Business lobby group Black Business Council (BBC) has hit out at law firm
Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) and AfriForum for challenging the gazetting of the Legal Sector Code under the broad-based Economic Empowerment Act.
Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau gazetted the code that seeks to speed up transformation in the legal sector, by mandating stricter compliance with equity and empowerment initiatives for the legal fraternity in September.
However, NRF approached the Pretoria High Court in a bid to block the implementation of the code, which is aimed at seeing an increased number of black participants in the country’s legal business.
BBC, which also represents black business and professionals in the legal sector has strongly condemned NRF and AfriForum over their opposition to the code.
“The Black Business Council (BBC) is dismayed but not surprised by right-wing opposition to the Legal Sector Code.
“Norton Rose Fulbright, AfriForum and similar anti-transformation organisations who are beneficiaries of apartheid are taking the government to court seeking to overturn a newly implemented policy aimed at the transformation of the legal sector,” BBC CEO Kganki
Matabane lashed out in an interview with Sunday World.
“Economic transformation at its heart, is about ensuring equality for black people. Opposing transformation is effectively arguing for the status quo for structural inequality to remain. Norton Rose and AfriForum’s opposition to the legal sector code should be seen in this light and must be condemned,” he said.
BBC stated that the majority of white-owned firms tended to monopolise
lucrative specialised legal work from the private sector and even the public
sector, “which maintain their apartheid procurement practices”.
“The legal sector code’s aim is to provide access to black lawyers to such quality legal work.
“We urge minister Parks Tau and minister Mmamoloko Kubayi (justice and constitutional development) respectively, to defend the right of black lawyers to access the same work as white law firms,” Matabane said.
In February last year, black lawyers’ organisations such as the Black Conveyancers Association, the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, the Black Lawyers Association, and the Pan African Bar Association of South Africa, took legal action to compel then minister of trade, industry and competition Ebrahim Patel to gazette the legal sector code.
The BBC said that it was supporting Tau and Kubayi alongside the seven black lawyers’ organisations such as the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, Black Conveyancers Association, Black Lawyers Association, Advocates for Transformation, Pan African Bar Association of South Africa, South African Women Lawyers Association, and Basadi Ba Molao through their collective intervention in the NRF application and oppose it.
AfriForum spokesperson Ernst van Zyl hit back at the BBC.
“The Black Business Forum exposes itself as a deeply racialist organisation that prefers discriminatory legislation that gives certain people special privileges based on their skin colour, rather than meritocracy,” he told Sunday World.
“AfriForum is against any law or piece of legislation that mandates discrimination based on race. AfriForum supports meritocracy, not laws privileging people based on their skin colour,” he said.
NRF did not respond to requests for comment.