Speaking to the Black Business Council, which has signaled strong support for Zuma, South Africa’s president said that the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act will be changed “to continue the quest for a transformed economy”. More people must be brought into the net to benefit from government contracts, he said.
We've heard this before. Remember how seriously Dud took the doos's obiter remark about set-asides in his 2015 state of the nation (of no fixed) address? I think this is another platitude from the mouth of a moron who no-one likes nor respects (other than Hlaudi of course). As Jackie Cameron wrote
The president’s words will be music to the ears of the tenderpreneur brigade, though not so sweet to the small army of entrepreneurs who aren’t black but play a meaningful role in job creation and economic growth and are already doing their bit for BEE. An amended public procurement bill is set to be released for discussion next month and tabled in Parliament early next year.
I can't see this happening. Zuma lacks the political clout to do it. Perhaps he is prodding Treasury to see what their reaction will be. Perhaps he thinks that the useless and tailcoat-riding BBC will start lobbying to get rid of Pravin because he's not going to agree to this. Thinking about it, this is probably what Zuma is doing. The strategy now is to create huge dissatisfaction with Pravin, specifically amongst those who are not competent enough to provide services to the private sector and have settled for government work that worries neither about quality nor price.
Now he's attempting to placate the completely irrelevant jungle jim, who is threatening to go to court (yeah right) to get the PPPFA scrapped. He's saying the regulations that Treasury published earlier this year are going to be promulgated at the end of this year as an interim measure, and then they are going to change the Act (not repeal it jungle). Here are the words of the thickest human being next to Hlaudi.
In the past five years as part of advancing BBBEE procurement, government amended the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act or the PPPFA Regulations to provide for BEE preference points. We thought this would work and would make an impact. However, you pointed out that it does not work. We are now aware of the shortcomings. We agree that the preference points system prescribed in the PPPFA is rigid and is not responsive to government objectives.
Due to the shortcomings, the preferential procurement regulations have failed to substantially re-shape the skewed ownership and control of the South African economy. It is the intention of government to ultimately repeal the PPPFA and its associated regulations and introduce a more flexible preferential procurement framework that is responsive to government objectives.
In this regard, the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act will be repealed by the Public Procurement Act. The Public Procurement Bill is now going through the different government stakeholder engagement processes before it is tabled in Parliament. This is targeted for early 2017. I trust that the BBC has made its inputs to the National Treasury.
In the interim, government is to produce regulations that will improve the PPPFA to make them more responsive to the economic transformation imperatives.
One of the main changes contained in the proposed new Preferential Procurement Regulations is the introduction of a compulsory sub-contracting clause.
It will be compulsory to sub-contract a minimum of 30% of the value of the contract for all contracts above 30 million rand, to small and emerging enterprises owned by the women, youth, black people or persons with disability. The intention is to finalise the Preferential Procurement Regulations for approval during October 2016, and for these to be promulgated by 1 November 2016.
Will this actually materialise? Zuma is a lame duck, it won't happen.
[E]mployment opportunities are accessible to people only where they live. The objective of the EE Act is not to induce racial migrations to accommodate the statistics. Its objective is accessibility of employment opportunities and it achieves that objective only if it takes account where applicants for the posts are located. Statistics that serve as a tool for that purpose will be statistics that reflect the reality of the population, and the reality is that the races are not distributed uniformly throughout the country, which is not reflected in the Department’s Plan.
The Employment Equity Act has since been changed and it no longer requires an employer to take into account regional demographics when devising EEP targets – it merely allows it to do so if it wishes. It may be that this amendment is unconstitutional because it effectively encourages migration of people far away from their families and communities, thus containing echoes of the apartheid migrant labour system. But a future judgment will have to determine whether this is so.
So sayeth Pierre de Vos in another of his insightful posts. As those who are scholars of Rob's Folly also known as Bolshie Bob's Botched Borscht will know that our Stalinist deludinist has found it fit to include the economically active population (EAP) as a target for his racially representative nation. As we have come to expect from the brains trust at the iDioTIc, the document is big on ideology and short on the most basic clue as to how to implement it.
