South Africa’s business sector needs to stand together in denouncing the race-based employment ideology government is seeking to implement if pending legislation is signed into law in its current form. So believes Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux, in conversation with BizNews correspondent Michael Appel. Dis-Chem-gate has shone a light on the impending Employment Equity Amendment Bill recently passed by the National Assembly. Le Roux has written to Sakeliga members decrying what he calls the “state’s harmful ideology” as a “road that leads to ruin”. Sakeliga has made public its intention to legally challenge the legislation should the president sign it. Le Roux says, as state failure accelerates, the government has less and less ability to enforce its own harmful policies, and believes the business sector shouldn’t be too eager to apply them either. In fact, he says “we should resist”.
Excerpts from interview with Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux
Piet Le Roux on whether the saga around Dis-Chem is a symptom of harmful government policy
Yes, one could even say that it is an economy captured by the state. We have an economic environment in which companies like this – independent companies listed on the JSE with huge brand value and sizeable legal departments – are not able to say no to government. In fact they’re trying to explain themselves and justify themselves within the dominant ideology which is race-based employment. That is a very harmful ideology. And our letter to Sakeliga members last week was to say that we do not have to accept this. There are other ways to add value. And in fact, there’s actually only a road that leads to ruin if everybody actually does what government ostensibly requires of them.
On whether the anger at Dis-Chem is misdirected
Ivan Saltzman of Dis-Chem wrote down what he was intending to do. We can, of course, lament what he said but it was also revealing. It was revealing because the memo, while official in Dis-Chem’s case, is unofficial in many other companies. It’s been that way for at least a decade or two in South Africa. As the state’s ideology got stronger and stronger, and as regulations and codes permeated and created this toxic environment in which businesses are being robbed of their independence, it has happened before and it is happening again. We should not focus too much on Dis-Chem, even though what Dis-Chem did is deplorable on many levels, when you replace the words who they prohibit for employment with any other group or any other ethnicity, and it would obviously be unacceptable. Why is it acceptable in the case of preventing white people for employment, putting a moratorium on that? But it is a moment for business in South Africa to also reflect and think about the road ahead. Isn’t this a fork in the road? Where we can either go down the road Dis-Chem takes us and that is the road to ruin, or we can regain our independence, coordinate and stand up and create an alternative environment in which we are not so toxically incentivised as to succumb to such a harmful policy. The state’s racial ideology is a harmful ideology. It’s our constitutional duty to oppose it.
On why racial quotas in industries would be a bad thing
It’s a bad thing because it substitutes entrepreneurial labour capital allocation in the country, business decision making based on what business has always done, which is to provide goods and services. And it introduces political decision making. It robs businesses of their independence and in so doing, they will be less successful. They won’t be less successful because they are appointing black people, they will be less successful because they are not making good business decisions. It’s quite foreseeable that there will be some companies in South Africa that even have 100% black staff component. That does not say anything about the success of the business. But what we do know is that we will detract from the success of businesses if we have them follow government’s prescriptions on what their employees or their shareholders or their customers or their mergers and acquisitions should look like based on race.
Read also:
- Sakeliga bemoans the race-based ideology of the state
- Post-July riots assistance to crippled businesses based on race – Sakeliga
- ‘BEE is a failure and it must be turned around’ – Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux
