The following statements made by Gary Morolo (Chairman of IST Holdings and Executive Chairman of Datacentrix) in the Financial Mail of 20 August 1999, underpins the essence of what we too believe a true BEE should be or provide:

"It’s a competitive world out there. It’s not about what you call yourself (reference to BEE companies), it’s about what you do."

"You don’t add value by being a black person; being black is not nearly sufficient. It does not give you any special insights about running a business. In so far as being black is an advantage, it is where government says "we need to bring black people into business". It will be people who have the entrepreneurial, the managerial, and all other attributes that are required to run a business, and that’s the context in which I am saying that just being black in itself does not give you an advantage."

"Empowerment, to me, is a consequence, a result."

To us, it is a business imperative that our consulting firm be representative of the peoples of this country - the bottom line is that, if we are to achieve our objective of making a significant difference to our clients' business operations, we need to work with the people in these organisations to empower and enable them to realise their organisations' potential to the fullest extent. The people in these organisations are from diverse background and if we are not in tune and do not understand these nuances intimately, we will not be able to make the impact we desire.

As these relationships and interactions are fundamental to our business, we are always looking for BEE partners that have similar values and business focus. During our engagements we anticipate such relationships normally commencing with a "courtship" during which we will jointly execute a project and work shoulder to shoulder, thus assessing our compatibility, before progressing to a more formal and structured relationships.

What are we searching for in our partners?

It is imperative to note that, while our relationships and interactions with BEE firms will continue in the future, our intent is to become fully representative of the South African society at all levels of our company, without detracting from the quality of our service offerings. We have departed on the challenging journey of building a company that will realise our strategic intent – but we are not at our destination yet.

In our drive to find and work with partners, we work closely with BLACKPRIDE MARKETING (Pty) Ltd. They provide this much needed support through their comprehensive selection and evaluation process, thus ensuring that we only engage true BEE firms.

In return for these services rendered, R-e-volution works with BLACKPRIDE MARKETING to coach, mentor and build competencies in SMME BEE enterprises, thus helping to develop the South African human resource talent pool. We believe this is a small, but significant contribution to develop the true potential in South Africa to ensure that our nation takes its rightful place in leading the African Renaissance.

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