THE tourism industry has been urged to submit its comments on the draft BEE Tourism Sector Score Card to the Department of Trade and Industry by August 20, whereafter the DTI is expected to gazette the scorecard within the next two to three months. This was the word from William Janisch, a consultant who helped develop the country’s BEE policy, and who addressed the recent Sure Travel congress on the topic. Elucidating the need for BEE to a predominantly pale-faced audience, he said BEE was one of the most misunderstood and feared concepts in South Africa among all race groups. Average whites felt BEE threatened their children’s future and thought it was unsustainable, while average blacks felt resented at work and didn’t want to be affirmative action appointments. “Unless everyone sees the value of BEE it’s not going to work,” he stressed. South Africa has the seventh-highest violent crime rate worldwide, a symptom of disparity and 300 years of unequal development. “Every society in history has collapsed because they failed to get the marginalised into the economy,” he warned. BEE seeks to rectify bringing the previously marginalised into the economy by introducing the “triple bottom line” of social, financial and environmental upliftment, he said. The trick to getting people into the economy was to spend money on social economic development projects. With BEE, South Africa became one of the first countries worldwide to audit the contribution of its businesses to society and so would hopefully end up with the “triple bottom line”, he said. The country had the world’s most comprehensive social scorecard, which was now being copied by the European Union, Canada and New Zealand.