CORRECTIONAL SERVICES EMPLOYEES IN THE WESTERN CAPE CHALLENGE THE IMPOSITION OF DEMOGRAPHIC REPRESENTIVITY IN THE PROVINCE
On Thursday 23 February a group of employees from the Department of Correctional Services in the Western Cape will be going to the CCMA to challenge the department's employment equity plan which has placed a prohibition on the appointment and promotion of coloured and white South Africans in the province.
Almost 18 years after the establishment of our non-racial democracy, the lives of an increasing number of South Africans are once again being disrupted by racial discrimination. In terms of the new ideology of demographic representivity, the number of black, white, coloured and Indian employees in an organisation, the number of managers and the number of board members should ideally be in proportion to the percentage of the population represented by each of the race groups.
So, for example, in the ideal demographically representative organisation, 9.3% of employees, managers and board members should be white; 8.8 % should be coloured; 2.5 % should be Indian and 79.3% should be black.
Superficially, this seems to be quite fair. The trouble is that reality cannot easily be forced to conform to ideological prescriptions. This is often because the skills, qualifications, aptitudes and experience required for most jobs, are seldom distributed along racial lines - partly because of South Africa's long history of inequality and partly because of the generally poor performance of black education.
Also, if demographic representivity were to be applied throughout society - in the private sector, in civil society organisations, in educational institutions as well as in government - the outcome would not be one of racial equity but of pervasive racial domination. Everywhere, minorities would find themselves confined to demographic pens in which their employment and promotion prospects would be determined primarily by race - and not by merit.