ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula has accused some political parties of using the new employment equity regulations to mislead the masses and of re-igniting apartheid-era tactics to garner votes for their parties in next year’s general elections.
Trade union Solidarity last week scored a major victory against the government’s implementation of the proposed race-based employment equity legislation.
The amended Employment Equity Act empowers Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi to set employment equity targets for 18 economic sectors.
Where percentages of Indian, black, white, and coloured people have been identified as high or low, employers have a five-year period to reach the set target.
Some political parties claimed that the new regulations, published in May, under the Employment Equity Act would discriminate against the coloured and Indian populations in the country.
However, in a report-back session after the ANC’s National Working Committee (NWC) met on Monday, Mbalula said the government and Solidarity signed an “amicable” Settlement Agreement on Employment Equity (EE) and Affirmative Action (AA), ending a nine-month mediation process.
“The agreement stipulates that Employment Equity is not one fit but that provincial variations must be considered.
“The propaganda, characterised by distortions of the Employment Equity Amendment Bill and the subsequently proposed regulations, wrongfully suggested that the result of the amendments would be the disposal of coloureds and Indians from jobs and replacement of them with Africans.
“Some political parties have henceforth grossly misled the masses of our people on this as a way of garnering votes in what is a re-igniting of the apartheid era ‘swart gevaar’ tactics by creating a fictitious racial gulf premised on baseless fears between Africans on the one hand and Indians and coloureds on the other,” Mbalula said.
The NWC emphasised the importance of the ANC participating in public hearings to debunk this propaganda, which, he said, was “fashioned as a cheap electioneering strategy at the expense of truth by perpetuating racial polarisation”.
The ANC said it would continue to support Affirmative Action and Employment Equity, but not as a job reservation tactic, which was notoriously applied by the apartheid regime.
“The ANC holds the firm belief that black Africans include Indians and coloureds,” Mbalula said.
The NWC further reiterated that these regulations were up for public consultation and called on all South Africans and structures to participate in them.
kailene.pillay@inl.co.za
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