City Press *
The trouble with tenderpreneurs*/Narrow BEE has empowered a small elite while workers continue to be 'casualised'/
*Blade Nzimande, City Press, Johannesburg, 27 June 2010*A letter in last week's City Press implied that the South African Communist Party (SACP) uses the term "tenderpreneur" to refer to all those who apply for and get government tenders. This is not true. As much as we are opposed to capitalism, the SACP makes a very clear distinction between entrepreneurs and tenderpreneurs.
Entrepreneurs, found in co-operatives, and small- and medium-sized businesses, are those who honestly go about doing business, including tendering for government work. Tenderpreneurs, found in both public and private sectors (and often the two colluding), are those who corruptly capture government tenders using their political positions or connections.
In fact, tenderpreneurs pose the biggest threat to genuine entrepreneurs because the latter often do not have inside information or the necessary political connections to get public or private sector tenders.
"Tenderpreneurship" expresses the worst of the intersection between holding a political position and business interests. The SACP has identified as urgent the need to fight this intersection to ensure that political office is not used for personal enrichment.
The SACP is also fully aware that the deliberate conflation of entrepreneurs and tenderpreneurs is often done by those very tenderpreneurs who are trying to discredit our campaign to fight corruption, both in the public and private sectors.
Our detractors, both inside and outside of our movement, also try to castigate our campaign against corruption as a campaign against the ANC.
Our position is clear: The ANC is not a corrupt organisation! Nor is the problem only to be found within the ranks of the ANC. But in all of our alliance formations, there's a minority of tenderpreneurs and other corrupt elements who use their political positions to enrich themselves.
For example, in the SACP we have also produced our own tenerpreneurs, such as Phillip Dexter of Cope, who often used the cover of being a senior official of the SACP to pursue his various business interests. Our action to eradicate such behaviour precipitated his jump to Cope.
Let us restate the obvious. We all agree on the need to transform the economy and to make sure that the economy is more inclusive by giving expression to the commitments to the Freedom Charter. However, we believe that the model of black economic empowerment (BEE) followed over the past 15 years has not taken us in the right direction.
Transforming our economy and empowerment must, in the first instance, mean investment in building the productive capacity of our economy to create jobs and to meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of our people, the workers and the poor. Instead, narrow BEE has empowered a small elite while workers continue to be "casualised" and outsourced at the mercy of labour brokers, even by some of the companies with BEE "credentials".
Furthermore, BEE has just become an adjunct to the very same non-transformed, colonial-type economy, where many white-owned companies simply chase politically connected individuals to secure more business.
This does not mean that all of BEE has exhibited these features, but they have certainly been a dominant one of BEE.
The SACP is therefore calling for a fundamental rethink of BEE that must be linked to industrial policy and the fostering of a new growth path in our economy.
In the current phase of our struggle, we need the unity of all progressive forces in co-operatives and business to fight the scourge of tenderpreneurship. We also need to ensure that there is more transparency in the awarding of government tenders, including publicly revealing companies that are shortlisted and awarded such tenders, and the reasons behind the decisions.
Corruption and tenderpreneurship are also rife in the private sector, and must be fought there with the same vigour as in the public sector. That is why the SACP and Cosatu have committed to supporting progressive trade unions to expose corruption in the private sector.
Our ANC-led alliance has committed to ensuring that our organisations are not used as refuge for corrupt individuals and that our elective congresses are not contaminated by dirty money.
* Nzimande is general secretary of the South African Communist Party -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
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