EUSTACE DAVIE: What race quotas really destroy

Many policies are introduced in the name of justice. Some genuinely expand liberty and opportunity; others, despite their intentions, dismantle the very freedoms they claim to protect. SA’s new race quota law falls into the latter category. 

Most public commentary has focused on who may or may not be hired. However, the deeper damage occurs earlier — at the point of decision. That pivotal moment when an employer, facing risk and responsibility, asks a straightforward question: who is the best person for this job? 

Today, the state answers on behalf of every employer: You may not hire who you judge best. You must hire who we say. 

The Employment Equity Amendment Act compels every business employing more than 50 people to implement racial quotas from September 1. These quotas are not general targets. They apply at every level of employment: management, technical and supervisory. If a firm does not meet these prescribed ratios in every department and every job level, it faces penalties including fines of up to 10% of annual turnover and exclusion from government contracts. 

The implications are profound. This is not a regulatory tweak; it is a direct takeover of private discretion. This amounts to the confiscation of judgment from those who bear the consequences of their decisions. The law means that an employer’s experience, industry knowledge and risk calculation no longer count. Judgment itself has been expropriated without compensation. 

A market economy thrives because of decentralised choices made by individuals responding to real-world feedback. It is not a structure to be engineered from above, but rather a discovery process that aligns talent, effort and enterprise with what people need. Employers do not make decisions based on racial checklists, but on the qualities that matter — competence, performance, reliability and the value that a candidate offers to their business.

This legislation breaks that essential process. It replaces the complex reality of business with a singular demand: meet the quota or face consequences. The inevitable result is misallocation of labour, incentives and trust. 

Once productive co-ordination gives way to racial compliance, the economic mechanism begins to lose coherence.

Academic and philosopher Friedrich Hayek once warned: “The more the state plans, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” When choices are imposed from above, the link between actions and outcomes weakens. Firms pause their hiring. Growth slows. People hesitate. Confidence withers.

The burden falls on businesses, but the harm is greatest for those striving hardest to succeed. When promotions no longer signal merit, but rather compliance with demographic rules, resentment and uncertainty take root. Employers who would otherwise grow their operations begin to retreat, wary of legal exposure with each new hire. 

This is not progress — it is regressive coercion. 

The policy does not elevate skill or reward initiative; it enforces numerical outcomes. It does not end discrimination; it legalises it under a different label. No society in history has prospered by converting merit into suspicion or by replacing voluntary co-operation with racial engineering. 

There is no justice in reverting to job reservation, regardless of who it may now appear to favour. It was wrong in 1956, and it is wrong today. 

A society founded on freedom does not seek to equalise outcomes by force. It ensures that people are free to associate, trade, produce and be rewarded in proportion to their contribution. No person’s future should depend on whether their racial category satisfies a spreadsheet in a government department. 

The right to make honest decisions must be restored. Business owners must be free to hire based on skill and character, not arbitrary racial classification. A free economy cannot function when political formulas override human judgment. 

This law destroys that freedom. It must be repealed. 

SA’s prosperity depends on recognising effort, respecting entrepreneurship and ensuring that race returns to what it should always have been: legally irrelevant.

• Davie is a director of the Free Market Foundation and author of ‘Unchain the Child’.