The ConCourt has come to our aid when it comes to regional and national EAP. You can use both. The ConCourt referred specifically to an EE plan. But I feel confident that we can extrapolate this conclusion into the meat of any BEE scorecard scenario. But you have to read this plan into the IMF's David Lipton's recent speech on the state of the South African economy.
But there is something else going on that has developed with the evolution of the economy. This involves issues that I know are very familiar to you: infrastructure bottlenecks; skills mismatches in the work force; regulations that stifle competition and entrepreneurship and keep that one-third of the labor force unemployed or too discouraged to seek work.
The end result is that a huge part of the labor force is left on the outside looking in, undereducated and with no opportunities for advancement. I’m told, for example, that there are township youth who not only cannot find work, but who grow up without knowing anyone in their circle of family and friends with a job either!
The formal economy is not absorbing them, nor are they able to strike out on their own. There is a crucial structural issue at play here: those included and successful in the advanced economy — large businesses, banks and unionized workers — maintain entry barriers against their potential competitors — small and medium-sized enterprises and the unemployed.
These paragraphs actually refer to the 79% of the EAP that the Prison's Department wants in its employ. Lipton is telling us that the government has in effect let these people down, both through their historical neglect and their ongoing burdensome policies. And once they have washed their hands of these people by pushing them out the school system the private sector is expected to absorb them and make up their educational shortfall by blowing humongous amounts of cash on skilling them, 6% of payroll to be precise.
We are being taken for fools, policies created by buffoons who are not required to understand how an economy or a spaza shop runs. This doesn't specifically mean that we can point fingers at Zoomer and his band of incompetents. We are part of the solution but government needs to make the first move - and that move should be axing Zoomer and his cabinet without a pension.
It was my father who told me that if you aren't going to say anything nice about anyone or anything then don't bother – but then he had no idea that the ANC government (which he never had any issue with) were going to be so useless. And my god how useless they have turned out to be. If you are in the only competent department in this bloated government (public sector) and you have been told by lobby groups like the BBC, BMF, Black Lepers' Association etc that you WILL make a plan to change the PPPFA to suit them, eventually you will capitulate. And this is exactly what Treasury has done with their new draft PPPFA regulations.
We need to travel back in time here. The black business council has long been pushing for dramatic changes to the PPPFA – the current (not draft) regulations really throw a spanner in the works for state capture (legitimate state capture – not the illegitimate stuff which makes up the majority of state procurement). Our brazenly Hlaudi-like jungle jim had even gone so far as to demand (always demands for jungle because he lacks the credibility everywhere for anyone to constructively engage with him) that the PPPFA be scrapped. Perhaps the BBC was emboldened by Zuma's statement in the fated 2015 state of the nation farce where set asides would be created for black businesses, perhaps they were inspired by Dud Miyeni-millions-to-be-had's set asides at the national disaster of the skies. Perhaps they forgot to pay attention to the fact that Treasury told Dud to stop behaving in this arbitrary way. Maybe they saw that if you put pressure on Treasury and ran to Daddy (23 odd children that we know about) you'd get the finance minister fired. Or maybe the Treasury just wanted to get this irritating mosquito out of their offices. Whatever the rationale – Treasury has published a half decent document (no sign of Bolshie Bob's work to be seen in it, which automatically makes it better).
A few observations
It's open to interpretation and changes. They've used general descriptions in many cases, things like referring to any EME/QSE as defined in a code of good practice issued under section 9(1) of the Act
The old HDSA definition in the first regulations is back – they don't refer to people who couldn't vote before 1994 but have included all women and disabled people in the designated group category
Functionality is now part of the evaluation criteria. In the past the PPPFA kicked in only once the functionality test had been conducted.
The terms "rural areas" and "township" are also included within the definitions
The 80/20 principle is now extended to contracts less than R100million (this is just for the BBC – they are going to make a clean sweep here)
Set-asides are included but not expressly – they are suggested. For example, paragraph 10 (1) says that pre-qualifying criteria MAY include things like (inter alia) a stipulated minimum BEE level.
If the contract is more than R30million then 30% MUST be subcontracted to a prescribed class of subcontractor.
