COSATU welcomes ConCourt Equity ruling
The Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomes the ruling of the Constitutional Court rejecting the appeal by former SAPS Lieutenant-Colonel Renate Barnard, backed by the trade union Solidarity, against the SAPS's refusal to promote her because she was white. The court ruled that this did not amount to unfair discrimination and was in the spirit of the constitution.
The case arose after Lt-Col Barnard was denied promotion three times, despite claiming to be the candidate with the best qualifications. The SAPS argued it could not promote her because under its employment equity plan, white women were already overrepresented at that level.
COSATU concurs with the main judgment, by Judge Dikgang Moseneke, that the SAPS employment equity plan is a "restitutionary measure envisaged by both the constitution and the Employment Equity Act... Their ultimate goal is to urge us on to a more equal and fair society".
It is important that we never forget the underlying reason why South Africa needs laws to redress the blatant racial discrimination of the apartheid years. Job reservation policies, maintained through "competency certificates", created a white workers' monopoly of skilled operators, in areas such as blasting, engine driving and shift supervisors, and prevented black workers from promotion to any senior management positions.
Still today we live with the legacy of those racist policies; the 14th annual report of the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) for 2012-13 confirmed how far South Africa still is from reversing them. We still do not have a workforce that reflects the demographic profile of the country. It revealed the "gross under-representation" of black people‚ women and people with disabilities in key areas of the labour force in the private sector.
The overall population profile of South Africa, in which Africans constitute 78.9% of the population, whites 9.6%, coloureds 9.1% and Indians 2.9%, yet at the ‘top management' level Africans held only 19.8% of the jobs, Coloureds 5.1%, Indians 8.4%, and foreign nationals 4.2%, while whites held 62.7%, slowly going down from their 76.3% in 2003 but still nowhere near the national demographics.
At lower levels the picture is slightly better but progress is still much too slow. At ‘senior management' level African representation rose over two years to 23.0% from 12.8%‚ coloureds remained at 7.0% and Indians increased from 9.6% to 10.1%‚ while white representation declined from 59.1% to 57.0%.
Among ‘professionals'‚ African representation rose from 36.3% to 38.4%‚ coloureds declined slightly from 10.2% to 9.6%, Indians rose from 9.1% to 9.4%‚ while white representation declined from 42.3% to 40.6%.
‘Skilled technical' Africans increased from 57.0% to 59.2%‚ while coloureds declined from 11.5% to 11.3%‚ Indians from 6.2% to 5.9% and whites from 24.0% to 22.0%.
These figures prove that while some progress is being made, especially at the lower levels, it is still at a snail's pace and shows that there is still a huge gulf between a still mainly white and male rich minority - and a large overwhelming black working class majority.
So COSATU is adamant that we still need to redress the past injustices in employment, and has always supported the Employment Equity Act (EEA) and broad-based black economic empowerment, but insisted that they that must be enforced more urgently and systematically.
The 2013 COSATU Bargaining Conference called for "a strengthened EEA, which needs to introduce strict penalties for non-compliance". We have therefore welcomed the Employment Equity Amendment Act, which came into force on 1 August 2014, which goes some way to facilitate faster movement towards racial and gender equity in employment.
The main problem with the previous EEA was the shockingly low level of enforcement, as revealed in every successive CEE report, which is why we also welcome the new Act's imposition of increased fines for employers who fail to prepare or implement an Employment Equity Plan.
We must now ensure that this new, improved act is far better enforced, so that we can move towards a discrimination-free workforce throughout South Africa. The ConCourt ruling will help us to move faster to the goal of a workforce which at every level reflects the population of the country we live in.
As POPCRU General Secretary Nkosinathi Theledi, says: "Affirmative action has been confirmed by the Constitutional Court. The transformation agenda has now been protected. The ruling should set the tone and tune for the entire country".
Statement issued by COSATU national spokesperson, Patrick Craven, September 4 2014
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