By Andiwiwe Makinana
The Independent Democrats have called on Premier Helen Zille to suspend the Speaker of the Western Cape parliament, Shahid Esau, for calling Afrikaaners "boere" and for saying too many black women worked for the legislature.
The Cape Argus reported on Thursday that Esau had allegedly made the remarks at a legislature staff meeting on Monday.
Cope has called on Esau to explain his comments, saying: "One would expect that Mr Esau would be more sensitive to the baggage that we still carry based on racial labels and stereotypes."
The ID's Rodney Lentit said the Speaker had "deeply hurt all the women of the Western Cape".
The parties called on Zille to suspend Esau pending an urgent investigation. They encouraged staff to take the matter to the Equality Court.
Parliamentary staff have drawn up a petition calling on Esau to "lead by example".
Esau said on Thursday that an investigation was under way, but he declined to give details.
"I said that when it came to the black component, there was an over-representation of black women and under-representation of black men.
"This was said completely objectively, with no malice intended," he said.
Meanwhile, the legislature placed an advert on its website yesterday inviting bids to conduct a skills audit of the institution's staff.
It said the purpose of the audit was to have "baseline information" from which to develop and capacitate employees.