Cape Town - DA leader Helen Zille has apologised for confusion regarding the DA’s position on affirmative action - and has promised to oppose the new Employment Equity Amendment Bill.
The DA alleges the amendment “is based on racial coercion, it will undermine growth, reduce jobs, drive away investment and work against black empowerment”, will be subject to political manipulation, “and undermine our chances of building the capable state”.
South African Institute of Race Relations researchers Anthea Jeffery and Frans Cronje said this week that the DA’s initial support for racial engineering would come as a shock to many party supporters.
They said by supporting the “race law”, the DA was “hoping its endorsement… would win it the support of ‘born-free’ black South Africans in the… election”.
The SAIRR’s Jeffery told the Cape Argus on Friday: “It’s important that the DA has done an about-turn on this bill, as (it) would hobble the economy horribly if passed.”
Zille said in her weekly DA Today newsletter that the DA’s MPs had, despite this, supported the Employment Equity Amendment Bill in the National Assembly on October 24 - and this had created significant confusion about the DA’s position.
Explaining the DA’s position on both black economic empowerment and employment equity, she argued that every empowerment initiative should “broaden opportunity for disadvantaged people” and not “seek to manipulate outcomes for the politically connected”.
The DA believed that if an initiative broadened opportunity, the party would support it. But “if it is used to camouflage yet another enrichment scheme for cronies, we reject it”.
Zille explained: “This is... summarised by the slogan we had (on) billboards in Gauteng: ‘We support BEE that creates jobs, not billionaires’.”
But Zille said DA MPs were “inadequately prepared” when the amendment was discussed in the National Assembly - which had somehow led to DA MPs supporting the amendment.
Zille explained: “The many and varied submissions on the bill were rushed through the portfolio committee in four meetings… The long parliamentary recess intervened before the bill went to the National Assembly and so we were unable to debate the implications of the bill adequately in caucus; when it did come before caucus, on the day it was due to be debated and voted on in the house, the explanatory memorandum produced by our spokespeople was defective.”
Zille said she took responsibility, and the DA would propose amendments to the bill in the National Council of Provinces, and would vote against the bill if it did not succeed in effecting these changes.
Cape Argus