Amy Musgrave
Group Labour Editor
A former senior white policewoman who failed to be promoted because of her skin colour, is to seek international remedy, after her nine-year legal battle came to an end at the Constitutional Court.
Renate Barnard, a former lieutenant-colonel now working at a bank as a forensic investigator, is to approach the UN and International Labour Organisation in hope of their recommending to South Africa that it comply with the spirit of conventions it has ratified on eliminating racism.
This is to be her last-ditch attempt to show that South Africa’s employment equity laws are out of sync with international conventions on racial discrimination.
The conventions are not blind to the needs for historical redress. Also, while the public service has been transformed in line with South Africa’s demographics, the economy remains largely untransformed, and this may weaken Barnard’s case.
Yesterday, the Constitutional Court not only granted the SAPS leave to appeal against a Supreme Court of Appeal finding that the police had discriminated unfairly against Barnard but, in a majority judgment, set this ruling aside.
Barnard was turned down twice for a position that involved evaluating and investigating complaints, on the grounds that white women were overrepresented at that salary level.
She had been recommended as the best candidate. The post was not filled and was scrapped by then-police chief Jackie Selebi, who deemed it unessential.
Dirk Groenewald, who heads the legal division of trade union Solidarity, which has been assisting Barnard, said a reason for the Concourt’s ruling was that the union had erred in not challenging Selebi’s decision.
The court said the decision was fair because it complied with the SAPS’s employment equity plan.
Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann said the union would not make the same mistake twice. In a case on behalf of 10 Correctional Services employees, the injustices of the affirmative action plan itself were being challenged.