Now what I really think
R100million as an 80/20 threshold.
I don't know – this is up 100% from the current regulations, which have set the threshold at R1million. This is a large amount of money. This figure is there to appease the lobby groups who will take firm advantage of this (I would too). What Pravin is telling us is that he is willing to pay up to R25million more on a contract.
BUT – Treasury is not as dumb as the ANC. There are implications here
Paragraph 6.4 of Statement 000 in the Revised Codes (36928 – if my brackets irritate you, you aren't alone) says that start-up enterprises must produce a QSE scorecard for contracts between R10m and R50m and a generic one for larger amounts for any contract contemplated under section 10 of the BEE Act. This effectively messes with compliance simplicity for contracts over R50m for start-ups.
Any contract over R30m must sub-contract. This might not be stipulated in the tender document, but the tender has to make it clear who they are subcontracting to (white owned EMEs and QSEs may also be subcontracted).
There is a functionality requirement which COULD provide a filtering mechanism for start-up chancers.
And the issues
Contracts less than R50m are open to abuse from start-up black-owned companies. No this is not racist – it's just that black-owned companies of between 51% and 100% ownership don't need to comply with elements, they just need an affidavit. State capture in R50million chunks – the Guptas must be laughing in the Dubai heat. Don't laugh too much my little pilferers – you could lose hydration in that heat and you won't be able to stand trial here with Zoomer.
The functionality criteria are not obligatory. A corrupt supply chain manager may just exclude this because they have already identified the winners in the tender
The inclusion of examples in the document
Paragraph 10 of the draft regulations list a few types of examples that will inevitably become the norm. The paragraph below is edited.
10(1) If an organ of state intends to apply pre-qualifying criteria in the evaluation of a tender, the criteria stated in the tender documents may include, but are not limited to
The tenderer having a stipulated minimum B-BBEE status level of contributor
The tenderer to sub-contract at a minimum of 30% of the value of the contract to one or more
EMEs or QSEs owned by black women
Black youth-owned EMEs or QSEs
Black owned EMEs or QSES
Etc
I would be surprised if the criteria that may be used are ever extended beyond these examples. This could render the definitions I discussed above as superfluous.
Set-asides
One morning an incompetent minister was on the radio telling us how her equally incompetent department were going to use set-asides. I found myself agreeing with her. If the state procurement machine (as per the BBC's allegation) is still not benefiting black business then fuck it, just use set-asides. It's probably time to do it. Treasury has not traditionally been in favour of set-asides, for good reason – they are patently unconstitutional. Section 217 of the constitution requires a procurement that is fair, competitive, cost-effective, transparent and equitable. Set-asides preclude a class of people (juristic and natural) from bidding for certain contracts. I think Treasury has been clever by not expressly stating that black-owned businesses may only bid but they are effectively precluding competitive bids from other suppliers by using the example above.
For example – let's say a bid for a contract less than R30m states that you have to be a level 2 or higher. The message here is that only black-owned QSEs with a shareholding of 51% or higher may bid. The supply chain manager will argue that any company can get to a level two by implementing the QSE scorecard at great expense and get to 95 points on the QSE scorecard. But then again, only those companies with 25% black ownership can do this. There are issues here – bill of rights issues, competitive issues, cost effectiveness issues. And most importantly litigation issues.
Points advantage to black-owned EMEs and QSEs
A perennial factor. A 100% black-owned EME will have an 8 point advantage over their white-owned competitors. Is this extreme advantage reasonable and fair? As a white speaking non-Jedi I would say no. Understand that for my QSE business to vaguely compete I have to conduct a wide variety of extraneous activities that my black competitors do not need to.
By the time you get to the 90/10 it all pretty much normalises. Alarm bells must be rung if a company that produces a QSE BEE certificate bids for a R100.1million contract.
AND IN CONCLUSION MY DEAR KLEINBOOI
This is a good document. As I was writing this blog post I realised that my misgivings had been partially addressed within the draft. However experience has shown us that the average supply chain manager is not clued up about the legal complexities of state procurement and so abuse can be expected. Functionality levels can be set in such a way that only one bidder could ever qualify and this is in spite of paragraph 4(2) that requires objectivity.
