Parliament Publishes DA Private Members Bill in Government Gazette to Repeal BBBEE Act and replace with SDG targets

24 October 2023

On Friday, Parliament published a Notice in terms of Section 154(2) of the Constitution in the Government Gazette for the Democratic Alliance’s intention to introduce the Preferential Procurement Policy and Framework Amendment Bill 2023 (the Bill) into Parliament.

The intention of the Bill is to do away with the racially based BBBEE targets, which have proven to only enrich those few persons and companies that are deeply connected to the ANC. In practice, we have only seen this minority group of connected individuals obtain obscene wealth, whilst the poorest of the poor suffer and are unable to compete in contracts with the State.

The Bill thus aims to remove BBBEE as a benchmark for determining whether someone can do business with the State and instead, replace BBBEE with the internationally accepted Sustainable Development Goals, which are a blueprint for peace and prosperity.

The Bill also aims to achieve the following:

- delete the obligation on an organ of state to follow a preferential point system when determining its preferential procurement policy and to replace it with a discretionary power;

- delete the references to the maximum amount of points that may be allocated in instances where either a contract has a Rand value above, equal or below a prescribed amount;

- to provide that the achievement of specific goals may constitute a tiebreaker mechanism or constitute a maximum of 10 or 20 points, depending on the circumstances;

- to repeal the reference to what the specific goals may include and to replace it with the utilisation of SDG’s as a framework for the implementation of the procurement policy contemplated in section 217(2) of the Constitution;

- to delete the option that specific goals may include the implementation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme;

- to substitute the Minister’s discretion to make regulations with an obligation to do so,

- including to clarify the framework of utilising Sustainable Development Goals; and

- to provide that draft regulations must be submitted to the National Assembly before coming into effect.

The Bill will be introduced to give effect to the DA’s Economic Justice Policy where economic opportunities are available to all persons, not just the connected few, whilst at the same time addressing past inequalities and factors which are currently preventing economic inclusion such as a crony state, poverty, unemployment and spatial inequalities.

The DA calls on all persons to submit their written comments on the Bill by emailing [email protected] and [email protected].

Issued by Dean Macpherson, DA Shadow Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, 24 October 2023