South Africa: Minister Parks Tau Must Untangle the Legislative Knots of B-Bbee Amendments

By Lindsey Schutters

The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition has steered SA's economic transformation agenda into a legislative storm that the minister must navigate.

Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) and top law firms have launched scathing but separate attacks on the government's latest proposed broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) amendments and sector-specific codes. To them, these codes have mutated from tools of empowerment into unworkable instruments of economic self-sabotage.

And the government seems to be listening. In his February summit in Pretoria with all 11 B-BBEE sector charter councils, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Parks Tau, confronted the elephant in the room.

"These numbers reflect a policy that has made a significant impact in undoing the injustice of the apartheid economy. But transformation works when it is implemented. It fails when it is ignored or circumvented," Tau conceded.

He didn't shy away from the friction: "We are not here to create conflict. We are here to fix what is not working, strengthen what is working and ensure that transformation remains central to SA's economic trajectory."

Disconnect

Nowhere is the disconnect between legislative ambition and operational reality greater than in the manufacturing and automotive sector. BLSA's Chief Executive, Busi Mavuso, has been relentless in pointing out the mathematical impossibility of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition's new B-BBEE requirements, which demand that original...

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