I'll be sending my comments to the required email address (I'll remove the profanities before I do).
The reader may have thought I have lost my mind. A post praising Rob Davies would be shorter than this post (my most widely read post I stress). I won't use the term racist when it comes to Bolshie Bob, because he's not cut from that cloth but what I will say about him is that I think the architects of apartheid would be most impressed with him. Can you imagine if they had found a black man who was so hell bent on destroying black people as Bolshie Bob is with destroying white people.
Anyway, let's get to the crux of the post. This thing called RACISM and how the ANC government would be nothing without it. Zimbabwe is the same with colonialism and Mugabe's disdain for Breetawn. When you are a government made up of the most corrupt and inept people you need a scapegoat and this scapegoat is the SCOURGE OF RACISM, other terms for it are COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY (although this is often levelled at black people who speak out against the government) or ANTI-TRANSFORMATION. The latter term is being used by Dud Miyeni-millions-to-plunder-from-SAA. It's a thin veneer of an excuse for killing the national carrier (as those in government love to call it).
The emphasis on fronting has a similar hollow ring to it. Please don't think that the so-called BEE Ombud/Commissioner is going to listen to your constructive commentary on the various iterations of their un-implementable codes. She's not interested in the fact that you just don't find Xhosa radiographers in Pofadder. She's only interested in hearing complaints of fronting. I have this completely untested suspicion that she will be more amenable to allegations of white people fronting by black people and not the other way round. It plays back into the racism argument – as John Robbie so correctly (my arse) observed "only white people can be racist because it's all about power." Whatever that means. But, he hastily pointed out, black people can be bigoted. How's that – white people can be both, and all at the same time. Such talent.
And so this country can never move on. It can't move because the ANC doesn't want it to. If it drops the perennial racist allegation then it has to take responsibility for its own mistakes and fuck-ups, Jacob Zuma being the most colossal of the latter.
This was going to be a longer post – but there's no hope here. Whilst white people live in this country racism will thrive, irrespective of whether they are racist, bigoted or not. That is unless the ANC actually wants to make a difference to lives of people in South Africa. Let us hope that Rob doesn't scare off all the white taxpayers too quickly - because when they go the BEE Commissioner will suddenly be without a job.
Reminds me of the old joke – and that's how the fight started. To say I was not livid when I heard this news would be an understatement the size of the Christmas myth. I was absolutely pissed off, more than pissed off, I was completely fucked off. We will speculate forever as to the real reasons behind Nene's dismissal, Zuma will never tell. But it seemed pretty obvious that Nene told Dud Miyeni to clip her wings, she ran to number one (she really should run a lot more) and he solved the problem the way he had done before. I'll let Alec Hogg take up the story
Here's a story I was told by someone who should know about these things. Three months ago, he says, then Minister of Mines Ngoako Ramatlhodi was asked by one of Zuma's sons to "intervene" after a mine owned by the politically connected Gupta family was issued a Section 54 notice. These notices are powerful bureaucratic weapons, enforcing the closure of the entire mining operation until safety concerns have been satisfied. Ramathlodi referred the agitated Zuma scion to the Department of Mineral Resources, explaining it was not his place to intervene. After that Ramathlodi refused to take the younger Zuma's phone calls. The next day, the Mining Minister was fired, replaced by an unknown junior politician from the Free State, one Mosebenzi Joseph Zwane. The only time Zwane had previously surfaced was when various associations with the Guptas became public. It sounded too brazen, too fanciful to be taken seriously. I'm not so sure anymore. Over the past week, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene blocked a rather transparent plundering attempt engineered by SAA chairman Dudu Myeni. She wants to interpose a small finance house into a long-ago arranged deal between the airline and Airbus on the premise that this tiny firm would eliminate SAA's currency risk. The actual purpose, as former JSE chief executive and SAA board member Russell Loubser puts it, was to fleece fees from the multi-billion rand transaction. Nene publicly issued a statement to overrule the idiotic scheme. Last night Zuma fired him, replacing the respected technocrat with a low ranking ANC cadre even more of an unknown than his new Mining Minister
I'm not going to go into this story any more. The camel was buckling already and this might have been the last grain of sand that pushed it over. Zuma now had completely raped the country. Oh and he wasn't finished yet. Fuck – if you can fire the minister of finance because he has identified your girlfriend as the charlatan she is why stop there. Rumours then abounded that a number of other ministers were on their way out, Rob included. I would imagine that Zuma was "pumped' (his nether regions are really the only functioning part of his body) on that Thursday morning. He had shown South Africa who was boss and he was on a roll. There was going to be a big firepool party at either Nkandla or the Guptas' kaya in Saxonwold. I was clinging onto anything here and the potential firing of Rob was pretty good news to me. But then you had to look at Zuma's MO. Fire a minister and replace him with a dumbassed patsy. If Rob went then his replacement would have been there to listen to the black business council and jungle jim and them only.
