2 December 2008
editorial
Johannesburg — IT IS hard to know whether to laugh or to weep in response to talk from the trade and industry department of possible changes to SA's black empowerment scorecard.
Just as the ruling party is finally emphasising that we need more of the broad-based and less of the rich-folk version of empowerment, the department says it is considering a proposal that would go in precisely the opposite direction. The idea is to remove employment equity and skills development from the scorecard, so companies would have to achieve their point count by meeting only the equity transfer, procurement from black suppliers and black senior management targets.
Not surprisingly, the proposal came from a black business person, so vested interests surely feature here. But that the department is even considering it is nothing short of scandalous. It would, of course, shift the empowerment goalposts yet again, starting anew the uncertainty that companies and investors had to endure as the department chopped and changed the codes. This is not a good time to undermine business yet again.
But worse than that is that the proposal would let companies off the hook on anything to do with broad-based empowerment. Selling shares to black investors, dishing out tenders to black businesses and putting black folk in glitzy senior positions would do it for the scorecard. Never mind about the workers or the poor. No one would need to bother about skills development. It wouldn't do anything for the score! And though companies would be rushing to change the colour of middle and senior management, there would be no pressure, at least in terms of the scorecard, to transform the workplace more broadly.
True, there are other pieces of legislation for this. But narrowing the scorecard to focus on targets that benefit the elite sends exactly the wrong message about what empowerment should be. By even considering this notion, the department is positioning itself clearly on the enrichment and not the empowerment path. That's a dangerous place for it to be.
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