Assessment of the state of Black Empowerment in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District of North West Province Department of Education

Abstract

The Black Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 is a tool used to redress the injustice of the past and ensure full economic participation of groups that where disadvantaged in the past. The main stream economy includes the fast–track of employment equity, ownership, skills development, preferential procurement, enterprise development, and socio–economic development. BEE is an inclusive and logical political process that is based on the national transformation programme of the country, for an example, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). Its purpose was to modify and change the inequalities of the past with transference of management, ownership and the control of economic and financial resources of South Africa to the majority of its citizens. The RDP sought to bring about full economic participation by the historically disadvantaged to accomplish prosperity and development that is sustainable. Public sector procurement is used by government as a mechanism to achieve certain broader policy objectives such as BEE, local economic development of small and medium sized business, skills transfer and job creation. The BEE programme was implemented in 2003. However, there are problems with the implementation of the programme. The theory (legislation) includes the Code of Good Practice, Sector Scorecards, and Public Sector Procurement Guidelines which span effective implementation of the BEE programme. According to the respondents, the major problem with the successful implementation of BEE, are the corrupt public officials who interfere with the process. The government officials responsible for the implementation of BEE practice nepotism and bribery on an extremely large scale. Moreover, political interference plays a major role in the lack/poor implementation of BEE. BEE compliance in the District of Dr Kenneth Kaunda Department of Education is extremely corrupt with many of the essential supply of goods and services being compromised. In this study to tackle the research topic both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used thus termed mixed method research. With mixed method research the researcher was able to use semi-structured interviews and questionnaires.