What then – well David Des Douglas Sacrificial Lamb etc would have been lobbied to cancel the PPPFA (Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act) and this would have been the panacea for black business to lap all government business. The new minister of trade and industry wouldn't argue and would publish even more ridiculous BEE charters to make compliance even more impossible. It is a sin to be white in this country you know, and they would fucking show us. If you want to see what our Des(olate) might have done take a look at Ray Hartley's black comedy article on his first day in office – Hartley stresses this is a work of fiction.
I'm not sure that Zuma has the same level of power to sack incompetent ministers (they are all incompetent barring Pravin and Hanekom) and replace them with even bigger idiots. I think he is on a bit of leash now. I wouldn't underestimate him though, he's still a dangerous idiot and can inflict a lot of damage in a very short period of time.
What then of this PPPFA and what'll happen if it is repealed?
The act exists to provide preference points or preference in general to a certain group of people. In the past it focused on levels of ownership. Now it works on BEE scores. I would imagine that Treasury is going to have a major problem with the new retarded BEE regime and preference points because it is going to end up in court. This is the way that businesses get an advantage over each other. If you take the act away what are you going to do? How are you going to favour a certain group over another without defining that group in some way. What our good racist jungle jim doesn't understand is that there is no other way without violating the constitution, not that jungle gives a fuck about that. I believe that it is a little too standard grade for his lower grade intelligence to grasp.
Zungurisation – shame I have been picking on poor old Sand Isle unnecessarily it appears
The Sunday Times wrote this week that Zungu was out of favour with number one. Bugger – from now on Zungurisation will be known as Guptafication.
Happy new year everyone. I'm very positive about next year. I think Zuma is going to take a pounding but he will be probably be here at the end of 2016 because he will do anything to stay of jail. I don't know if he fully understands the extent to which the average tax payer fucking hates him though and how they are now really baying for his sordid HIV free blood. Here's a song for him and his bloated and useless cabinet (excluding Pravin and Derek).
This blog was started in August 2006. I started writing it as a guide to people who wanted to know more about the vagaries of black economic empowerment. Perhaps the liberating experience of having a platform to pretty much say what you want went to my head because the blog soon evolved into a political vudderfok venting place. Many would argue that it devolved into such a home. There were some particularly good posts - I have to say this myself because no one has told me as much - that contained my analyses of certain aspects of this sordid industry that I operate in. Other times there were knee jerk digs at the quality of personage that works in our rudderless regering. I came across some of the biggest racists that this country has ever seen (jungle jim) and in certain cases I endorsed one or two people who have slipped so far in my estimation that I cannot understand why I bothered with them in the first place (Thami Mazwai).
This post is a short(ish) reflection on the last 9 years. A hell of a lot has happened in those years. The first codes of good practice came out in February 2007 followed by a number of sector codes. All this good work was negated by Rob's Folly (revised BEE codes). We have seen the politically connected benefit (Penuel Maduna under Mbeki – and I don't care if I spelled his name incorrectly) and now Zungu under Zuma. To a certain extent Zungu got his arse kicked in the Arcelor-Mittal deal – but not hard enough unfortunately because it is his band of BBC merry men that are attempting to hijack the economy with the full endorsement of Number One and his handlers.
