The long title to the BBBEE Act provides:

"To establish a legislative framework for the promotion of economic empowerment; to empower the Minister to issue Codes of good practice and to publish transformation charters; to establish the Black Economic Empowerment Advisory Forum; and to provide for matters connected therewith."

The BBBEE Act empowers the Minister of Trade and Industry to issue Codes of Good Practice, which are to be applied in the development and evaluation of Black Economic Empowerment Charters.

When undertaking procurement of goods and services, the state and its organs must ensure that they do so in compliance with the provisions of the BBBEE Act.

The Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Amendment Bill, 2011("BBBEE Bill")

The BBBEE Bill is currently in the process of being finalized.

The Minister of the dti is on record as having stated the following:
"These objectives, amongst others, are to align the B-BBEE Act with other legislation impacting on B-BBEE and with the Codes; establishment of the B-BBEE commission to establish an institutional environment for monitoring and evaluating Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment; provide for the regulation of the verification industry by the Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors and deal with non-compliance and circumvention by, inter alia, introducing offences and penalties.

The Bill also introduces inclusion of specific statutory offences involving fronting and other forms of fraudulent misrepresentation of empowerment status and the specification of penalties and blacklisting of entities and/or management for those offences.

Furthermore, the Bill makes provisions for empowering the Special Investigations Unit to investigate all offences involving fronting or corruption committed by both the public and private sector with regard to the application of the Act and B-BBEE codes of good practice."

Once the amendments take effect, they will have the force of law and companies, the state and its organs will be required to ensure strict adherence thereto, in particular develop systems for monitoring and evaluating BBBEE.

Care should be taken to avoid fronting and corruption.