B-BBEE Affidavit & Compliance

Affidavit or certificate — decide this first

Most people looking for a B-BBEE certificate application need a sworn affidavit instead. The two documents are not interchangeable, and turnover decides which one applies to you.

Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment is how government buyers and many corporates score you as a supplier. So the first question is not which verification agency to use. It is whether your business is an Exempted Micro Enterprise, a Qualifying Small Enterprise, or neither.

That is why the order form asks for your turnover band before anything else. Get the band wrong and you end up with a document your buyer will reject.

You will see the same thing written as a BBBEE affidavit, a BEE affidavit, or a BEE certificate. They all describe the sworn statement above. Only a SANAS-accredited agency issues the verified certificate.

How to apply for a B-BBEE affidavit

The process is short. It is also the same process whether you apply through us or handle it yourself.

1. Confirm your turnover band for the last financial year. A company that has not traded yet swears to its expected position.
2. Confirm your Black ownership percentage, as recorded in the share register.
3. Work out the level that follows from that ownership. The section below covers the usual bands.
4. Draft the affidavit in the prescribed wording, using the registered company name and registration number exactly as CIPC holds them.
5. Sign it in front of a commissioner of oaths, who stamps and dates it.
6. Keep the signed original and send scans to buyers who ask.

Step four is where most self-filed affidavits fail. A document that names the trading name rather than the registered entity, or quotes a registration number that does not match the CIPC record, gets bounced by procurement.

What an affidavit actually costs

An EME affidavit is a sworn statement, and you can have one commissioned free at a police station or by any commissioner of oaths. Ordering it from us buys the drafting, the correct wording, and not having to make the trip. It does not buy a document we manufacture, and we would rather say that plainly than let you assume otherwise. Anyone quoting you a "BEE certificate" on a brand-new company with no turnover is selling you a drive to the police station.

We are a filing company, not a SANAS-accredited verification agency. Above the QSE ceiling we cannot verify you, and we will tell you so rather than take the order.

Levels

Level follows Black ownership, not trading history. Many EMEs sit at Level 4 by default, a 100% Black-owned EME can generally claim Level 1, and 51%+ can claim Level 2. Confirm the current DTI practice note before you swear to a level — the bands are set by policy and they do move.

Level matters because it converts into preference points when a buyer scores your quote. It does not convert into a guaranteed contract, and no level makes up for a price that is out of range.

Sector codes change the thresholds

The R10 million and R50 million lines come from the generic codes. Several sectors publish their own, with their own turnover bands and their own scorecards — construction, tourism, ICT, property, agriculture, and transport among them. A construction contractor sitting comfortably inside the generic EME band can be a QSE under the construction code.

Check which code governs the work you actually sell before you assume the generic bands cover you. If you are bidding on public works, this sits alongside your CIDB grading, which is assessed separately and by a different regulator.

A new company can hold one immediately

Turnover on an affidavit is measured on the affidavit's own rules, usually the last financial year. A company with no trading history swears to its expected position, which is why a business registered this month can hold an affidavit this month and start quoting corporates.

That makes the affidavit one of the few compliance documents available on day one. A tax compliance status PIN depends on SARS issuing your income tax number first, and a CSD profile depends on both. The affidavit does not wait for either.

It goes stale in two ways

1. Turnover. Cross R10 million and the EME affidavit stops being the right instrument. Continuing to submit it is a due-diligence failure waiting to happen.
2. Ownership. An affidavit describing last year's shareholders is worse than no affidavit at all.

Track revenue deliberately as you approach the threshold instead of discovering it mid-tender. Affidavits are also generally treated as valid for twelve months from the date they are sworn, so diarise the renewal with your annual returns rather than as a separate reminder you will forget.

If your shareholding changes, update the CIPC record with shareholder changes first, then swear a fresh affidavit against the corrected record. Doing it the other way round produces two documents that contradict each other.

What it is not

A CoR14.3 says nothing about B-BBEE, though buyers occasionally ask for it as though it did. Nor is an affidavit a tax document — for that you want a tax compliance status PIN — and appearing on government supplier lists is a separate step again, CSD registration.

It is also not a licence, a grading, or a rating. It is a statement you make under oath about facts you can prove. Treat it that way and it does its job.

Read the longer B-BBEE guide →