When I started in this business I believed that we could make a go of this empowerment thing. The Maslow-approved scorecard made so much sense that it could only but work. That was in spite of the fact that the codes and all of the supporting documentation wasn't particularly well written and that the DTI had absolutely no clue what they were doing. Even when you take this into account we saw an amazing take-up of BEE throughout the country. I measure this by some of my more remote clients who couldn't get a scorecard out of the local Worcestor butcher in 2007 and now you can get scorecards out of their local filling station. If the scorecard message is getting through to rural Worcestor then it must mean that a greater awareness has drifted through the economy.
This is what happened over the next five years
Scores steadily improved. I noticed that certain verticals stuck to an industry average, the banking sector is probably the most obvious.
The message circulated throughout the economy
Investments in enterprise development (more often than not donations) and skills development increased
High profile BEE deals petered out. Most of them had been concluded and needed to run their course, in many cases they were extended
The new breed of potential BEE takers started getting pissed off because the deals were done. They persuaded Rob that a change was needed
And so change arrived. Rob's revised codes were bludgeoned through, the DTI paid scant regard for any comments. And here we sit on the cusp of the new BEE era.
The NEW BEE ERA
I hate the term BEE, irritates me. The new ERA is simply a system where by a small cabal of connected Africans (someone described them to me as the Aurora crowd but I think you can throw in the Imperial Crown Trading crew too) designed a system whereby they would benefit under state procurement because white companies (a broad term describing everything that is not black by definition) could not compete on points or on racial profile. To quote Loane Sharp
The government is now creating 100 "black industrialists" (the government's term), and it appears that the much-vaunted R1-trillion infrastructure programme is being delayed to ensure that government-nominated industrialists win the overwhelming proportion of civil engineering tenders.
You see the problem here was that companies were making such great progress in their BEE endeavours that black owned companies could no longer compete on points. To make matters worse they would also need to go through the expense of empowerment even though they were black just to match a white owned competitor.
"Nee fok dit," they said sobbing into their single malts at the Michelangelo. "We'll reduce everything down to race and create a system that can only suit us." And so they did, the revised BEE codes are just one small element of this, the PPPFA is the next to fall.
Where do we find ourselves in this 1000th post? A simple summary must be – THE SUCCESS OF BLACK BUSINESS WILL BE MEASURED AGAINST THE FAILURE OF WHITE BUSINESS, and ultimately the economy. Anthony Butler perhaps captured this sentiment perfectly when describing Malusi's ridiculous visa rules
It would be comforting to imagine that this is merely a "departmental silo" problem, in which Home Affairs is preoccupied with child trafficking, while Tourism is preoccupied with visitor convenience. Or that this is all a matter of face for a young minister who wants to be president, has failed as minister of public enterprises, and now cannot bow down before the forces of reaction. But it is much worse than that. (I)t is about race. The tourism industry, no matter how many jobs it creates, shows a white face to government, and the success of the sector breeds resentment.
In his 2015 state of the nation giggle session our very competent, intelligent and decisive president made the following announcement.
Government will set-aside 30% of appropriate categories of State procurement for purchasing from SMMEs, co-operatives as well as township and rural enterprises.
We are quite used to this esteemed personage's platitudes and incredible decisiveness so it might be quite strange to the average person when he does actually deliver on his promises. He has in fact in the new draft PPPFA regulations. A Bardot delivery had these same regulations sent to me, it would be wrong not to post them up here for your perusal.
Here are a few of some of the features:
80/20 works for R10m to R50m
90/10 for more than R50m. If you are seeing new QSE patterns emerging you would be on the money
50/50 points' system for less than R10m
The 80/20 and 90/10 systems work on standard BEE points' allocations. However the 50/50 system is a lot more interesting. This is what it looks like
Points will be allocated in accordance with the table below
No.
Criteria
Points
1
Price
50
2
Specific Goals:
2.1
Individuals who had no franchise in national elections before the 1983 and 1993 Constitutions
12
2.2
51% or more ownership by females
12
2.3
51% or more ownership by persons with a disability
12
2.4
SMME (Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise)
6
2.5
LED (Local Economic Development)
8
This harks back to the 2001 PPPFA regulations. No franchise before the two constitutions effectively includes all black people as defined. Africans had not vote before '83 and '93. Coloureds and Indians didn't have the vote before 1983. The reference to disabled and women includes ALL women and disabled people.
