Fight against South Africa’s new BEE targets heading to the UN

Solidarity has announced its plans to take the government before the United Nations Committee over its intended implementation of the Employment Equity Act.

The union said it will reveal its plans to fight the government’s race laws in totality at the United Nations (UN).

“The government and Solidarity will again appear before the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in November, where Solidarity will expose the government’s policy of statistical racial representativity to the world by submitting a shadow report on discrimination in South Africa to the committee,” it said.

“Although our settlement earlier this year to stop the government’s proposed race laws was a major breakthrough, we are now taking it even further,” said Dr Dirk Hermann, Solidarity’s chief executive.

“This time, we are making it clear: Race laws must stop, and we want an end date. The time is now.”

The union noted that more details about Solidarity’s campaign at the UN against South Africa’s race laws will be provided on Monday (16 October 2023).

“Not about race,” says Department

The Department of Employment and Labour says that the new proposed employment equity targets determined by the minister are “not about race”.

Speaking to union representatives this week, the department’s deputy director for employment equity, Niresh Singh, said the targets are “also about including people with disabilities, Coloured people, Indian people, White women and so forth.”

Singh said that when talking about employment equity and affirmative action, critics make a big deal about what he calls a “small issue”.

“People only take one small issue but change it into a big issue. They think Employment Equity is only about race, and that is not true,” he said.

The deputy director told unions to work with and consult with employers in the country to ensure that the targets are met and that all shortfalls in demographic representation are addressed, including in terms of disability and gender.

However, despite Singh’s assertion that the country’s new employment equity laws and proposed targets are not about race, the regulations go to great lengths and have an incredibly detailed focus on making sure 18 major sectors in South Africa employ workers based on race.

The laws assented to by President Cyril Ramaphosa in April empower the minister of employment and labour to set race-based targets for each sector in the country, which need to be achieved in five years.

Failure to meet the targets could result in hefty penalties, including millions of rands in fines.

The proposed targets present 10,800 data points, presenting racial demographic targets for 18 sectors across four job categories, covering five racial groups (including one catch-all ‘black’ category).

Critics have argued that the targets also amount to racial quotas, which are unlawful in South Africa.

The department has hit back at this, saying that the targets cannot be quotas as they are flexible, businesses can be exempted, and the timelines give space for the sectors to achieve them.

However, unions like Solidarity have argued that there is no realistic way that any business can achieve the targets, given the state of South Africa’s economy.

The union presented a deep-dive impact study on the targets, noting that businesses would have to expand at unrealistic rates to meet the targets without firing anyone. The only path left would be to fire and rehire based on race – a de facto quota system.

The targets are no longer open for public comment, having closed on 12 June.

Read: Alarm bells for one of South Africa’s largest employers