The amended black economic empowerment (BEE) act will come into effect before the end of October, including the establishment of a new office of the BEE commissioner expected to deal with issues of fronting.
However, Trade and Industry minister Rob Davies said on Tuesday that a part of the legislation dealing with the alignment of sectoral charters and the new law has been suspended until October 2014.
Mr Davies told a media briefing at the Union Buildings that further regulations provided for in the new law were being legally refined and should be ready by the end of November.
The regulations dealt with the interpretation of the act, application BEE framework, reporting monitoring and evaluation, as well as questions of offenses and penalties, he said.
"We are moving towards implementation of both the codes, which are secondary legislation, and the act itself, which will be proclaimed certainly by the end of this month," said Mr Davies.
He said the post of the new BEE commissioner will be advertised before the end of the week and the successful candidate is expected to start working by March next year.
"The most important part of the (commissioner’s) work is to implement new statutory definition of fronting," said Mr Davies.
He said the commissioner, expected to operate in similar form as the national consumer commissioner, may attempt to find solutions in cases of fronting or refer serious transgression to law enforcement agencies.
The new statutory definition of fronting – previously dealt with a fraud – carried a 10 years imprisonment sentence. The commissioner will be answerable to the DTI and the minister.
The proposal to emend the BEE law went to Parliament for debate last year and President Jacob Zuma signed it in January. The proclamation of the law was issued earlier this month, and will be gazette before the end of October.
Earlier Mr Zuma chaired the last meeting of the Presidential BEE advisory council, whose term ends this month.
The first 2003 BEE act had made provision for the establishment of the council. However, it was only until 2009 that Mr Zuma made the appointments.
Council member and Mr Zuma’s special adviser on business Sandile Zungu said on Tuesday the task of the incoming council "is the creation of black industrialists".
Mr Zungu, a businessman who is also the secretary-general of the Black Business Council and chairman of investment holding company Zico Group, said state-owned enterprises such as SAA had the wrong business model.
They were not able to "win" because they were "hopelessly undercapitalised". Non-profitable routes must be cancelled or the state should "just accept that (SAA) will only survive if (it is) run on a perpetual bail-out basis", he said.
Mr Zungu said his team had successfully executive its mandate of sharpening the legislative instruments available to government, including the amendment of the 2003 act.
Deputy trade and industry minister Mzwandile Masina said government was making progress in its programme to boost black industrialists.
Mr Masina said the target was to create up to 100 black industrialists in the current term, with an additional aim to have their companies listed in the JSE.
He said 18 applications had been processed since the programme kicked off under his guidance in August. Mr Masina said part of the remaining work was to get government’s developmental finance institutions to participate in the programme.
Mr Davis said the first part of the codes of good practice had been gazette and the "phase two" put out for public comment on October 10.
The second phase dealt with small enterprises, the scorecard, recognition of sales of assets, recognition of equity equivalence as well as the guidelines for the development of transformation charters and accepted codes.
Mr Davis said a number of their recommendations from the BEE advisory council "found their way into legislation".