Jeff Rudin argues that “Employment policies and practices that divide ‘black people’ according to the apartheid-manufactured ‘races’ of Africans, coloureds and Indians are thus outside the law.”
The High Court has already decided that it is unlawful for employers to adopt a formula, when deciding the candidates to interview, that effectively creates an insurmountable obstacle for white male applicants to be considered.
View or download the judgment by clicking here, courtesy of Saflii.
Du Preez v Minister of Justice & Constitutional Development
[2006] 8 BLLR 767 (HC)
Jeff Rudin’s letter Minister is ignorant first appeared today in Business Day and BDlive and courtesy of Business Day here are some extracts.
OUR government’s dysfunctionality makes us far too inured to the unacceptable. Thus we should probably not be surprised that the labour minister is ignorant of key labour legislation. You report her as praising Woolworths for its “unwavering effort to genuinely address transformation in the workplace through the implementation of employment equity” (September 10).
Yet, the apartheid “races” determining Woolworths’ recruitment drive have no place whatsoever in the Employment Equity Act of 1998.
The only “racial” designated group recognised by the act is “black people”, which the act defines as “a generic term which means Africans, coloureds and Indians”. Employment policies and practices that divide “black people” according to the apartheid-manufactured “races” of Africans, coloureds and Indians are thus outside the law.
I was the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) parliamentary researcher covering labour in 1998. I attended all meetings of the labour portfolio committee that deliberated on the Employment Equity Bill. The retention of the apartheid “races” was supported by some political parties, as, indeed, was the extension of these divisions into tribal and language ones. The ANC rejected all these moves to perpetuate — let alone build on — the fractured society inherited from apartheid.
The present minister of labour seems to be blissfully ignorant of the very precise meanings of the act. Thus, rather than being shocked by Woolworths’ ignorance, she welcomes their reproduction of the apartheid “races” the act explicitly repudiates.