By Kganki Matabane, the CEO of the Black Business Council:
Johannesburg, 16 January 2025: 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 government to court seeking to overturn a newly implemented policy aimed at the transformation of the legal sector.
The legal sector code is an important intervention to transform the legal sector, which like other sectors in the economy, are still characterised by structural inequality inherited through apartheid. Economic Transformation at its heart, is about ensuring equality for black people. Opposing transformation is effectively arguing for the status quo – 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.
Large majority white owned firms monopolise lucrative specialised legal work from the private sector (and even 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 Ministers Parks Tau and Mmamoloko Kubayi, ministers of Trade, Industry and Competition and Justice and Constitutional Development respectively, to defend the right of black lawyers to access the same work as white law firms.
The BBC, as the over-arching confederation representing black professional and business associations, chambers and corporates in South Africa, supports the ministers and the following big seven organisations that have resolved to intervene in the Norton Rose application and oppose it; National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL), Black Conveyancers Association (BCA), Black Lawyers Association (BLA), Advocates for Transformation (AFT), Pan African Bar Association of South Africa (PABASA), South African Women Lawyers Association (SAWLA), and BASADI BA MOLAO (Women of Law).
About the Black Business Council
The Black Business Council (BBC) is the over-arching confederation that represents black professional, business associations and chambers. The primary purpose of the BBC is to lobby government on policy related matters and to play an advocacy role where policies are in place in order to accelerate the participation of black business in the mainstream economy.
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