It's a question I hear more often now. Why should we bother with a BEE certificate? I know of a large company that went out of its way to get to a level 2 last year that is asking whether their clients and customers are at all concerned about a BEE certificate. I know of a few companies that have gone with non-compliant BEE certificates because their clients are saying – give us a certificate. One of the requests was from Vodacom, which is the worst BEE nazi in existence.
There's something going on and this is a huge threat to the BEE industry. It's an undercurrent that started with Trump and Musk and was followed by the various legal actions led by the largest law firms (maybe not quite in that order). I wrote before that when Cyril phoned Musk and Musk told him to change the law to allow Starlink to operate here, Cyril's only response was that it was the law. He had no statistics to show that the programme is working for the country. He has no statistics because there are none. There are a number of people who have made a lot of money, both legitimately and illegitimately. We have a government that is more than happy to pay an extreme premium to black service providers, in many cases AN EXTREME premium.
Business has had enough. I realised this yesterday when I was talking to the client who doesn't know whether they want to do this anymore. I said to them that I think the conversation this time next year will be very different. This year I am advising them to go through the process, mostly because they've done a lot of stuff and I can keep the costs right down for everything else. Next year they may not do it at all, and I'll have nothing to convince them to change their minds.
For BEE to succeed it needs to deliver. Parks and Recreation's dead in the water BEE fund is not the way to go now. If BEE is to survive we need major concessions for foreign investment.