pushed the target to 50%.  You can use generic (large) entities as ED/SD beneficiaries subject to them being ED/SD beneficiaries as EMEs or QSEs.  And a supplier development beneficiary is on the supply chain list and the ED one isn't.  He could have simplified the EME and QSE purchases into one section, as he proposed in the draft, but he didn't.

Happy reading folks.  I suppose this bodes well for Ebie - because it is fucking hard to destroy an economy with the same level of prowess as his predecessor.

Patell me things will be different

Unlikely. I’m expecting more of the same, although some people expect worse.

It was fun going for bolshie bob because he was so useless. I’ll start with Ebie in the uppercase, but I’m not going to give him a fraction of a chance that I gave bolshie.

Stay tuned, this blog isn’t going anywhere for a while

 

Confirming the PPPFA's applicability and the DTI workshop

This notice was issued by Treasury this afternoon regarding the applicability of the PPPFA - it was issued in June but made the front page of www.gov.za today.  Reinforces my earlier post about Eskom and PPPFA.

NOTICE IN TERMS OF SECTION 1 (iii)(f) OF THE PREFERENTIAL PROCUMENT POLICY FRAMEWORK ACT, 2000 (ACT NO. 5 OF 2000) 

I,  Pravin  J.  Gordhan,  Minister  of  Finance,  acting  in  terms  of  section  1 (iii)(f)  of the Preferential  Procurement  Policy  Framework  Act,  2000  (Act  No.  5  of  2000),  hereby give notice that the Preferential  Procurement Policy Framework Act,  2000  (Act  No.  5 of 2000)  and its Regulations shall  apply to all  public  entities listed  in  Schedules 2  and 3  of  the  Public  Finance Management Act,  1999  (Act  No.  1 of  1999)  with  effect from 07 December 2011 . Signed  at Pretoria on this 6th day of June 2011 .

This notice bolsters the Joint statement by the Ministers of Economic Development, Finance and Trade and Industry on designated sectors for local procurement (which I think is great - very much in favour of this.

DTI's workshop today

By the way a little birdy is keeping a running commentary on the developments at this workshop.   It's not looking good - this is what I know so far (tweets have been edited)

• We are going to be measuring degrees of blackness
• In summary take everything jungle jim has said and turn it into your worst nightmare 

Oy vey - can't say I didn't expect as much.  There'll be many submissions from me to the DTI.

Ebrahim and BEE (via The new growth path: the framework)

Capping pay and bonuses for senior managers and executives earning more than R550 000 a year, restraining wage settlements for workers earning between R3 000 and R20 000 a month, a major rethink of black economic empowerment (BEE) and a “red-tape elimination campaign”.

As summed up by Ann Crotty in today's Business Report.  Engineering News blared - "Patel’s growth plan calls for ‘major’ BEE overhaul" .  

This is what Ebrahim had to say about BEE, you can download the whole document here (fast-forward to page 21)

Government has adopted the position that black economic empowerment (BEE) should seek to empower all historically disadvantaged people rather than only a small group of black investors. To this end, it adopted the Broad-Based BEE Act, which calls for expanded opportunities for workers and smaller enterprise as well as more representative ownership and management. 
Current BEE provisions have, however, in many instances failed to ensure a broad-based approach, instead imposing significant costs on the economy without supporting employment creation or growth. The present BEE model remains excessively focused on transactions that involve existing assets and benefit a relatively small number of individuals. The New Growth Path requires a much stronger focus on the broad-based elements of the BEE regulations – ownership by communities and workers, increased skills development and career pathing for all working people, and support for small enterprise and co-ops – as well as a new emphasis on procurement from local producers in order to support employment creation. 
The following shortcomings have emerged in the implementation of BEE.

1. First, ownership and senior management issues receive disproportionate emphasis.  The unintended consequences of this trend include “fronting”, speculation and tender abuse.
2. Second, the regulations do not adequately incentivise employment creation, support for small enterprises and local procurement. The preferential procurement regulations aggravate this situation by privileging ownership over local production.  (I think the issue is a little deeper than this Ebrahim, we have ridiculous labour laws and unions getting in the way here.)
3. Finally, the broad-based BEE regulations penalise public entities as suppliers. The democratic state owns public entities on behalf of our people yet the regulations do not count them as “black empowered”. (Don't know what Ebrahim is on about here, these entities are owned by the people and should be ignored.  Mind you, Ebrahim is a commie so it makes sense that he would push for more state entities.)

A major re-think is needed of the BEE framework and policy to achieve South Africa’s developmental and growth goals. The dti and EDD will work with the relevant government departments and the BBBEE Advisory Council to ensure: 

• A substantial revision of the BBBEE Codes to do more to incentivise employment creation; investment in new productive capacity by black entrepreneurs, including small businesses and co-ops (using among others stronger local procurement); skills development and employment equity; collective and other forms of broad-based ownership; and sector strategies to create jobs.  
• Consistent implementation of broad-based (instead of narrow) BEE in all sectors, with a systematic assessment of the effects on the cost of capital and investment.
  

This is a dramatic (I mean DRAMATIC) noise coming from a minister.  Something that Rob should be talking about - not fronting.  There have been utterings from the DTI and other black commentators that this is where we need to be heading.  By focusing on the lower elements of the scorecard you reduce the possibility of fronting and offer a much better measure of success, like creating 5million jobs by 2020.

For a critical view of the New Growth Path you would do well to follow the links at the bottom of this report.