Company directors today must realise that government, strategy and sustainability have become inseparable. And tied in with that, BEE offers exactly the kind of strategy framework that can create unparalleled growth for South Africa....if it is done correctly.

 

This is the message corporate governance expert Prof. Mervyn King and BEE specialist Andrew Bizzell will bring to South African business at an important BEE conference in Sandton early next month.

 

King, who is the Director of the Global Reporting Initiative, will be elaborating on issues and aspects of King III, his latest report on corporate governance and a code of governance principles for South Africa.

 

He will talk extensively about the relationship between King III, global sustainability and triple bottom line accounting, while Bizzell, who is the chairman of the BEESA Group and of the National Association of BEE Consultants, will provide revealing insights into how all of this ties up with BEE.

 

The conference will place sustainable black economic empowerment under the spotlight, promising to be highly topical at a time of heightened public and political debate around issues of race, transformation and empowerment in corporate South Africa.

 

King, Bizzell and several other prominent speakers will also place these issues in perspective against the background of current global economic developments.

 

"Whether you are a BEE director or any other director, sustainability is a critical issue for governance and strategy that needs to be included in one's long-term strategic thinking," says King. "The fact that these three elements have become inseparable is a cornerstone of the King III report."

 

King says in a number of countries businesses are already required by to report on how they impact on the society in which they operate in and on the environment, and that it has become a critical issues.

 

"It's also in the King Report and will become a listing requirement next year," he says.

 

Other issues to be addressed include measuring a company's economic value within the context of good governance and sustainability, set against issues such as compliance, sub-prime, food prices, the world of today, the future and available resources among others.

 

In addition to providing an overview of King III, King will be outlining the objectives, the current trends and the challenges of sustainability reporting.

"From a sustainability point of view," says Bizzell, "we can sustain a small economy, but we can't sustain a growth in the economy because we don't have the infrastructure to support that growth. The plan that BEE introduces, is an economic growth tool. It is how we are going to grow the economy from 7-milliion people participating in the money flow, through to 30-million people."

 

Bizzell, a leading BEE consultant who developed 'sustainable BEE' as a trademarked approach to economic growth of the South African economy, says this has not happened in many countries. In the few like Brazil, China and the Philippines where it has happened, he says there was "no framework as well defined and designed as South Africa's black economic empowerment codes of good practice".

 

Bizzell poses the question whether BEE is going to be "the problem child", or the "framework for growth that we work with". He says BEE is asking that companies start looking at transformation beyond mere compliance if they are going to grow bigger sustainably and be part of the growth of the country.

 

"If we understand what the BEE framework is about, we will understand that socio-economic development is developing the entry-level skills to satisfy the needs of the market, and enterprise development is creating the jobs to absorb those skills that are being developed at the entry level."

 

He says that once the skills and the jobs, that are going help grow the economy and the number of people participating in it, have been created, and once they have been absorbed into a company, skills development, employment equity, and management control - three of the elements on the BEE scorecard - will drive people through the organisation and out possibly into their own businesses into eventual ownership.

 

"So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that once you get this going, and people understand it, it will result in the kind of economic growth that most countries have never seen before," says Bizzell.

 

The 3^rd Annual BEE Conference takes place in the Hilton Hotel, Sandton on 6 - 8 October. The conference will culminate with a gala dinner and the Annual BEE Awards presentation at which top-performing companies will be honoured for their empowerment achievements.

 

Other eminent speakers will include Jan Munnik, managing director of EES-SIYAKHA and a leading expert in EE transformation in South Africa, Nomonde Mesatywa, Chief Director for Black Economic Empowerment with the Department of Trade and Industry, Lumkile Mondi, Vice President and Chief Economist of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and Sandile Hlophe, Managing Partner of KPMG South Africa.

 

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