Although the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act No 53 of 2003 ("the BBBEE Act") makes BEE implementation compulsory for the State and its associated enterprises, an ever increasing number of private enterprises are joining the movement of becoming BEE compliant and acquiring a BEE scorecard rating to enable them to participate and compete in the economy. This may be attributed to, inter alia, the existence of the requirement that all private entities which intend to have business relations with state bodies must be BEE compliant. In terms of section 10 of the BBBEE Act government bodies are moreover entitled to consider a private entities' BEE compliancy when deciding whether to issue it with a licence as applied for by that entity. Compliancy pressure is also placed on private enterprises through charters handed down in the respective industries. Social pressures furthermore increasingly urge compliance.

Once a private enterprise has achieved its BEE scorecard rating it will encounter the confusing issue surrounding the verification of its scorecard by a verification agency. Two interrelated questions arise in this regard:

• The first is whether such verification is imperative and whether a self rated scorecard is valid
• The second question is whether the accreditation of verification agencies is required and whether any accredited verification agencies exist.

In terms of the BEE Codes of Good Practice the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) encourages the use of BEE verification agencies to verify an entities' scorecard. There has however recently been some debate surrounding the validity of a self rated scorecard. A member of the Association of BEE Verification Agencies (ABVA) recently published a notice stating that "According to a trade and industry department guideline (issued October 2007), self-assessed scoring does not provide sufficient proof of a supplier's BBBEE status (Mail & Guardian, 13 February 2008)." It went further by urging entities to "make sure that your suppliers provide you with official BEE verification documentation that is valid". It is respectfully submitted that such statements are misleading and incorrect, for the following reasons:

• The DTI has yet to state that self rating is not acceptable, it follows that a self rated scorecard which complies with the applicable legislation as well as with the Codes of Good Practice is valid
• Neither the DTI nor the gazetted BEE Codes of Good Practice makes verification of the scorecard mandatory
• It is uncertain what exactly comprises "official BEE verification documentation". Surely only an accredited verification agency could claim to have the authority to supply such documentation.

The DTI provides that a verification agency may be accredited as such, by the South African National Accreditation Agency (SANAS). When accrediting such agencies SANAS will need to guard against conflicts of interest and should avoid situations which would allow a verification agency to prepare the scorecards as well as to verify them, as this would result in a clear conflict of interests and would surely bypass the purpose of the accreditation in the first place. Accredited verification agencies shall therefore most likely only be authorised to verify an entities' BEE compliance once the scorecard has been completed. The accredited verification agencies' role and function can therefore be compared to that of an external auditor where impartiality and objectivity are of paramount importance.

Despite the provision for the accreditation of verification agencies, to date hereof no such accreditations have occurred. SANAS has yet to grant a single verification agency accreditation. It has been reported that the first accreditations of verification agencies are set to take place next month. Unfortunately the fact that there are currently no accredited verification agencies does not appear to be widely known. Due to the misinformation surrounding this issue, the door has been opened for unscrupulous agencies to take the deception of potential customers one step further, by leading them to believe that accreditation obtained from a verification agency is a mandatory requirement and that they, as verification agencies, have been accredited as such.

Despite this fact it would be unfair to state that the verification of a score card by a verification agency is worthless. Certain verification agencies are gaining a respected reputation in the verification arena. It may therefore be said that an accreditation obtained from such a verification agency may be deemed to hold more weight than one produced by a little known verification agency, purely from an integrity point of view. All of this taken into account it must be borne in mind that the focus of the worth of an entities' scorecard depends largely on the quality of the supporting documentation which corroborate the results indicated in the scorecard and that each scorecard produced shall be individually evaluated to determine its validity.

SANAS's pending accreditation of verification agencies shall be welcomed and shall go a long way towards clearing up the uncertainty surrounding the weight or value to be assigned to the verification of scorecards by verification agencies. With regards to the uncertainty surrounding the validity of self rated scorecards, it appears that in the current circumstances a self rated scorecard, which complies with all of the necessary formalities, has equal worth to a scorecard which was compiled by a separate body and even one which was verified by a verification agency, from a legal perspective.