Abstract
Public procurement is a key instrument in the post-apartheid South African government’s broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE), a legislative and policy framework aimed at reversing the country’s legacy of injustice and inequality through pursuing a range of socio-economic objectives that favour the majority black population. This paper employs a theoretical and derived logic model to analyse the design and implementation of BBBEE by means of literature and document review as well as key stakeholder interviews. It seeks to answer two key research questions: (1) has BBBEE achieved its intended outcomes? and (2) what lessons can be drawn from the South African experience for sustainable public procurement? The study finds a significant knowledge gap that precludes definitive conclusions on the impact of BBBEE, largely due to the limited rigorous evidence, particularly evaluations, on whether BBBEE is achieving the desired outcomes. Instead, the paper’s key contribution is the development of a derived logic model that clearly outlines how BBBEE is intended to work and is used to provide insight into how BBBEE has performed against aspects of its intended outcomes. The paper finds that the intervention’s effectiveness has largely been undermined by various challenges and demonstrates that it remains unclear whether BBBEE’s observed achievements have translated into targeted impact of meaningful participation of all black people in the economy. Considering the scale of BBBEE and its implementation for over 16 years, the paper concludes that the limited evidence on how it is performing against its key objectives is both a design and implementation shortcoming.
Highlights
Government’s role in leveraging its purchasing power to produce positive social and environmental outcomes has increasingly been a topic of interest in global sustainable development debates
The government expressed its intentions to use public procurement as an instrument to achieve specific socio-economic objectives in the 1997 Green Paper on Public Sector Procurement Reform. This has resulted in the design and implementation of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) initially referred to as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE)
The findings presented above illustrate that while BBBEE has registered some achievements, with the promulgation of relevant legislation and regulations to give effect to its implementation, it is clear that the intervention has been met by challenges both within its design and implementation
Summary
Government’s role in leveraging its purchasing power to produce positive social and environmental outcomes has increasingly been a topic of interest in global sustainable development debates. The country’s apartheid system resulted in discrimination of African, Coloured, and Indian people (collectively referred to as ‘black’ people in South Africa) in every aspect of society, political and economic life [5] The system prevented these groups, which together constitute the majority of the population, from obtaining access to goods and services, access to fair opportunities for business ownership, management, and senior position jobs. The government expressed its intentions to use public procurement as an instrument to achieve specific socio-economic objectives in the 1997 Green Paper on Public Sector Procurement Reform This has resulted in the design and implementation of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) initially referred to as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). Statistics SA reported that 49.2% of the country’s adult population lives in poverty and the majority of the poor continue to be black people (approximately three out of every five black Africans are poor) [7,8]
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