Pretoria - The Employment Equity Amendment Act once again came under fire during picketing by a group of DA members led by party Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga outside the Employment and Labour office in Pretoria.
President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the act into law in April and Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi published a gazette last month inviting comments on its sectoral targets.
While the DA and trade union Solidarity have been scathing about the act, trade union federations like Cosatu and Saftu have expressed support for it.
The DA has said it was prepared to go to court over the act because it believed it would introduce forced quotas in local businesses and would also discriminate against whites, Indians and coloureds.
The government said the law seeks to introduce new measures to promote diversity and equality in the workplace and it applies to all employees and employers in the country.
It also empowers the minister of labour and employment to identify and set numerical employment equity targets for economic sectors.
The numerical targets are meant to ensure equitable representation of suitably qualified people from historically disadvantaged groups based on race, gender and disability at all occupational levels in the workplace.
Msimanga accused the government of trying to amend the act to sideline Indian, coloured and white workers. Speaking outside the department’s office, he said: “We are here to tell the Department of Labour that what they are trying to do has failed South Africa in general. Unemployment now is at an all-time high in South Africa.”
He criticised the department for introducing “more quotas instead of coming up with an economic plan to turn the situation around” and create employment.
“They are actually saying they want to fight the legacy of apartheid but they are actually implementing the same apartheid policies where they want to segregate people based on race. Initially, they (the government) said ‘less white people into job spaces and now they are saying it should be less Indian people, less coloured people into job spaces’.
“What is going to happen next? They are actually going to say less Zulu people into job opportunities. Then you know it is a perpetual thing; it is not going to end,” he said.
He called on the government to put an end to the act and “to talk about how we are growing the economy of South Africa”.
According to Msimanga, the amendment seeking to promote quotas was “unconstitutional” and he said that the DA was prepared to take the fight as far as the Constitutional Court to reverse the situation.
He proposed that the government cut red tape to make sure that it was not cumbersome to run a business in South Africa and for businesses to find it easy to employ people.
He lambasted the government for borrowing money and then spending it on social grants payouts, saying it was not sustainable in the long run. He said the government must instead borrow money to build industries that would employ people who can pay tax.
“When you have tax, you have a prosperous country. That’s basically what we have been saying to the government needs to happen. And unfortunately our pleas have been falling on deaf ears,” Msimanga said.
Pretoria News