Ever since 1998 parliament has been complicit in the extralegal rewriting of the Employment Equity Act
30 January 2023 - 18:04
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Michael Morris’s most recent column refers (“ANC scandalously sustains apartheid legacy of racial laws”, January 30). The problem goes way beyond the ANC. The buck doesn’t even stop with the president, but with parliament. Ever since 1998 parliament has been complicit in the extralegal rewriting of the Employment Equity Act (EEA).
All official statistics supposedly arising from the EEA (and related subsequent legislation) use the separate apartheid racial categories of African, Indian and coloured, along with their gendered equivalents. Yet, none of them appear in either the original EEA or any of its subsequent amendments. The wording of all the EEAs couldn’t be clearer:“‘Designated groups’ means black people, women and people with disabilities.”
The exclusion of the hated apartheid “races” — other than white — wasn’t an oversight. The issue was heatedly debated in parliament’s labour portfolio committee. It was in fact the ANC that resisted pressure from other parliamentary parties (as well as within its own ranks) to have a divisive hierarchy of racial oppression.
I was the ANC’s labour researcher at the time and directly witnessed these proceedings within both the ANC’s labour caucus and parliament’s labour committee.
Jeff Rudin
Alternative Information & Development Centre
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: Parliament complicit on EEA
Ever since 1998 parliament has been complicit in the extralegal rewriting of the Employment Equity Act
Michael Morris’s most recent column refers (“ANC scandalously sustains apartheid legacy of racial laws”, January 30). The problem goes way beyond the ANC. The buck doesn’t even stop with the president, but with parliament. Ever since 1998 parliament has been complicit in the extralegal rewriting of the Employment Equity Act (EEA).
All official statistics supposedly arising from the EEA (and related subsequent legislation) use the separate apartheid racial categories of African, Indian and coloured, along with their gendered equivalents. Yet, none of them appear in either the original EEA or any of its subsequent amendments. The wording of all the EEAs couldn’t be clearer: “‘Designated groups’ means black people, women and people with disabilities.”
The exclusion of the hated apartheid “races” — other than white — wasn’t an oversight. The issue was heatedly debated in parliament’s labour portfolio committee. It was in fact the ANC that resisted pressure from other parliamentary parties (as well as within its own ranks) to have a divisive hierarchy of racial oppression.
I was the ANC’s labour researcher at the time and directly witnessed these proceedings within both the ANC’s labour caucus and parliament’s labour committee.
Jeff Rudin
Alternative Information & Development Centre
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
MORE:
Employment equity fines on cards for JSE-listed companies
MICHAEL MORRIS: ANC scandalously sustains apartheid legacy of racial laws
UNATHI KAMLANA: Transformation is much more than a tick-box exercise
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