The Democratic Alliance (DA) now says it voted for the Employment Equity Amendment Bill of 2012 (the Bill) in the National Assembly last month even though it opposed virtually all the key changes introduced by the Bill. (Where the DA stands on employment equity, Politicsweb, 2 November 2013]
But if the party had so many reservations about the Bill, why then did its use its clout as the official ‘opposition' to endorse it?
The essence of the Bill is that it:
- strips away key defences for businesses battling to meet unrealistic racial quotas;
- more than trebles current fines;
- cuts short the enforcement process so that prosecutions become easier and huge fines can more readily be imposed.
The Bill also has another key weakness the DA fails adequately to note. The Bill itself still allows employers in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal to apply regional demographics in setting their racial targets. But this is not the end of the matter, as the DA seems to think, for the Bill also empowers the minister of labour to limit reference to regional demographics by means of regulation.
More fundamentally still, the EE Bill betrays the principle of non-racialism. It encourages the racial bean-counting the DA claims to oppose and will inevitably harm the poor black majority by choking off investment, growth, and jobs.