I do rather like the inclusion of SMME and Local Economic Development because the issue with the current regulations is that it didn't favour regional businesses. What Zille and Kane-Berman missed is this paragraph
(2) (a) For the specific goals under 2.2 to 2.5 in the table above, the Minister of Finance (Minister) may, from time to time, prescribe targets that must be procured from certain categories of person or commodity groups. Therefore, the number of points, as well as the groups referred to in the specific goals in sub-regulation (1)
What this says is that Nene may use set asides. Something that the Constitution would not be happy with (as if that has ever been a problem for our literate and competent legislators), and something that Treasury banned in 2006.
Now onto some of the more interesting features of 2.1 above (you will see on page 8 that this requirement may never be removed from any tender). You'll notice the word "INDIVIDUAL", this is a very specific word, it refers to individuals and not classes of people. As I mentioned African people did not have the vote until 1994. This means that only individuals who are over 21 years old and African can qualify. Indians and Coloureds get a rawer deal. They would need to be 31 years and older (as if they haven't been shafted enough under the revised codes). As this regulation gets on in the years so will the age of the black person increase.
This is pure BBC – a subtle attempt at favouring Africans over other black groups.
Another issue which plagues me is the value of the tender. What the 50/50 system does is give certain types of people up to a 100% price advantage. If they tick all the boxes under 2 above and get 1 more point for price they could 51 points which beats the bidder that only offered the best price (cost effectiveness is a vital ingredient of section 217). The rules are that they should win the bid. But this system is only for bids for less than R10m. If that bidder comes in a R10,000,000.01 then they are no longer part of the R10m scheme. In effect this system will only work for bids less than R5m.
The whole system is completely open for abuse. It is absolutely unconstitutional and unaffordable. Related articles
What happened before Zoomer started speaking showed the real state of the nation. What a despicable person and the party that he represents is rapidly descending into a neo-Nationalist party (the old PW Botha version). It would seem that our dearly beloved president is now considering how to pay off his Nkandla loan - there are three possible payment options, cash, EFT or eWallet.
But what then of his bland presentation, what of the content. I don't know if you noticed that his partisan audience wasn't actually clinging onto his every word, if it wasn't for Blade's sycophantic applause, he would have received no applause whatsoever. I think Blade pissed off Pravin because every time the hysterical one applauded it woke Pravin up.
For those who have now returned from the Gupta's Taj Mahal after evicting them from their compound because they are foreign nationals and foreign nationals are no longer allowed to own land in South Africa, you might have noticed this little statement
Government will set-aside 30% of appropriate categories of State procurement for purchasing from SMMEs, co-operatives as well as township and rural enterprises.
This is good idea - of course we understand the term SMME to mean BLACK SMMEs but that is detail. But in order to do this you'd need to amend my favourite section of the Constitution, 217. I have blogged about this often. To change the constitution you need a 2/3rds majority. Last night's performance will result in an even sharper drop in the ANC's majority.
The rules have changed now. The ANC/government is no longer relevant or reasonable.
Quite simply because he is not respected by the business community. You cannot assume that the FM is speaking in isolation here. Just take a look at the cover page of this week's issue. The lead article is equally damning.
JACOB Zuma’s Presidency has taken on a particular flavour. Exposés of capricious political interference in important arms of the state such as the prosecuting authority, the police and the intelligence services have become commonplace: there is little shock factor left in the abuses of power and process committed by his friends in his name; and there is no parallel with any other SA president in the extent to which he has personally benefited from holding office.
This article appears at the same time when Eskom is loadshedding the life out of the economy. The impact of this loadshedding will be felt for a long time yet, and yet it is this moron's face that graces the cover of the FM. Today is the State of the Nation Address, we are anticipating fireworks from the equally moronic Malema. It's very strange how the adage - the enemy of your enemy is your friend, rings true almost all the time.
