A snippet caught my eye in the Sunday Times recently:
“The abuse-prone system of awarding government contracts is to undergo sweeping changes following the discovery of ‘irregularities’ in tenders awarded by the Public Works Department”.
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Nothing new, many would say, except that this was a statement issued by then Minister of Public Works Jeff Radebe and Deputy Minister of Finance Alec Erwin on January 22, 1995.
Remedy
If this does not illustrate the shocking inability or unwillingness of the ruling party to remedy an issue that was highlighted 25 years ago, nothing does.
One year after assuming office under the new dispensation, the rot that characterises public procurement to this day was identified, clearly not as a cancer that was allowed to fester under the previous regime, but as something to be manipulated and plundered by the new holders of the levers of power.
Lip service
Lofty promises by both ministers in 1995, and those who followed them, up to the present day, to “overhaul state procurement” and “stamp out abuse” amounted to naught.
A raft of legislation over the years, notable for being unenforced, has paid nothing but lip-service to one of the most important economic transformation tools.
In the right hands, and with the proper will, the noble concepts of Black Economic Empowerment.
The push to accelerate and advance what should have been done over 20 years in a much shorter time is undoubtedly going to undermine and destabilise an already fragile economy.
(BEE), later Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE), Preferential Procurement Polices (PPP), and set asides could have engineered a meaningful and sustainable transformation of the economy.
Inaction
What this inaction has spawned, out of frustration by the marginalised, is a more strident approached, characterised by the supporters of Radical Economic Transformation (RET) movements.
And for this, the ruling party has no one but themselves to blame.
After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, he joined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.
He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.
Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.
More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.
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