Companies keeping blacks out – study

The Black Management Forum has bemoaned SA’s lack of transformation and co-produced a study with financial services firm Deloitte to prove its point, it said yesterday, notes a Business Day report. The forum would use the findings of the study, Transformation Barometer, to agitate for more change in government, the private sector and elsewhere, it said. Corporate SA, according to the barometer, engaged in malicious compliance and gate-keeping to keep blacks away from the table. In addition, the country’s poor education system continued to trip up blacks. Deloitte’s Sandile Gwala said the country was far from being transformed and the research was necessary to confirm this. Forum president Bonang Mohale said that the forum would devise a master plan based on the study’s findings, which it would release soon. Labour law consultant Tom Healy reportedly told Business Day: ‘One area that needs attention (in terms of transformation) is employment equity. If companies looked more at quality, then transformation could happen at a quicker pace. ‘It has become all about points and status.’ The barometer focused on four sectors: agriculture, mining, manufacturing and financial services, notes the report.