IRR hands over follow-up letter to the Presidency on latest race law

21 April 2023

This afternoon, the IRR handed over a follow-up letter to President Ramaphosa’s office in Tuynhuys in Cape Town, seeking clarity on his rationale for signing the unconstitutional, counter-productive Employment Equity Amendment Bill (EEB) into law.

This follows our earlier letter to the Presidency of 12 April 2022, opposing the amendment of the Employment Equity Act, to which we failed to receive a substantial response.

In a letter dated 1 November 2022, the President’s office informed the IRR that the President had noted our constitutional objections to the EEB, and that these would be considered before Ramaphosa made his final decision.

Given this assurance that he applied his mind to our objections on the constitutionality of the Bill, which was signed into law on 12 April 2022, our request is simply that the Presidency share the content of the deliberations that somehow trumped the IRR’s demonstration of the of the unconstitutionality of the draft law.

It is the national interest that the President makes his deliberations known so that the public can understand what convinced him to sign the EEB into law, despite the fact that it violates non-racialism, imposes illegibly vague standards on what counts as a racial classification, violates the equality clause by imposing anti-poor racial targets, violates the constitutional distinctions between the public and private sector, and violates the constitutional requirements that tenders be competitively transparent.

In the meantime, the IRR has instructed its legal team to challenge the amendment to the Employment Equity Act.

Issued by Mlondi Mdluli, IRR Campaign Manager, 21 April 2023