Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Dealer network is empowering blacks A STRONG network of dealers supports several thousand OMC military and armoured vehicles, such as SAMILs, Casspirs, Mambas and RG-12s (Nyalas).

These are used by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and the South African Police Service.

Thami Mbele, director: South African programmes at Land Systems OMC, says these dealers are located at or near SANDF centres in urban areas, as well as in smaller towns such as George, Kokstad, Phalaborwa, Zeerust, Upington and Bethlehem. In this way, downtime and positioning costs are minimised, as the dealers are specifically focused on the military client environment.

Our dealer network is unique because of its geographic coverage, technical ability and business empowerment edge. We have worked hard to identify and support the right organisations in the right areas with the appropriate financial assistance and training, to ensure businesses and relationships that are sustainable for the future.

The company's after-sales support is a lifetime commitment offered countrywide, ensuring that our service to the SANDF is second to none.

"We've managed to secure a sound working relationship between the SANDF and our dealer community because of the dealers' close proximity to the military establishments, which also gives us an intimate knowledge and a deep understanding of how the SANDF manages and operates its fleet of vehicles. Mbele says that traditionally, given the country's history, very few blacks had been involved in the defence industry. The company's dealer network provides an excellent example of transformation in the defence sector, he says.

Mbele says that Land Systems OMC has made significant strides with its black economic empowerment strategy since 2000.

In order to facilitate the entry of black participants in the defence industry, the company initiated a programme to transform its dealer network, he says.

We decided that one of the avenues we needed to pursue in order to introduce black people to the defence industry was the transformation of our dealer network, he says. Mbele says that two years ago the company embarked on a five-year plan to ensure that all dealers had black empowerment status by 2008.

In 2000, only one firm in the company's 31-strong dealership network was black empowered. Today, there are 21 black empowerment dealers in the network, which means that more than 68% of Land System OMC's dealers are empowered. By the end of next year all our dealers should be black empowered, which underlines that we are not merely paying lip service to transformation and change, but creating jobs as well as ownership opportunities in the process. The company is assisting its dealers to achieve this goal by guiding and supporting them in their empowerment endeavours, he says.

We do not dictate to the dealers which model they should follow. Instead, we believe that it should be a business imperative for them to transform, and a concept that they should fully accept before attempting to implement it, Mbele says.

He says that empowerment initiatives, if tackled in a proactive and positive manner, can bring about transformation at all levels of the industry.