Minister Nxesi’s deflection in NCOP Q&A reveals ANC’s unravelling

19 May 2023

In yesterday's NCOP Q&A session, Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi responded to the DA's probing with a second outburst in as many weeks. He desperately attributed the Western Cape's superior employment record to geographical advantages and the privileges bequeathed by a dismantled apartheid regime. These inaccurate exclamations are symptoms of his and the ANC’s mounting self-doubt. They expose the ruling party's downward spiral, betraying an inability to own its bureaucratic ineptitude.

This reality distortion further reflects a party failing to grapple with its disastrous governance, choosing to ignore the thriving example within its own borders. They recast blame onto geographical features and the legacies of the past, resorting to racial divisions to evade confronting their manifest failures.

This is not mere political theatre. These outbursts are self-indictments that reveal an ANC retreating further into racial rhetoric and blame-shifting, unable to contend with the consequences of its policy failures.

Yet, we see a different picture in the Western Cape, under the DA’s stewardship. The unemployment rate, at 21.6%, and even the broader definition rate at 25.9%, are both significantly lower than the national average of 32.9%. This inconvenient truth for the ANC is the fruit of the DA’s commitment to meritocracy and equal opportunity.

Such outcomes are not the blessings of geography or the vestiges of a bygone era. They signify the success of policies centred on capability and potential, anathema to the ANC’s race-fixated social engineering, eerily reminiscent of apartheid-era manipulations.

The Government’s latest regulations to the Employment Equity Act, gazetted earlier this week, introduce numerical racial targets across all industries and regions, thereby striking at the heart of our Constitution's commitment to non-racialism. The regulations risk propagating a divisive narrative that racial identity determines opportunity and advancement, which threatens to entrench racial divisions, and undermine social stability. These regulations, if left unchallenged, will spark a skills exodus, disrupt capital accumulation and the efficiency of production, and thereby cause significant damage to South Africa's economic structure, undermining any prospects of growth.

It is for these reasons that the DA will pursue court action, affirming our commitment to unity and equality. The DA will not stand by as the ANC seeks to destabilise our economy and the livelihoods of South Africans. We will persist in upholding the principles of meritocracy, equal opportunity, and non-racialism against the ANC's chaotic attempts to undermine these pillars of our constitution and society.

Issued by Michael Cardo, DA Shadow Minister of Employment and Labour, 19 May 2023