And the ANC does nothing - no wonder I am patently anti-ANC. I can't imagine that any logical person who either fought against apartheid or is relieved that it is over could have wished for a South Africa that looks like this with this destructive imbecile at the helm. Please come back quickly Jesus, Christ knows we need you more than ever.
A rumour is now doing the rounds that the period for comment for the second round of codes has been extended to the full 60 days – I can't find this notice on the DTI's website but it is an embarrassment for them and probably won't be put up. I think we have until 9 Dec 2014 to submit our comments. To a certain extent the extension of the period to 60 days, which the act requires the minister to do, is a victory for us. A small victory but it has a significance. History has shown that the minister and his goons minions at the DTI have little regard for process or the law, and by offering a 35 day period they're just shoving dodgy legislation up our backsides. Someone must have said to them that if they don't follow that part of the act then the whole process can be thrown out. It is a surprise that they actually considered this, their past behaviour shows that they are not concerned about such things.
So we've been given the requisite amount of time to submit comments, and we should submit comments. But you must remember that the underlying codes that the new codes are built on are rotten. At face value the draft codes appear to have been drafted by someone who has not gone through the DTI's in-house training system. They might have actually used a word processor with a spell checker for a change. And it's also possible that someone with a legitimate matric certificate actually checked the wording (what am I saying, of course that person had a legitimate matric, it's only those in position of power who lie about their educational qualifications. As an aside, Zoomer has no issue with his standard three, he doesn't feel that people need to call him Dr or Prof Zuma because of his numerous honorary doctorates.)
Where was I, it's so easy to distract yourself with the incompetence that is Zoomer. The draft codes rely on the existing codes for clarity, but there is no clarity under the revised codes. The perfume that is being sprayed on the draft codes cannot hide the stench that the revised codes emit – something akin to Thandi's pig farm. And then there's the fact that the DTI is so hell bent on shoving shit down our throats that they won't consider our comments – as one large company said to me, they did not consider a single sentence we sent them. In other words, why should we bother sending through comments when we know that anything that highlights the folly of Rob's delusion will be disregarded. Armed with this fact, we still have a duty to let him know that he is living in cloud communist land.
Here are a few corkers from the draft codes.
Statement 003
Par 3.1.6 - a sector code...must set targets which are over and above the minimum targets set out in the generic codes (as if the targets contained in the revised codes weren't onerous enough, no sector charters have got to outdo them. You can imagine what the ICT Charter would look like under Dilly, skills' development would go up to 8% of payroll on African females alone)
3.1.11 - no transition period shall be provided for the implementation of a sector code (now here's a thing, 3.1.6 tells us that the targets must be higher and you still haven't got a transition period to get used to this. Actually the reason for this cause is far more sinister than that – what it is saying is that the draft is in FACT the final document, irrespective of the comments. You can imagine looking at a draft and knowing your business well enough to know that these targets are unachievable and you send your well thought out comments to the DTI, hoping that they'll see reason. They won't and they'll go ahead and publish whatever please them and then tell you it's effective immediately. Don't laugh – this is what will happen.)
5.4 - a section 9(1) code is legally binding on the applicable sector, organs of state or public and private entities (this means that you HAVE to implement a sector code that is applicable to you. In other words, BEE is now a legal requirement for all companies. This differs to the current understanding that a code is a guideline and if you want to do business in this country it would be a good idea to get a scorecard. Here is a constitutional challenge waiting to happen)
I have looked through the rest of the draft and there are little niggly things that could bother some, Chris van Wyk has told me about the different requirements for South African multinationals vs international multinationals. The QSE scorecard is far more lenient than the large enterprises scorecard, for instance the EAP targets don't apply to the QSE scorecard. But this does not detract from the fact that the underlying codes are wrong, illegal, unconstitutional and a product of a whim. If the revised codes are allowed to go through then we are simply FUCKED. Not a little fucked – TOTALLY FUCKED and completely FUCKED OVER. It's not often that I apologise for using profanity but I do under these circumstances because it emphasises the extent to which this incompetent government is rapidly eroding the democracy that we think we have. We are very simply frogs in rapidly boiling water (obviously not being heated by Eskom) and the temperature is starting to get uncomfortable but not enough to climb out and protest. It's almost too late.