This year's report is compiled out of 1493 reports received from employers who have more than 150 employees. 1365 reports were excluded. The reason that is given for the exclusion is that these reports were from smaller businesses who reported for the first time. The 2003 report is compiled out of 3252 reports from large employers, with 1645 reports excluded. The 2005 report is compiled out of 2085 reports from large employers, with 677 received reports excluded for reasons like data in vital tables not tallying, missing pages and inaccurate completion. It is very strange that because of these kinds of mistakes, there were 677 unusable reports two years ago, but this year the Commission apparently did not receive a single report with errors from a large employer.

This year's report is based on the least number of employers so far. It also represents only about 2 million of South Africa's 17 million-strong EAP. The 2003 report represented 3.3 million, and the 2005 report represented 2.4 million. The employers who report to the Commission also differ every year. Because of this, a scientific comparison between the different reports is virtually impossible. Many of the employers who do not submit any reports are governmental departments who, on average, meet or exceed the racial demographic targets of affirmative action policies. If such employers do not deem it necessary to submit reports, the statistics will always remain skewed towards an under-representation of black people.

Because of the unlikelihood of there being no errors in the reports submitted by large employers this year, the decline in employers and employees represented by the report and the basic mathematical errors (certain columns' totals are simply incorrect), the 2007 Employment Equity Report is the most unreliable one released by the EEC as of yet. It is even worse than the 2006 report which was exposed as being deeply statistically flawed by Solidarity.[1] Policy decisions that use only the 2007 EEC report as a source of information will be deeply flawed and unrealistic. Any policy decisions have to be based on scientifically- and statistically-correct data, which the Employment Equity Reports unfortunately do not provide at the moment.

For the moment, we will ignore the bias and flaws of the Employment Equity Reports, and consider their figures as correct. It will be shown that even when using these figures, the conclusions reached by Jimmy Manyi are false.

In the foreword to the latest Employment Equity Report, Jimmy Manyi states that white women continue to be over-represented by an average of about three times their share of the Economically Active Population (EAP). According to his own document, white women are 5.4% of the EAP. They hold only slightly more than 8% of total jobs. His statement that they are three-times over-represented, is a blatant lie. If it was true, white women would have to hold 16.2% of all jobs.

In 2001, white women held 12.4% of all jobs, in 2003, 9.5%, in 2005, 9.1%, and now they hold 8%. There is a clear decreasing trend, and never has Manyi's statement of white women holding three times more jobs than they "should", been correct.

Manyi also notes in the foreword that: "White males also continue to be dominantly over-represented." While on the face of it, this statement is not false, it is still misleading as a result of omitted truths, to whit: The representation of white males in total jobs has declined steadily from 14% in 2001 to 12.6% in 2003 to 11.2% in 2005 and  10.1% in 2007. Even when one only looks at the top management level, like Manyi obsessively does, white males have also constantly declined, from 78% in 2001 to 58.4% in 2007. Top management accounts for only 0.046% of South Africa's total EAP.

It is interesting to note that during his speech at the press launch of this year's report, Manyi throughout compared 2003's report to 2007 - omitting 2005. He pointed out that white women's share of top management increased from 8.8% in 2003 to 9.8% in 2007. However, when one compares 2005 with 2007, white women's share of top management jobs actually declined. The same is true of white women and even white men in all the other job categories. Both show a decline in all categories (except for an increase of 0.1% for white women in non-permanent jobs) from 2005 to 2007. Manyi convieniently skipped that part.

The one percentage point increase in white women's share of top management jobs from 2003 to 2007 that Manyi mentions, represents a mere 155 white women. Based on this tiny number of people, he creates the impression that all white women are "unfairly benefiting" from affirmative action. Once again, this is simply a falsehood.

Another thing that Manyi finds "troubling" is the decline from 2003 to 2007 in black representation at the professionally qualified and mid-management level. This is merely a result of an anomalous spike in the figures in the 2003 report, for which the EEC gives no explanation. Once again, when one compares 2005's report to 2007's figures, it shows increased representation of blacks at this level and a decline for whites. The same goes for a comparison between 2001 and 2007. Total black male representation increased from 16.8% to 26.4%, black female from 8.1% to 14.9%, while white males declined from 52.8% to 38.7% and white females from 22.3% to 18.5%. It is only Manyi's selective comparison of 2003 and 2007 that makes the picture look dark for blacks and rosy for whites.

Issued by Solidarity September 17 2008