LETTER FROM A CEO

I hope this finds you well. I am writing to you personally because you may be considering placing your  B-BBEE compliance on hold, and recent developments have made this a good moment for us to talk about whether that still serves you. Some of you may consider suspending your B-BBEE work over the past year, and for understandable reasons — the cost, the political noise, and a run of court decisions that appear to be rolling back the compulsion to comply. Do not have a knee jerk reaction!

The most striking of these is a recent Pretoria High Court judgment in the property sector, which struck down the requirement that estate agencies and related businesses hold a B-BBEE certificate simply to be licensed to operate. It is a significant ruling, and it has been widely read as a sign that compulsory B-BBEE is in retreat. If headlines like these have led you to treat B-BBEE as optional, I understand entirely why you would pause — but I would be doing you a disservice as an adviser if I let that conclusion go unexamined.

Here is the distinction that matters, and it is easily missed. What that court removed was coercion through licensing — the state using a permit as a lever to force compliance. What did not remove, and cannot remove, is the commercial reality that your B-BBEE status still affects who you are able to do business with. The gun to the head is a separate thing from the open door. The ruling took away the gun. It left every door exactly where it was.

And those doors matter. If your business deals with banks, with government or state-owned entities, large corporate clients, or with anyone bound by needing preferential procurement points, your B-BBEE position remains a live commercial asset — or a live commercial obstacle — depending on how it has been managed. A competitor with a strong scorecard still wins the mandate, the tender, or the panel appointment that a business without one cannot. None of that changed. Pausing your B-BBEE simply because you are no longer forced to comply can quietly cost you work you would never see yourself losing.

This is why I would encourage you not to treat “on hold” as a decision, but as a pause worth converting into a deliberate choice. Doors may be closed in your face and then what will you do?

I have always believed that B-BBEE done grudgingly, only because a rule demands it, is the weakest version of it — and that B-BBEE done because it genuinely opens commercial doors is worth doing well. My interest here is not to talk you back into compliance for its own sake; it is to make sure that if you step away, you do so with your eyes open, and that if you stay in, you are getting real commercial value from it.

You need to make an informed and valued decision based on fact and not emotion.  We welcome the chance to look at your specific situation and give you a straight view. Please feel free to contact me directly.

Warm regards,

Hilton Johnson

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Compliance Hub Consulting (Pty) Ltd