Mbeki joins divisive employment equity debate
23 July 2007

The government is coming under increasing pressure to give employment equity greater teeth in the marketplace, with President Thabo Mbeki acknowledging that South Africa is "not singing from the same song book" on black empowerment.

In his regular newsletter in ANC Today, Mbeki, who has often referred in speeches to whites harking back to their privileges and wishing to hold on to them, notes resistance to the government's policies of fast-tracking in the workplace.

Mbeki refers particularly to a book put out by Solidarity, a largely white trade union. The Naked Emperor argues that the flip side of affirmative action is increased group conflict, resentment by "the punished groups" and the demands of beneficiaries increasing.

This points to the government coming under pressure to remove white women as a designated group under employment equity legislation, although labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana has previously dismissed such a move.

The president's reference to the debate points to the fact that affirmative action, skills development and equity - which can be broadly defined as black empowerment - in the workplace has become the new battleground with big, mainly white, business as the government struggles to deliver to its largely working class black constituency.

The rising tension between the government and business was underscored recently when transport minister Jeff Radebe, who is a former public enterprises minister, referred to business not coming to the party on infrastructure spending and making no forward plans to prepare for government's multi-billion rand construction bonanza in the next five years.

In the context of a jobless rate of over 26 percent - the vast majority of whom are black but with a growing white unemployed class, which Solidarity puts at roughly 5 percent of that population - Mbeki has taken note of the raging debate in the media, including Mdladlana's claim that there was much resistance by whites to employment equity.

Mbeki reports that his labour minister - known to be a close confidante - found it "unbelievable that even today … we are still debating the relevance of our employment equity legislation".

Significantly, Mbeki also takes note of the "snail paced movement" of job equity as spelt out by the employment equity commission report, which focused on the rapid advancement of white women in particular.

He is careful to report that Manyi has referred to this slow movement as perpetuating and entrenching the racial and gender disparities in the economy.

He also notes that the Canadian report emphasised that people with disabilities, in particular, had been "quietly left by the wayside", signalling some action in this area.

Donwald Pressly,  www.busrep.co.za