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This article is prompted by a letter to last week`s City Press which implied that the SACP uses the term of `tenderpreneurs` to refer to all those who apply and get government tenders. This is not true. As a matter of fact, much as we are opposed to capitalism, the SACP makes a very clear distinction between entrepeneurs and `tenderpreneurs`.

Entrepeneurs, found in co-operatives, small and medium sized businesses, are all those who genuinely and honestly go about doing business, including tendering for government work. `Tenderpreneurs`, found in both public and private sectors, and often the two colluding, are those who corruptly capture government tenders using their political positions or connections.

In fact `tenderpreneurs` pose the single biggest threat to genuine entrepeneurs, as the latter often do not have inside information or the necessary political connections to get government or even tenders in the private sector.

`Tenderpreneurship` expresses the worst in the intersection between holding of political position and business interests. The SACP has identified as urgent the need to fight this intersection in order to ensure that political office is not used for personal enrichment.

The SACP is also fully aware that the deliberate conflation between entrepeneurs and `tenderpreneurs` is often done by those very tenderpreneurs who are trying to discredit our campaign to fight against corruption, both in the public and private sectors.

Our detractors, both inside and outside, our own movement also try to castigate our campaign against corruption as a campaign against the ANC. Our position is clear: The ANC is not a corrupt organization! Nor is the problem of corruption only to be found within the ranks of the ANC. But in all of our alliance formations are to be found a minority of tenderpreneurs and other corrupt elements who use their political positions to enrich themselves.

For example in the SACP we have also produced our own tenderpreneurs, like Phillip Dexter of Cope, who often used the cover of being a senior official of the SACP to pursue his various business interests. In line with our commitment to eradicate such behaviour, we confronted and dealt with him - the action that precipitated his jump into Cope.

Let us restate the obvious. We are all agreed on the need for the transformation of the economy and to make sure that the economy is more inclusive as part of giving expression to the commitments in the Freedom Charter. But we believe that the model of BEE followed over the past fifteen years has not taken us in the direction we wanted.

Transforming our economy and empowerment must in the first instance mean investment in building the productive capacity of our economy in order to create jobs and meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of our people, the workers and the poor. Instead narrow BEE has only empowered a small elite, whilst workers continue to be casualised, outsourced and at the mercy of labour brokers, even by some of the companies with BEE `credentials`.

Furthermore, BEE has just become an adjunct to the very same untransformed, colonial type economy, where many white owned companies simply chase politically connected individuals in order to secure more business.

However, this does not mean that all of BEE has exhibited the above features, but they have certainly become a dominant feature of narrow BEE. That is why the SACP is also calling for a fundamental rethink of BEE, and that it must be linked to industrial policy an the fostering of a new growth path in our economy.

In the current phase of our struggle we need the unity of all progressive forces, including in co-operatives and business, to fight the scourge of tenderpreneurship. We also need to ensure that ther is even more transparency in the awarding of government tenders, including publicly revealing companies that are shortlisted and awarded such tenders and the reasons thereof.

Corruption and tenderpreneurship are also rife in the private sector, and must also be fought there with the same vigour as we fight these in the public sector. That is why the SACP and COSATU have committed to supporting progressive trade unions to expose corruption in the private sector as well.

In all this our ANC-led Alliance has also committed to ensuring that our organizations are not used as refuge for corrupt individuals. It is also often this dirty money that normally finds its way into our organizations to contest elective congresses.