The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the Gauteng North High Court’s ruling affirming the Employment Equity Act and its provisions enabling the Minister for Employment and Labour to set various sectoral targets to ensure more representative and inclusive workplaces and that all workers, irrespective of race, gender or disability are afforded fair opportunities to meet their full potential.
Whilst the litigants, the National Employers’ Association of South Africa (NEASA) and Sakeliga, the Afrikaans chamber of commerce, are free to take any law to court for constitutional verification, we are pleased that their challenge has been dismissed as legal adventurism. It not surprising that in this year when dog whistling has been taken to extraordinarily dangerous levels, that NEASA and Sakeliga could not resist the temptation to jump upon this bandwagon of ill-considered rashness and racial mobilisation.
The Constitution is eloquently clear in its requirements compelling the state to pursue measures to address the discriminatory legacies of the past 350 years and the resultant inequalities of today, including through employment equity and other measures intended to uplift the poor and historically disadvantaged. Any government which fails to live up to these fundamental and common-sense constitutional prescripts can and has been taken to court previously.
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The Employment Equity Act is nearly as old as our hard-won democracy and has stood the test of time, including previous court reviews. It is peculiar that the NEASA and Sakeliga’s court challenge omitted to acknowledge the well considered 2023 amendments to the Employment Equity Act.
These amendments sought, after extensive engagements between labour and business at Nedlac and public hearings at Parliament, to strike a fair balance between easing administrative burdens on SMMEs, reflecting South Africa’s demographic diversity (including regional), and equally to nudge employers to do better to ensure all employees have a fair chance to fulfil their full potential, in particular those historically denied equal opportunities.
These changes include easing reporting requirements on SMMEs employing less than 50 staff, adapting employment equity targets to take into account our regional demographic diversity, recognising employees with visual impairments and to adopt more focused targets for sectors falling painfully behind employment equity progress. The Regulations provide ample time, e.g. five years and modest targets, well below population demographics, for employers to work towards. As with all laws, exemptions are provided for employers who have tried but for various reasons cannot achieve their targets.
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It is shameful but not surprising, that NEASA and Sakeliga’s court papers are premised upon fake news about the Act and its Regulations. Employment Equity accommodates all South Africans, of all races and genders, including White males. No where does it provide for any worker, of any colour or gender, to lose their job. Any statement claiming they do should be taken as seriously as the flat earth society and race baiting on social media. Employment Equity and transformation remain extremely emotive matters for all workers and should be handled with the necessary care and sensitivity and not used to score likes on social media, let alone to decampaign South Africa in the United States.
The Constitution, guided by the call of the Freedom Charter, declares that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White. The Employment Equity Act and its Regulations speak to that, as do they the realities of the lack of tangible transformation in the private sector where 31 years into democracy, 60% of managerial posts are held by White South Africans, and nearly all low-income posts by African and Coloured compatriots. Unemployment too is inevitably guided by the colour of one’s skin. These are the painful realities politicians, and even the luddites at NEASA and SAKELIGA, must appreciate and that the Act correctly seeks to address.
