[Here is an example of how Blacks get shares in S.African Companies. This is from an internal company document. I have changed the name of the company to “ThisCompany” to hide the identity of the company concerned – but it is a major public company in S.Africa. Jan]

ThisCompany Black Employee Share Scheme

It seems sometime ago that ThisCompany announced it™s Black Economic Empowerment Deal to the public for the first time. Details of the offer as well as the impact on staff is available on Pulse which also includes a number of questions and answers which will help staff to understand the scheme.

In terms of the scheme all black staff will be eligible to receive shares in ThisCompany and again the details are contained on the website. In order to facilitate the process of the allocation of shares the bank is embarking on an exercise to confirm the demographic details of all of its black staff to ensure that the allocation process runs smoothly. The reason for this is that there are certain criteria which will qualify individuals to be eligible for a share allocation.

Some of the criteria are:
o A permanent staff member of the ThisCompany group on 31st May 2005
o A South African citizen, defined as such on the employees South African identity document. i.e. the staff members id document must state that the employee is a citizen of SA

A black generic person being either:
o African
o Coloured
o Indian
In good standing, meaning an “acceptable level of work performance” determined as of 31st May 2005

We are working under very tight deadlines in order to complete this confirmation process in time so we ask that every staff member please respond to the request for this information as a matter of urgency.

We thank you for your co-operation.