Employment and Labour Minister, Thulas Nxesi says South Africa’s labour market over the past three decades has been a mirror of dark, deep hole syndrome as reflected in the recent Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) report.

Nxesi said this dark hole syndrome has been a disturbing pattern in which the White community has been dominating top echelons of workplaces and African’s, Coloureds and Indians have been occupying lower levels.

He said the discussion on EE amendments has been distorted deliberately to pit Africans against Coloureds and Indians – and also making the poor to fight among themselves.

The Minister was addressing an employment equity (EE) Act amendment engagement session and service delivery campaign with the community of Mitchells Plain in Cape Town at the Portlands Indoor Centre.

He said the historical reality of SA’s labour market was that of racial exclusion.

“The reality is that we cannot give employers more than 26 years to transform and they choose not to move. What we are saying now with the Employment Equity Act amendments is that Minister will have the power to negotiate sector by sector - and say let us agree on targets. Each and every company must put targets in place and these will not be imposed by the Minister – but will be set up by the industry,” he said.

Nxesi said targets should not be confused with quotas. He said a quota is put in place and everybody must comply, “a target is put in place to be met. The targets are flexible in that they offer a leeway to provide reasons for non-achievement”.

According to Nxesi government cannot allow the laws of the country to be trampled because SA is a constitutional democracy. He said the history of this country was painful and government would not allow “the whipping of emotions with lies”.

The 23^rd CEE Report released in June showed that top management is occupied by whites at 62.9 per cent followed by Africans at 16.9 per cent. This, according to CEE is despite the fact that Africans constitute 80 per cent of the national economically active population (EAP), followed by Coloureds at 9.3 per cent, Whites at 8 per cent and lastly, Indians at 2.7 per cent.

The situation regarding representation of women and people with disability was even worse, Nxesi said.

The Employment Equity Act came into being in 1998 to achieve equity in the workplace by – promoting equal opportunity and fair treatment in employment through the elimination of unfair discrimination and implementing affirmative action measures to redress the disadvantages in employment experienced by designated groups, in order to ensure their equitable representation in all occupational categories and levels in the workforce.

In the advancement of elimination of unfair discrimination, the EE Act places the responsibility on the employer to take steps to promote equal opportunity in the workplace by eliminating unfair discrimination in any employment policy or practice.

Nxesi said the Department was eager to see the finalisation of the National Labour Migration Policy. He also expressed concern over the flood of immigrants which was posing a number of problems in the labour market. He said immigrants were now preferred for employment over South Africans because they offer cheap labour, cannot fight for their rights and are subjected to slavery working conditions.

The Minister called on departmental officials to deal with frustrations experienced by communities when accessing departmental services, especially when applying for Unemployment Insurance Fund UIF benefits.

For enquiries, please contact:

Sabelo Mali

Media Liaison Officer (Ministry)

082 729 5804/ Sabelo.Mali@labour.gov.za  

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Issued by: Department of Employment and Labour​

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